Is It Time to Ditch Your Social Media Scheduler?

A social media evolves, so must our usage. Unfortunately, similar to digital marketing in general, we always need to be constantly aligning and pivoting to be most effective.

One of the habits that we has marketers have since the beginning of social media is the convenience and efficiency of using a tool to help us schedule our social media content.

This is something that we have never questioned, but today's post is about encouraging you to think more about how you schedule content, and if there might be a more effective way of leveraging social media.

Modern digital marketing calls for agility, creativity, and real-time engagement. A social media scheduler is almost the polar opposite what marketing today needs. While convenient, these social media scheduling tools might be holding your social media strategy back more than helping it. Let’s delve into why it might be time to rethink your approach to this technology.

Convenience vs. Visibility: The Scheduling Dilemma

Social media schedulers have provided remarkable convenience by allowing us to pre-plan and batch-process content, ensuring a consistent posting schedule. However, there’s a significant trade-off: visibility. Many social networks, including LinkedIn, have started deprioritizing link-based content, which tends to be the bulk of what we schedule through these tools.

Imagine this: you meticulously queue up several months’ worth of blog posts, promotions, and links only to discover they barely see the light of day. If you analyze the traffic coming from these posts, you’ll find it’s declining and is unlikely to bounce back. That’s because the social media algorithms prioritize fresh, dynamic content that engages users in real-time. Social networks are also in the business of keeping people on their platform as long as possible, which videos and photos (and, in the case of LinkedIn, sheer text posts) help them do.

Understanding the Feed by Being Present

Living in the feed is essential for understanding what content is currently resonating. Algorithms favor content that garners immediate engagement, and being in the feed enables you to interact with other users and contribute to trending conversations in real-time. This daily engagement provides valuable insights into content types and formats that are currently performing well.

For instance, did you know you can’t schedule certain high-impact content types in advance using most social media scheduling tools? Polls, carousel posts, and threads often have to be posted manually. By spending time in the feed, you notice these opportunities, letting you pivot your content strategy to maximize impact.

Platforms Where Scheduling Still Works

While I'm advocating against over-reliance on social media schedulers, it's worth noting that not all platforms are created equal in this respect. For instance:

• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Short-Form Video Platforms

Scheduling works where real-time engagement is less crucial and volume can augment visibility.

Real-Time Engagement: A Paradigm Shift

For platforms where you aim for maximum impact - LinkedIn and Instagram, for instance - ditching the scheduler could be beneficial.

Living in the feed of platforms and engaging organically allows you to truly understand the nuances of what works. By interacting, commenting, and seeing real-time engagement, you’re better poised to craft posts that naturally draw user interaction. You also get a better pulse on which image sizes, post formats, and video orientations are capturing attention.

Redefining Your Social Media Workflow

If you’re concerned about replacing your scheduling process, don’t worry. Here’s an approach that balances structure and spontaneity:

1. Morning Publishing Session - publish in the morning
2. Scheduled Backup - if you don't publish that morning, go into your scheduled queue and post from there

This hybrid method allows you to stay nimble while ensuring you never miss a posting opportunity.

Conclusion: Making the Shift

Ultimately, stepping away from schedulers in favor of more authentic, real-time engagement will reinvigorate your social media strategy. Witness firsthand what’s working, adapt quickly, and enjoy a higher level of engagement with your audience.

Staying attuned to your feed and meeting your followers where they are in real-time transforms your approach from mechanical to dynamic. It’s not just about ticking the scheduling box anymore, but truly inspiring and interacting with your audience.

I encourage you to experiment with these principles and observe the difference in your social media presence. Let’s drop the automaton approach, embrace human creativity, and redefine how we engage with our social media communities.

If you want to go deeper into this topic, listen to the entire podcast recording here:

Thanks for reading all of the way to the bottom! I am beginning to create content specific for the LinkedIn community in my newsletter, but if you want to discover more of my comment, please check out my blog at https://nealschaffer.com/new-blog-posts/ where I am currently publishing 4 posts a week. You might also be interested in checking out other episodes of my Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Finally, I do help businesses and professionals in a variety of ways, so if you are interested, please click through on whatever interests you:

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