Because, we all know social media takes time.
Between curating content, posting updates on Facebook, tweeting several times a day, listening to your audience, responding to customers, and analysing insights, you could easily make it your full time job. Time is money, and suddenly social media doesn’t seem as “free” as you may have thought it was originally.
Naturally, many small business owners would love to find some way to make things a little bit easier. There are many tools out there for pre-scheduling posts for your social media, such as Hootsuite, Buffer and Tweetdeck. Facebook even has its own feature for scheduling posts in advance, equally so does Twitter.
So is automation the key to saving time? LinkedIn expert discussion group query;
Our opinion…..
It really does depend on the business.
While there is no denying that scheduling takes the time, hassle and commitment out of managing commercial social media accounts, it also takes the human and ‘social’ aspect away too.
Customers online have evolved; now they expect immediate communication with a real person, live information and feedback, accuracy, and interaction…
While I agree scheduling has its place, particularity in small businesses/ holiday periods etc. when time is of the essence and marketing is another task on top of sales, but…
We are an outsourced agency and a large part of our business is now Social Media management accounts for both SME’s and corporates who run additional campaigns – we have our own internal software that manages accounts and from our experience (and I suppose it comes down to ethos too), we, where possible avoid scheduling as much as its possible to do so in a 24/7 operational business world.
Who are we as ‘Social Media Managers’ is we can’t give them that??
What do you think? We would love to hear from you!
** Originally posted 4/69/2014 as a member of the Social Media Expert group on LinkedIn.
