If you're looking for ways to scale how you create content for social media, scheduling your posts with queues is one of the most powerful ways to do so.
This handy scheduling feature is ideal for:
- a) grouping posts of a similar theme into campaigns, and
- b) keeping your content schedule full with curated content.
Queues can help you with curating content, scheduling campaigns and tracking your results efficiently.
To help you get a hang of Queues, we’ve prepared three fun exercises for you at the bottom of this blog. If you don’t have a Sendible account yet (but would like to give this feature a try), you can sign up for a free trial here.
What are Queues great for?
Content curation and sharing
If your aim is to position your brand or client as a thought leader as part of your social media strategy, you’ll need to supply your audiences with relevant, high quality content. Part of this will be writing it, of course, but a large part will consist of smart content curation from trustworthy sources.
Queues are ideal for sharing content, especially evergreen, cornerstone pieces that add value and ease the pain-points of your target persona.
It’s simple to add individual social media posts to Queues. Once you’ve created a Queue, you can add a new message directly from the Compose Box (the place where you create all of your posts) or import them in bulk via CSV.
The benefit here is that you can simply queue your messages to publish at the same time throughout the week without having to worry when is the best time for the posts to go out.
Here's what one of our customers, Terri LeBlanc at the Swamp Fox Bookstore loves the most about queues:
You can save even more time by using our RSS Feed service that delivers the newest articles from your favorite blogs right to your dashboard.
Creating and tracking social media campaigns
Say you’re running a campaign about your client’s new product range that you need to promote sparingly for the next few months. Or, you’re a software company (like us) and you want to push a brand new feature that you’ve just released.
The beauty of Queues is that you can schedule all of the posts related to one subject and group them as a campaign to see how effective it was. When you run another social media campaign, you can compare both Queues and evaluate what went good and what could’ve been done better.
You can also find your top posts with the help of our social media reports and use that data to write more social media posts of a similar style.
Using Queues for scheduling social media posts
| Pros | Cons |
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Pros
- Users can set times once and won’t need to specify the time each message should go out. So while it will take a little bit of time to set up, it’ll save time in the long run.
- Your posts will look more organic if you add times which are less even, e.g., 12:33 instead of 12:30. So that, rather than it looking like you've scheduled the message weeks or months in advance, it appears as if you've just come across a piece of content and decided to share it with your audience.
- If your client is set up within their own user account, you can populate times based on when their posts are most likely to get engagement such as likes, shares or comments.
- All messages added into a Queue before they are sent out are tracked as a campaign so you can get specific data on these posts.
- You can use Queues and bulk importing via CSV to schedule posts for multiple clients in the same industry. Use different times and use the randomize options so that messages aren't posted in the same order.
Cons
- Not ideal for messages which need to be sent out at a specific time and date (especially if you’ve chosen to randomize the posts).
- If you're using the option to repeat posts, you need to make sure to keep adding content to the Queue as, otherwise, you'll end up with a Queue that just keeps repeating the same messages in a short space of time.
Three exercises to get you started with Queues
All you need to get started is think of what kind of posts you already publish on social media. Are they links to your blog, images of the office, #throwbackthursday posts or jokes that you share (or plan to) with your audience? Then, see if it’s worth creating Queues for each of them.
Below are three exercises that will get you up to speed with Queues and hopefully, you’ll see the value as soon as you start using them. All you need is some time to test them, but you’ll be scheduling actual social media posts as you go so it’s a win-win, right? Our customers find this feature a big time-saver, and we hope you do too.
Exercise #1 | Create a new Queue and write five social media posts with a trending hashtag
Time to have some fun! Feel free to choose any trending hashtag you like, here are a few that will work on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook: #throwbackthursday, #mondaymotivation, #wednesdaythoughts, #meettheteam, #officelife.
Instructions:
- Create a new Queue which has only one time slot on, e.g., Thursday.
- Choose one trending hashtag, e.g., #throwbackthursday.
- Write five new posts and add them to your Queue. This means that for the next five Thursdays, one post will be sent out each time.
- Tip: Add an image or video to see those engagement rates go up! If you want to post the same image to multiple networks on the same day, add multiple Queue time slots for that day - just make sure not to randomize your posts.
Exercise #2 | Create 10 social media posts and add them to a new Queue
Start out with the same network to make things easy! Twitter is great for this as the lifespan of each tweet is quite short, so pick one link from your client’s blog, webinar page or event. Then, write 10 different social media posts for the same link and choose one time slot for any two days of the week, e.g. 10:52 on Wednesday and 14:47 on Sunday.
Instructions:
- Create a new Queue for your blog (or the source of the link you’re sharing).
- Open the Compose Box.
- Write the tweet and add the link (and any images or hashtags you like).
- Then, select the right Queue (if not selected already) and schedule the post.
- Start writing more tweets and add them to your Queue.
- Tip: Try mixing up the copy and using different images and hashtags.
Exercise #3 | Create a custom report adding a campaigns module to track the results from your Queues
You'll want to track the impact your grouped social media messages are having. It's possible to track the success of each Queue with a custom reporting module.
Instructions:
- Log into the Custom Reports section of the dashboard (under Reports).
- Create a custom report and add modules from the Campaigns section to track messages sent, best days and times to post, clicks and more.
- Use this data to further improve your Queues.
- Tip: We recommend waiting for at least one to two weeks to see real data from your Queues.
Note: This feature requires a Sendible plan with Custom Reports enabled.
More tips on using Smart Queues in Sendible
- Avoid overwhelming users with too many posts being sent to them (it can be tempting with a feature like this, we know!). It’s best to start small and build up the frequency slowly instead of going all out and running out of content to publish.
- Avoid posting the exact same link or image to multiple networks repeatedly. The best way to counter this while pleasing social networks (and abiding by their guidelines) is to write unique copy for each post, especially if you plan to share the same link a few times. It’s as simple as:
- Using alternative headlines.
- Starting your copy with a verb or asking a question.
- Writing a post that describes only one of the headings in the content.
- Adding quotes from the author.
- Mixing it up by adding images to posts with links or sharing only links.
- You can see all Queued messages in the Engage section by selecting Queues. Note that your Queued messages won’t display in the Scheduled view which allows you to overview Queue messages separate from others.
- Dive deep into Queues and master them by reading our support articles:
Feel free to ask any questions about the feature and we’d love to hear about the creative ways you use it! Tag us on any social networks with @Sendible or #Sendible and we’ll share your post.
