Learning to Schedule My Social Media

Instead of Chasing It

For years, my primary focus with Heartland Genealogy has been the blog itself. I research, write a post, publish it, and then try to remember to share it somewhere on social media.

As I've been working on moving Heartland Genealogy to Blogger, I've also been looking more closely at how I share those posts. Moving away from WordPress meant giving up some of the automatic sharing features I'd become accustomed to. At first, that seemed like another disadvantage of making the move.

However, it has also forced me to rethink how I'm using social media.

Discovering Meta Business Suite

One of the tools I'm learning to use is Meta Business Suite. Since Facebook and Instagram are both Meta platforms, Business Suite allows me to manage my Heartland Genealogy Facebook page and Instagram account from the same place.

More importantly for me, I can schedule posts.

Instead of publishing a blog post and then immediately trying to share it everywhere, I can prepare my social media posts ahead of time and schedule them throughout the day.

I'm beginning to realize that this may actually work better than automatically sharing everything the moment a blog post is published.

Developing a Schedule

After experimenting with the various tools, I've developed a tentative schedule for promoting a new Heartland Genealogy post:

6:30 a.m. — Blogger

The complete post is published on Heartland Genealogy. This gives me one permanent home for the article and a link that I can use everywhere else.

7:00 a.m. — Facebook

A short introduction to the post appears on the Heartland Genealogy Facebook page with a link back to the blog.

7:30 a.m. — Substack

A much shorter version of the post is published on Substack, again encouraging readers to visit the blog for the complete story.

8:00 a.m. — Instagram

The featured image becomes the focus of an Instagram post, accompanied by a shorter description of the day's blog topic.

Then, rather than having everything appear during the same morning hour, I'm experimenting with additional posts later in the day.

5:00 p.m. — Threads

A short, conversational post can introduce the day's genealogy topic to a somewhat different audience.

Why Spread Everything Out?

Initially, I thought "sharing a blog post" meant publishing it on the blog and immediately sending it everywhere else.

Now I'm questioning that approach.

Someone checking Facebook at 7:00 in the morning may not be the same person scrolling through Threads at 5:00 in the afternoon or Instagram in the evening. Spreading the posts throughout the day gives the same genealogy story several opportunities to reach readers without posting the exact same thing everywhere at the exact same time.

It also allows me to change the presentation for each platform.

Facebook works well for a short explanation and a link. Instagram depends much more heavily on the image. Threads seems better suited for a short, conversational comment. Substack gives me room for a condensed version of the story that can lead readers back to the full blog post.

The research hasn't changed. The story hasn't changed. What changes is how I introduce that story.

Scheduling Makes This Possible

Of course, I'm not planning to sit at the computer at 6:30, 7:00, 7:30 and 8:00 every morning—and then come back at 5:00 and 9:00!

That's where scheduling comes in.

Blogger allows me to schedule the original blog post. Substack also allows posts to be scheduled. Meta Business Suite lets me prepare and schedule posts for Facebook and Instagram.

That means much of this work can be completed when I'm already working on the blog post.

Instead of social media becoming something I have to remember to do several times throughout the day, it becomes part of the publishing process.

From Automatic Sharing to Planned Sharing

Ironically, I started looking into all of this because I wanted to replace the automatic sharing features I was losing when moving away from WordPress.

I assumed the goal was to find another tool that would automatically take a Blogger post and send it everywhere.

I'm beginning to think that isn't actually what I want.

Automatic sharing is certainly convenient, but it tends to send the same information everywhere. Scheduling requires a little more preparation, but it gives me control over the image, wording, timing and destination.

For a genealogy blog, that may be a better approach.

A post about a Civil War pension file might be introduced one way on Facebook and another way on Instagram. A post about using artificial intelligence for genealogy research might work particularly well on Threads. A family biography might benefit from an image and a very short introduction.

Instead of simply announcing, "Here's today's blog post," I can give readers a reason to become curious about the story.

Still Learning

This is definitely a work in progress.

I'm learning Blogger. I'm learning more about Instagram and Threads. I'm figuring out Meta Business Suite. And I'm experimenting with when and how often I should share new posts.

Some of this schedule will probably change as I see what works—and what doesn't.

But I'm already discovering something I hadn't expected when I started this transition.

Moving Heartland Genealogy to Blogger isn't just changing where I publish my genealogy stories. It's making me reconsider how I help people find those stories after I publish them.

And perhaps that's the most important part of social media for a genealogy blogger: not being everywhere all the time, but finding manageable ways to connect our research and stories with the people who might enjoy reading them.