Scheduling Social Media Updates

With a social media presence being a necessity for operating a successful business these days, updating your social media profiles may seem like a burdensome task. Many businesses are short on both time and money leaving little wiggle room to devote to tasks that don’t directly affect the bottom line. The thing is, though, engaging in social media can either make or break a business in the digital age. If you don’t have hours to sit in front of the computer to track when your audience is online or the funds available to pay someone else to do it, scheduling social media updates may be a good option for you. Find out the pros and cons of scheduling, how to strike a balance and reliable scheduling services that won’t break the bank.

Benefits of Scheduling Updates
The benefits to scheduling updates are numerous. Your account can still be updated if your electricity or internet goes out, you’re on vacation, or you’re sick. Twitter users want to see consistency in the people they follow. Scheduling ensures that your feed is active and can be seen by your audience to keep your product or service fresh in their minds. Scheduling saves time because your tweets for the day or week can be set up in advance rather than carving out several times to post throughout the day which can jolt you out of your routine. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, scheduling allows you to control when your audience sees your updates. If, for example, you know that most of your followers are active on Twitter during the afternoons, you can schedule your updates to appear at that time without being logged on to send them yourself.

Disadvantages of Scheduling Updates
There are just as many reasons to avoid scheduling updates as there are to scheduling them. A lack of interaction with your followers can make them lose interest quickly. Retweets, direct messages, and mentions should ideally occur in real time to be relevant. Sure, you can plan some retweets, but if it’s been more than a few hours since the original post, you’ve missed the best window of opportunity to engage with that user. If your product, service or topic is not an evergreen topic, news updates are essential. Scheduling posts may result in posting something inappropriate when you should be tweeting about more pressing matters. Scheduling is not without its glitches either, so ignoring your account may result in inactivity if something goes wrong.

Striking a Balance
Even if you use scheduling services for most of your tweets, it is good practice to log in and make some updates in real time several times per week. This will keep you from sounding robotic, will allow you to engage with users, and will let you keep up with trending topics in real time. It will also give you the opportunity to unschedule any tweets that may be inappropriate or irrelevant in light of recent events.

Scheduling Services
Social media scheduling services are available for any budget, from free versions to those that cater only to large corporate accounts. The most popular service is HootSuite. It allows you to schedule updates on a variety of platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and others. SocialBro, SocialOomph, and Buffer are other options for scheduling your updates.

For more advice on scheduling social media updates, or for help in management of all your social media profiles, get in touch with Infintech Designs. Their professional staff have expertise and experience in a wide range of social media platforms and technologies and can assist you with everything from day-to-day management to long term strategies.

Infintech Designs
3110 Magazine St., #120
New Orleans, LA 70115