Table of Contents
In last week’s post I talked about the importance of creating evergreen content and the many benefits of doing so. Once you’ve created the original content, be it a blog or a video, you will post a link on your social media. If it’s content you were able to repurpose into other related pieces, you’ll have multiple bits of content to post for a while. Now you need a content distribution plan and a good scheduling tool.
Evergreen Content Distribution Plan
Plan to repost your new content at least daily on Twitter for the first week or two. That means you’ll need to write multiple tweets that link to the same thing. You shouldn’t simply post the same exact tweet over and over every day. Not only do your followers want more than that, Twitter might catch it and see it as spam. While there are loopholes, Twitter doesn’t allow the same tweet to be sent within 24 hours, so get creative!
Facebook & LinkedIn
You’ll want to post about your new content on Facebook and LinkedIn as soon as it’s available, but you should also schedule a second post in the same week to catch the people who didn’t see it the first time. You can also schedule it to appear again in later months.
Definitely post a related graphic or photo on your Instagram feed. You’ll need to get creative about getting people to travel over to the post as you cannot include a link in the photo description. Or rather you can include it, but people won’t be able to click on it, and if it’s super long, they’re not going to go type it in. And no, they cannot copy and paste it either. Consider putting the direct link in your bio link area and telling your followers to tap the link in your bio to get there. Don’t forget to add it to your Instagram and/or Facebook stories for a bit of added reach.
Other Networks
Are you using Snapchat, Reddit or TikTok? You’ll want to find a way to share your new content with your fans there as well, although it’s not as easy as sharing to the above platforms. Do a quick live or recorded video letting them know where the new content is found. Or perhaps you’ll share a link to your content as part of your response to something. The main thing here is to understand the rules for each network and learn to work within them.
Example of a Content Distribution Schedule
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook Page | Post A - Link to original blog - 9am | Post B - Link to original blog - 1pm | |||||
| Post A - Link to original blog - 9am Post C - Link to original blog - 1pm | Post B - Link to original blog - 9am Post A - Link to original blog - 1pm | Post C - Link to original blog - 9am Post B - Link to original blog - 1pm | Post A - Link to original blog - 9am Post C - Link to original blog - 1pm | Post B - Link to original blog - 9am Post A - Link to original blog - 1pm | Post C - Link to original blog - 9am Post B - Link to original blog - 1pm | ||
| Post A - Link to original blog - 7am | Post B - Link to original blog - 7am | ||||||
| Post A - Link to original blog - 1pm | Post B- Link to original blog - 8am | ||||||
| Facebook Group | Share post A from Facebook Page to your Facebook Group - 1pm | ||||||
| Facebook Profile | Share post A from Facebook Page to your personal profile - 1pm | Share post B from Facebook Page to your Facebook Group - 1pm |
This is just an example of how to distribute your content the first week. After that you’ll want to think about reposting your content on a regular basis. Perhaps monthly. Just because you posted it a lot the first week doesn’t mean everyone saw it. Even more importantly, hopefully you’ve gained new followers since that content was posted and you’ll want to reshare your best evergreen content for them to have the opportunity to learn from it. This works no matter whether your content is a blog, a book, a slide deck or a video.
Choosing a Scheduling Tool to Distribute your Evergreen Content
Once you’ve decided on a schedule for distributing your evergreen content you need to pick a tool to help you manage it. You can absolutely mark it in your calendar to reshare something a month down the road, but I can tell you from experience you’re more likely to forget or put it off to do other, more important work. There are lots of options available to you for managing the future posting of your content, but they all have varied features. Here are some of the features you’ll want to look for in a scheduling platform:
- Easily repeats content. You don’t want to pick a program that you have to schedule each and every post.
- Divides your content into categories that can each have their own posting schedule. This allows you to have a different schedule for tips, blog posts, videos, and curated articles, for example.
- Allows you to customize the posts for each network.
- Enables you to write multiple versions of posts for each piece of content.
- Allows you to tag appropriate accounts on some or all of the networks.
- Has an easy option for pausing categories, networks or your entire content library if needed.
I have tried a LOT of social media scheduling programs in my years as a social media consultant. Here are a few of the ones that meet all or most of the above criteria.
Cloud Campaign – This is the one I’m currently using, but it’s quite expensive for the average small business user.
Meet Edgar – Probably the industry standard for repeating content. Great program.
Smarter Queue – Offers more options for content management than Meet Edgar, but because there are more options you may find it overwhelming to get set up. This one is also Canadian, if you like to keep it local (ish).
AgoraPulse – Lots of great reviews from people I trust. I’ve only done a trial run with this one. It’s a bit on the pricey side for many small businesses.
Social Jukebox – Has fewer scheduling options. Doesn’t work with Instagram. It’s a great starter tool if you’re only planning to use Twitter and Facebook. This one does have the option to post something every X days which is a nice option in some cases.
There are, of course, many other scheduling tools out there. These are the ones I have some experience with and can recommend. Hootsuite and Buffer are great scheduling tools, but they do not accommodate repeating evergreen content the way the above mentioned tools do. Definitely do your homework, trial the one you think you want to use and go for it. I will tell you that switching programs is a very timely venture, so choose wisely from the beginning. If you think you’ll grow into one of them within a year, bite the bullet and start with that one now. I guarantee you’ll thank me for not having to move all your content over to a new system.
What questions do you have about evergreen content distribution? Let me know in the comments!
