How Categorizing Your Blog Posts (and more) Simplifies Your Social Media Scheduling

You know that feeling where you just had tacos for lunch, and then tacos for dinner, and then the next day someone suggests tacos for breakfast, and it's like, "Gregory, please, this is way too many tacos in a row."That's how your social media followers feel when you don't maintain the right balance of content!When you're planning out your social media updates - and especially when you're doing it using a scheduling tool - you want to make sure you're planning a strong variety. Otherwise, you're giving your fans that too-many-tacos feeling.But how do you do it?How do you maintain that healthy balance of different types of content that'll keep your followers from burning out?By categorizing the different types of content that you share!Categorizing your social media updates by type makes the planning and sharing process a whole lot easier - here's how.Think of your social updates like Skittles that you're handing out one at a time - and you don't want to keep giving someone the same flavor over and over.Is it easier to make sure they get a variety if all those candies are mixed together in a big bowl, or if they're separated into different bowls by flavor, so you can just rotate?That's exactly how categorizing your social media updates works - you sort everything into groups based on type, and that way, you can easily choose what types of content get posted at certain times.This is something that a lot of marketers do already - you just have to know how to look for it!Want to see how you can categorize your social media content to make scheduling a breeze?Let's check out some examples of how it's done!

Categorizing your social media updates

Depending on how often you blog and how many evergreen posts you like to re-share over time, you might keep all of your blog posts lumped together in one giant category.If you want to make sure you're maintaining the strongest possible variety, though, separating your homegrown content into different categories can make your life a lot easier!Categories like...Tutorials and How-tosIf you create a lot of instructional content for your blog, you might benefit from putting it all into its own category.Social Media Examiner is a perfect example:https://twitter.com/SMExaminer/status/999590984567738368Their site publishes a wide variety of content types, including how-to posts like the one they shared above - and when you look at their social feeds, you can see that those different content types are nicely mixed up.(So you won't, for example, see links to 20 different how-to posts in a row without anything else to break them up.)Behind the ScenesPulling back the curtain on your business is a great way to humanize yourself and create some teachable moments.Maybe you're going behind the scenes of how the business actually works:https://twitter.com/MeetEdgar/status/982231195659284481Or maybe you're using something you experienced as the context for a post that provides tips and tricks:https://twitter.com/MeetEdgar/status/992378074133073920Whether it's the entire purpose of your post or just a framing device for a larger lesson, taking your audience behind the scenes can be an engaging break from the norm, so peppering this type of post in with your usual material is a strong way to keep things fresh!Podcasts and InterviewsMaybe you host the occasional podcast, or conduct interviews with other leaders in your industry.When that's the case, splitting that type of content into its own category creates a lot of opportunities for multimedia-rich updates like this:https://twitter.com/PatFlynn/status/999741849479864320When you look at Pat Flynn's Twitter profile, you can see that he shares a lot of links to his podcasts, but with plenty of variety in the aesthetic and function of those updates.While ones like the update above embed audio previews, for example, others just include an eye-catching graphic:https://twitter.com/PatFlynn/status/1001115956398215169SEMrush is another strong example of this strategy, using different parts of the same podcast as source material for different promotional updates:

This type of variety is exactly what Twitter wants to see (here's more on how and why), and spreading it out among other types of content helps you get the most mileage out of it!(After all, you want that stuff to be seen by different audiences - posting 'em all back-to-back might not be the best way to do that.)Vlogs and VideosJust like with podcasts, splitting off vlogs and videos into their own category can help you keep things fresh on social media.Take entrepreneur Marie Forleo for example!Her Twitter profile is a strong mix of quotes, tips, and links to videos like this one (among other stuff, too):https://twitter.com/marieforleo/status/999681452429266949Sprinkling video links in among other categories of social media content keeps them from being overwhelming, and breaks up the other stuff, as well!And here's another great example of how this can make your life easier:That video is from 2015.Because the content is so timeless, it can be shared on social again and again over time - and just like SEMrush did with their podcast promotion above, the actual text of the update can change, too:https://twitter.com/marieforleo/status/646325597401169922This is one of the biggest ways that categorizing your social updates makes your life easier.When you categorize, you can crank out a whole bunch of different updates for a single piece of content (here's how), and you don't have to worry about posting them all in a row - they'll have stuff from other categories spreading them out!Instead of your timeline looking like this:[Random social media update][Random social media update][Random social media update][Random social media update][Random social media update]It'll look like this:[Blog post - How-to][Quote of the day][Blog post - Video][Inspiration][Blog post - Infographic]See? Guaranteed variety, built right in!ListsLists and roundups can be a nice break from types of blog posts that might be more dense - and separating them from those more involved types can inject a little more variety into your social media.Here's an example that makes it clear that what you're about to click on is a roundup of easily-digestible tips and strategies:https://twitter.com/jenrgy/status/1001402830983520258This sort of thing is also perfect for spacing out your shoutouts when you tag the profiles of the people or brands that a roundup features:https://twitter.com/ActiveCampaign/status/984139520332443650And all of these examples of different ways you can categorize your blog posts are just a FEW of the options out there.If you're a health coach, for example, maybe you want to create separate categories for recipes and workouts - it's all content that lives on your website!Just don't forget that not everything you post on social media will necessarily lead to your website - and that means some other categories you might create include things like:Quotes, Inspiration, and TipsWhen you're trying to balance out the links you share to your own stuff on social media, updates that share content like quotes, inspiration, and tips are perfect.A quote like this:https://twitter.com/TheSWU/status/1000508840486547457Or an inspirational message like this:https://twitter.com/yogatailor/status/1000499089417605120Or even a quick, bite-sized tip like this:https://twitter.com/Lowes/status/988870194742214657If you were to share 50 of these in a row, your audience might start to burn out on them - but by keeping them in their own category and alternating it with your other categories, you can effectively space them out over time!Promos and Special OffersLove writing guest posts for different blogs? Stick 'em in their own special category!Mixing these in with the other stuff you post helps promote your appearances all over the web:https://twitter.com/kaleighf/status/991014654620168192That might also include upcoming appearances you've got lined up, like an AMA or a Twitter chat:https://twitter.com/lkr/status/992452169361186817Depending on how much of this stuff you usually participate in, you might even break up this category into different, smaller ones!For example, we've created different categories for some of our different webinars, so that we're spreading out the promotions for all of them:

(That's from our own Edgar account - because Edgar's scheduling system is based on categories, you can set and forget your custom spread of different types of content.)And these are all just a FEW of the different ways you can categorize the content you share on social media!Splitting up the social media updates you share into different categories based on type makes it easy to ensure you're always getting that perfect variety of content - and your audience will notice!

What are some of YOUR favorite ways to categorize your social updates?

Whether you do it using Edgar or you've got another method, how do you like to split up your own social media updates into categories?Got a cat memes category you post something from every morning?Or a weekend inspiration category you post something from every Saturday?Share a few of your own faves in the comments, and link to where we can see 'em on social!