Why scheduling posts is anti-social

As a revenue growth consultant and my background doing global social media for BP, I often see or get tagged into social media posts for people looking for free advice on marketing and sales which I'm usually very happy to give.

Last week Em was tagged in a post asking for recommendations on which scheduling tools to use for social media and her response was so shocking it seems that it led to a flurry of emails and direct messages... Someone asked what scheduling tools they should use to prepare posts for their multiple social media channels and she responded saying “We don't use scheduling tools because...

Scheduling posts is fundamentally anti-social.

And to all those people who have direct messaged saying how they couldn't cope without the use of scheduling tools and how do we manage it? here’s the secret:

Most people don’t understand what the word SOCIAL in social media actually means.

Tara Hunt says SOCIAL is not a tool, it's not a platform. It's not even a Facebook advert.

SOCIAL is an activity related to or designed for human beings to connect with one another.

Because people don't understand this, we have robots pretending to be human and we have humans pretending to be robots - calculating the best time of day to post, researching hashtags and creating auto-responses to messages. It's awful!

Scheduling posts is just one way that all the magic, fun and power is being taken out of social media completely.

People have to remember what social actually means and start investing in making social media what it needs to be - more social! I agree with Tara that:

Real SOCIAL media needs to do three things:

• Be a 2-way conversation

• Intended to build relationships and encourage interaction

• Add value

If you post something at 10am on a Tuesday through a scheduling tool, all you've done is shout out into the digital abyss. It only becomes a 2-way conversation when that sharing of information becomes an exchange. You share something interesting, someone comments, you reply. It's a conversation that anyone can see, and more importantly anyone can add to in their own time. We still get emails asking questions about articles we wrote in 2015 - that's SOCIAL! Posts from 3 weeks ago are still getting comments from people, that's SOCIAL because it's an opportunity to interact!

If you just schedule a post and then walk away; if you don't engage with people then that's not social. It may be how many people manage their social media accounts to feel like they have a brand presence online and we get why - it's easy and you may get a few hits online but it's not SOCIAL. As Tara says:

Learn the difference and be ok with it.

Everything we post is intended to connect with people and build relationships. We post about what we’re reading, watching, hearing or thinking about because we’re humans looking to connect with other humans who are interested in the same things we are, who can help us learn and develop and to find people who we can give back to and help as well. Sometimes we have to remind people what we actually do for a living so they can introduce us to people I can help or say "hey actually I do need that service/those skills/that kind of training." but if we did that all the time we would just be using social media as an advertising stream and people would turn off pretty quickly.

When you share my knowledge, help people find resources, give recommendations and leave feedback you’re being social. you’re adding value to conversations and building networks.

Auto-posts on Instagram saying "great post, your channel needs to be seen by more people, follow me to find out how" are not social. It's the opposite of that, it's just a way of trying to derive value by jumping on to a popular post to get attention and clicks.

This kind of scheduled robotic social media drives us crazy because it perpetuates the problems we see everywhere online - it just creates a barrage of broadcasters and attention seekers who are slowly but surely suffocating the power of social media as we know and love it.

There's already so much noise online, people can't hear themselves think so they just give up because they're getting 10,000 marketing message a day telling to do this, buy that, be better! They're having fewer interesting conversations with people online, conversations that generate new ideas or save time by sharing best practice and resources; that create relationships, virtual networks and communities that can actually add value to people's lives.

The true power of social media is in connecting people, destroying the boundaries between time differences and geographical locations and bringing the world closer together.

Scheduling posts is just one way that people try to confine social media and reduce it to a traditional marketing medium and rob it of all its magic. Marketers have to wake up and realize that there is a return on investment in social media but you can't judge it by traditional key performance indicators. The investment in social media is in the community you create, the goodwill you generate, what people like us call the intrinsic value of social capital. It's not about the number of impressions a certain post or hashtag gets or what your click-through rate is. With Instagram killing likes, it's only a matter of time before people start to understand that vanity metrics will only get you so far and if you don't understand what social capital is and how to utilize it in your marketing strategy then you're going to fall behind even further and no amount of ad budget will save you.

It's now harder and expensive for brands to get their messages out there because people have just switched off to it. Instead of taking this as a call to change behavior, businesses have just got more sophisticated with their targeting and metrics. Channels have responded because they're in business to make money.

Instead of wondering how to start a conversation, all businesses want to hear is how many clicks did we have? and how many times has our name been mentioned?

NO! It's time to stop spending money on the diminishing returns of interruptive marketing and invest in what makes social media actually SOCIAL.

Markets are conversations.

You have to start interacting WITH people rather than just talking at them. PLEASE.

“Set it and forget it” scheduling hinders your ability to engage with breaking news. It lacks authenticity. If you're going to go down the route of automating posts and updates, at least regularly review activity, briefly scan upcoming posts to ensure timeliness and relevance, and manually provide responses to any interactions - please!

Once you stop scheduling, you force yourself to be more attentive to the needs of your audience. I genuinely advise clients to consider posting manually—even if it’s for just a trial period. It could make a huge difference in the way your message is received.

So do you agree or disagree? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Let us know