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4 Weekly Social Media Activities that are Critical

How do you know what you should be doing daily vs weekly when it comes to your social media activities? Just like your business, there are certain things you should devote attention to weekly. For example, you wouldn't work on payroll daily; it just doesn't make sense. The same is true for your social media goals and initiatives.

This article is the second in our series about social media activities along with when and what you should be doing on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. Please review the other articles in this series as they are designed to work together.

8 Daily Social Media Activities That Are Essential for Shop Owners

The 8 essential social media activities that every shop owner should be doing on a daily basis.

Prioritize and Stick to a Routine

Seems like we've heard this before, right? But we can't stress the importance enough of making sure you prioritize your tasks and create a routine for yourself. Again, having a system in place will pay dividends for you not only in seeing results from your social media efforts, but it will also provide you with more time in your day to devote to other things, less stress, and the comfort of knowing you're not missing anything. In fact, having a system in place for your business is essential, but that's a whole different post and discussion.

Schedule, Schedule, Schedule

By the way, did we mention schedule? Scheduling is a component of your system we just discussed. I'm not just talking about scheduling your posts. Yes, that must be done. But also creating a schedule around reviewing results, doing research on competitors, which posts worked, and which ones didn't. By creating a schedule and making it part of your day, week and routine, you will ensure you're not missing what's important.

In today's world, there are a variety of digital tools designed to help you plan and schedule posts. Long gone are the days of going to each individual social media channel and scheduling or creating your posts. Sure you can still do that but we'll look at some of the industries leading SaaS tools in another article.

Weekly Activities

The following weekly social media activities are designed to work in conjunction with predominately your daily activities. Doing the daily and not the weekly or vice-a-versa just doesn't cut it. So, read on and let's keep you efficient and effective with your social media campaigns.

1. Create a Posting Schedule for the Week

If you remember from the daily activities article, nowhere did we discuss the actual post creation and putting them on the specific channel (like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). That's because this is a weekly activity.

If you've already been posting some things to your Facebook page, Instagram, or your Twitter account, you know what a big time-suck it can be. Also, you don't want to end up posting 12 posts on Monday and only 3 on Tuesday, do you? This is where you need to have a personalized posting schedule. You need to create a document that you plan and populate each week. It should have the same number of slots for each weekday and the weekend. You can see some examples below.

examples of social media calendars

Doing this manually can be a chore. There is a myriad of free templates out there a simple Google search can reveal. A few of the more notable ones (that are also free) are from HubSpot and HootSuite. Here at AutoPair we use a combination of Airtable to plan the posts in a calendar and then create and publish from HootSuite. Follow the link below to get your free social media posting schedule.

Download a free posting schedule here

Once you create your schedule then you actually have to create the post content and post it on the specific platform to be published at a later date. What to post is a subject all to itself. Check out the article, "What Should You Post to Social Media".

There are plenty of posting tools and platforms available that will incorporate a posting schedule for you to use. These are much easier to use and help to automate the process. If you are going to manage your businesses social media activities, then we suggest using one of these platforms. Some of these platforms have free levels but many come at a paid membership level. A few of the more notable ones that provide a scheduling feature are Hootsuite, Buffer, Sendible, HubSpot, SproutSocial, Loomly, and AgoraPulse.

If this is beginning to seem daunting, then maybe engaging a social media professional to manage your posts is more appealing. There are plenty of individuals that you can hire at various gig sites. But hiring an individual is risky. They typically don't know the automotive industry and especially your own businesses brand voice. You'll do a lot of hand-holding if you choose to go this route. Yes, it can be cheaper, but you usually get what you pay for. Using a digital agency is a better alternative. At AutoPair, we've created a digital agency to help you with just these types of campaigns. Learn more about our digital agency services here.

One last thing to keep in mind, leave some room in your schedule for ad-hoc campaigns (for example, holidays).Always keep a spare slot or two open that you can fit in such promos.

2. Capitalize on your Competitors' Best-performing Posts

Keep in mind, your strongest, most profitable local competitors are posting to social media and getting results. For your shop to stand out and capture the attention of prospective customers, you need to learn how to research their social media channels and analyze their strategies. The research and analyzation tend to be more of a monthly activity but identifying the top-performing posts is a weekly activity. Identifying your local competitions' best-performing content is only half the battle. You need to adapt it your own shops needs and your own audience.

Here are some tips on how to take advantage of your competitors' posts.

Address questions that they haven't answered.

If you remember, we discussed that you need to check your own comments and questions on a daily basis. Keeping that in mind, by checking your competitors' posts and addressing any questions they didn't answer on a weekly basis can provide your followers with unique value.

Leverage their best performing post formats.

The greatest thing about having a competitor is that you share the same audience. Let's examine this situation; the repair shop down the street creates an infographic and you notice that it's beating your videos you've been making. It might be time to rearrange your priorities and think about creating an infographic of your own.

Offer stronger alternatives to the content they are sharing.

Do their online polls get more engagement on social? Try to beat them with a fun quiz or game.

3. Track the Results of your Ongoing Campaigns

All of the major social networks have their own analytics services. These provide you with tremendous insights into your post's performance. Let's say you have a campaign that's designed to educate your audience about your shop's superior diagnostic services. You notice that it's not getting as much engagement as other types of campaigns. By monitoring the results of these ongoing campaigns, you can tweak them in the cases when something is going wrong.

4. Boost Well-Performing Posts

Some of the content you post will have more likes, engagements, etc. than others. While some of your posts might seem just average but these may have potential as well. Boosting a well-performing post can have a noticeable impact on your reach, likes, followers, engagements, etc. Boosting does require you to spend some money. Facebook and Instagram make it easy for you to boost a post. If boosting a post is new to you, we've written an article on it here.

As you can see, creating your posting schedule is a major part of your weekly social media activities. Again, using a platform to help automate the publishing will make your social media tasks much easier and enjoyable. Reviewing which of your posts have been performing better than other is crucial as well. Then carving out some time to capitalize on your competitors' posts and addressing things they haven't will build value to your shop over theirs.

Remember, utilizing social media is still about building relationships and trust. The more you're able to demonstrate trustworthiness and engage the public on your social media networks and channels, the bigger your payoff will be with loyal, profitable, long-term customers that you enjoy working with.

Here is a summary of the Weekly Social Media Activities you should be doing.

Weekly Social Media Activities

Create A Posting Schedule for the Week
Capitalize on your Competitors' Best-Performing Posts
Track the Results of your Ongoing Campaigns
Boost Well-Performing Posts

In our next article in this series we discuss the monthly social media activities you should address.

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social media activities weekly

About the author

Ken Koger

Ken writes on a variety of topics for AutoPair. Drawing on his experience as a founder, advisor, digital marketer and representive in the automotive industry, Ken writes about digital marketing, tech, financial, buisiness, and general automotive advice.

Ken has a deep understanding of digital marketing, web and mobile design, technology and business development. His automotive knowledge is built on years as a manufacturers representative in the automotive repair vertical, a former race car driver, team owner and all-around gear-head. His financial expertise comes from years as a licensed financial advisor and planner serving closely held businesses and their principals.

Ken resides in Naperville, IL with his wife Dawn. He has two grown children, a dog and 2 cats. And, did we mention...he drinks a lot of coffee!