By now, we all know that social media can be a powerful component of any marketing strategy.

Social media can help retailers establish a brand identity, engage with customers, and advertise. And with the advent of social commerce—a form of ecommerce in which customers can discover products, shop, and even check out without ever leaving a social media app—an effective social media presence is more important than ever.

A strong social media presence is obviously good for free advertising. You can run promotions, spread the word about new items and sales, and get your name in front of potential customers. But people don’t follow social media accounts just to be advertised to; they follow because they enjoy an account’s content. The most successful brands on social media put a lot of thought into the look and voice of their content. Attractive photos and engaging captions are a must. The goal is to not only show people your products, but to build trust.

Trust is vital in luxury jewelry. Customers are making a major purchase, and they have to know they are spending their money in the right place. Social media allows you to build that trust by establishing a brand identity. You can engage your customers on a personal level and make them more educated consumers in the process. You can show potential customers who you are, what you do, what you know, and what you stand for. That last point is possibly the most important in capturing the attention of younger consumers interested in ethically sourced and sustainable jewelry.

If you want to get noticed on social media, you have to not only post in a consistent style, with a consistent voice; you have to post every day. All of this effort can be exhausting and time-consuming. It’s hard to get into a rhythm, and if you’re having a particularly busy or stressful day, your daily Instagram post is probably the first thing to get dropped from your to-do list.

Instead of making the time to post every day, you can, with the help of a social media scheduling tool, produce a week or month’s worth of content at once. Furthermore, producing all of this content at once allows you to more consciously create a consistent look and voice for your brand.

Social Media Scheduling Tools

There are hundreds (really!) of different types of social media scheduling tools available, each with slightly different features. Rather than reviewing all of them, we’d like to share two different types of social media scheduling tools: A “post planner,” and an “evergreen planner.”

Hootsuite. This post planning tool is visually intuitive, allowing you to schedule posts in a calendar view, where you can see a thumbnail image of the post, a preview of the text, and an icon of the social media platform. It also serves as a sort of social media hub, allowing you to read and respond to messages from all of your social media accounts in one place. You can store images in the app to more easily access them. It also serves as a sort of social media hub, allowing you to read and respond to messages from all of your social media accounts in one place. Hootsuite’s $30/month professional plan allows you to schedule an unlimited number of posts across 10 profiles.

Meet Edgar. One of the challenges of building a social media presence is just figuring out what to post every day. Meet Edgar allows you to schedule “evergreen” content—the type of post that is always relevant and keeps your brand in the public eye. You use a scheduler because you don’t have time to post every day. If you don’t have time to schedule, either, this tool will do it for you by reposting blogs, articles, quotes, products, and other content that drives customers to your website.  At $49 per month, it’s not exactly cheap, but neither is it the most expensive tool out there--and it provides a lot of functionality for the price.