3 Tips To Avoid Scheduled Social Media Disaster

3 Tips To Avoid Scheduled Social Media Disaster

You may think that programming all your social media messages for the weeks at a time is a good thing, but there are some serious mistakes to that strategy alone. Like any good marketing plan, a balanced blend is what’s needed to succeed and pre-programmed messages alone won’t cut it.

Here are 3 tips to help you avoid scheduled social media disaster.

Problem: You Look Fake

When you schedule all your social media ahead of time through a service like Hootsuite, your posts all show up with a little line of subtext that discloses they’re coming from hootsuite, so everyone knows your faking your live interaction. While some scheduled, released posts are fine, if you want to look genuine and like you’re interested in real-time conversations with your social media communities, don’t rely on scheduling alone. Everyone can sense a phony. Certainly you’ve been out to dinner with someone at some point in your life where you could sense they were just “going through the motions;” it’s not a good feeling to be on the receiving end of that one-way conversation. So don’t do that to your community and expect to have raving fans of your business.

Solution: Schedule things like blog posts you expect to come out that week or important holiday notices or closures, but make sure you have at least a 50/50 blend of pre-scheduled posts with live interaction generated from each unique social media outlet. If you don’t have time to consistently do so, hire a company to do this for you. There are many affordable options out there like $99 dollar social that for just $99/month will help you with your social media posting.

Problem: You’re Out Of Touch

You’ve scheduled all your topics and posts for social media for the week and now you’re onto the daily business of running your company. The only problem is, someone commented on a post or someone sent a complaint through Twitter, but you didn’t notice because you’re out of touch with your social media communities. After all, you programmed out all your socials so no need to check your accounts. The trouble is your reputation gets damaged and your community falls apart if this happens too often, sometimes if it happens even at all. Folks might let neglect slip once or twice, we all get busy, but consistently ignore or neglect them and they’ll leave you fast – or worse, complain about you fast. Don’t chance your reputation.

Solution: If you find it difficult to remember to check your social media accounts, set triggers through each one to notify you on your phone when you or your business are mentioned in a social media post, comment or message. It will help you keep track of live conversations and get involved in real time so your communities don’t feel neglected, while protecting your company’s reputation at the same time.

Problem: You’ve Got Glitches

When you schedule all your posts and then don’t keep an eye on your accounts, you run the risk of not knowing when there are problems with one of your platforms. Glitches happen in automatic scheduling platforms like Hootsuite all the time. If you’ve ever seen or experienced the “fail whale” in Twitter or a link not producing a photo in a Facebook post, you know how true this is. You’ll have to log into your accounts to even know if any of your scheduled posts had technical glitches and didn’t deploy. So while you may think you’ve got social media covered for the week, the reality is that you may have a big problem if there’s a glitch and you have no idea.

Solution: By checking into your social media accounts at least every morning and night, or by assigning that task to someone on your team, you’ll ensure you catch glitches as they happen. That makes your messaging on social media consistent with no big blackout periods while you think you’ve got coverage.

 

Michael Mayfair
 

Michael is a writer and personal trainer from New York. In his spare time, Michael enjoys golf. Above everything else though he's crazy about his family and a true dog lover.