Meet the Australian business making social media marketing easy with their Instagram-first scheduling tool, Sked Social! Born in Melbourne way back in 2013, Sked was created out of frustration and necessity. Founder Hugh Stephens discovered that posting content to Instagram was time-consuming and inefficient, so he created a solution now used by businesses worldwide. Sked is one of the tools we use as a small business to help our team create, schedule and share content so we can get back to what we love most… Markets! We’re big fans of a healthy work-life balance and love how we can use Sked to schedule content on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and even Pinterest! We love learning about brands doing extraordinary things to empower and support small businesses, so we chatted to Kyra, their head of social, to learn more about how Sked works, their brand persona and some cool new features.
Can you tell us about your role with Sked?
I’m Kyra, the Head of Social at Sked Social. I originally joined the Sked team in 2019 as a Jr. Marketing Manager doing various marketing activities and bits of social here and there. Once Reels were launched, and it was clear that social media was moving more towards video, we knew we needed to lean in or get left behind. So that’s when I transitioned into a more full-time social media role. We currently have a solo-person social team (but an amazing marketing team that’s fundamental to our brand voice, creative ideas and overall execution), so I’m in charge of everything from social strategy and content ideation to community management and content creation. Our social channels are all about educating people about the Sked product, helping people learn new social media skills and being relatable about what it’s like working in social media (and how Sked helps alleviate tons of the common struggles social media marketers face). It’s a mix of high-value, educational and cheeky, entertaining content, but it’s all about creating a community where people can learn new skills, share fresh ideas, and laugh.
How did the brand persona develop?
When we moved from Instagram-only (Schedugram) to “Instagram-First” Sked Social in 2018, we went through a complete rebranding process. As part of that, we personally talked to our core audience – other social marketers.
Sked Social has always had a fun, “Quirky” (that’s our Quokka mascot) brand persona. Cute quokka mascot, bright colours, conversational brand voice. We’re an Aussie brand, so we’re also a bit cheeky and aren’t afraid to make jokes and laugh a little. We want our Sked users to know that the Sked team is full of real, down-to-earth people. We are a team of digital marketers building a tool for digital marketers. Sked solves problems to make the job of content creation and community building just a little easier. We get the struggles; we identify with our target customers because we are our target audience. Because of this, our brand voice is always helpful and conversational. Luckily, this persona is easy for me to fall into in the social world and helps us get personal with our social community.
How many people are on the Sked team?
We currently have a full-time staff of about 40 people spread across the globe. We have staff members in the US, Mexico, Europe, the Philippines, Australia and more. We’ve been growing a lot recently. We’ve added positions to our marketing, engineering, customer support and social teams.
What do you think is the coolest feature of Sked Social?
The Sked team has been hard at work releasing tons of new features lately, and I love all of them. I’m probably most excited about the beta of our inbox tool, where we can monitor DMs from Facebook and Instagram, assign conversations to different team members, leave internal comments and more. I’ll never have to leave the Sked dashboard now! One of my all-time favourite features is the link in bio tool, though. We can add buttons and a clickable gallery to really optimize our Instagram bio and direct traffic from our page to anywhere. When we’re scheduling content through Sked, we add in the URL that goes with the post – a blog or product page, for example – and when the post goes live, our audience can click the link in our bio and then click the image of the post and be taken directly to the link associated with it. It’s helpful for product launches, educational pieces, digital offers and more. You can see it in action on our Instagram @getskedsocial
How We Use Sked:
Here at The Finders Keepers, we use Sked across many social channels to help plan, curate and schedule our social media content. Here are a couple of ways we use it:
Mood boarding on Pinterest
Pinterest is one of our fav places to scroll online, and we love using it to mood board Stall Holder Inspiration for new and old sellers to find ideas and examples of great stall setups.
Curating our Instagram Feed
We love the ability Sked gives us to draft up Instagram posts and save them until it’s time to post. Once we’ve drafted a couple, we can insert them into the schedule and move them around until we are happy with how it looks in our feed preview. See an example and learn more here.
Keen to give Sked a try? Head to their website here to learn more and grab a 7 day free trial!