Scheduling your posts and tweets makes maintaining your Social Media presence easier.
As a business owner or a marketer, it frees up your time and allows you to focus on other areas of the business.
So the question today is should scheduling be done?
Or should it be considered taboo?
Scheduling is a necessity for the time poor business owner.
However, I would always recommend posting in real time to keep your content relevant and to stay engaged with your community.
Confused?
If you have no idea what scheduling is learn all about it here.
Scheduling Your Posts, The PRO’s and the CON’s
PRO’s
Flexibility
If you’re running your own business then you know it’s hard to find time during the week to be consistent on any Social Media platform. You also want to keep your presence on each platform there.
By scheduling prior to your other duties you get that peace of mind of knowing that you’re still active.
Reach Your Audience
Ain’t nobody got time to check when their audience is on. Well a good marketer will care nonetheless, but if you’re time poor, 3rd party apps like Hootsuite can help identify the best times to schedule your posts.
Keeping your Brand Relevant
If you aren’t active on social media, your community won’t see you. Being active and as current as possible will keep your business on your audiences feeds.
CON’s
Bulk Scheduling Mistakes
Like anything when you post several days in advanced, things may get a bit rushed and mistakes might be made. It’s worse when you have more than one page to manage.
Errors on your page can be unprofessional and can lead to lost followers.
Real Time… What’s that?
Social media is all about the NOW… response time keeps posts and tweets more active, if you don’t respond in REAL TIME you audience will be able to pick up on it. This keeps things with your community less personal and less engaging.
Keep Up With The Times
When you schedule days and weeks in advance, your posts won’t be as relevant and up to date as they should. For example, current events can’t be utilise in scheduled posts.
This will make your page seem out of touch.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
If you don’t monitor your scheduled ads, you may come of insensitive and it can be quite disastrous in certain cases. Here is an example of what I mean ‘Worst Scheduled Tweet Timing. Ever.‘
Talk about bad timing… Ouch.
Balance
While I always recommend finding the time to post yourself, scheduling posts is quite handy. I think finding the right balance will benefit your social strategy greatly.
Monitoring your scheduled ads is a must to reduce the risk of bad publicity.
You want to keep as relevant as possible, maybe have a split of how many posts you schedule as well as post in real time. Use third party apps to figure out what times are best for you to post and work around that.
Find balance in your social media activity, find something that works for you.
