If you have a social media manager, are immersed in the social media world, or have been around long enough, you may have heard of third party post/content scheduling softwares. These websites or app integrations make it possible for creators and business owners to automatically publish content to their social profiles without manually doing ANYTHING.
A comical anecdote: There have been MANY times where I've been out with friends, and they would tell me “How did you post right now?”, “Oh you posted! Love this!”, and I would immediately panic because I thought someone had hacked my Instagram, meanwhile I WAS THE CULPRIT behind a post on my page.
Social media schedulers can be very useful for posting on a consistent basis without wasting time to actually post it, or truly benefitting from working ahead to get content out so you can just not worry about your followers not seeing your recent activity.
One industry myth that I always see going around is that a third party content scheduler such as Later or Hootsuite may hurt people’s engagement. Some social media managers even pride themselves on ONLY posting manually for their clients ( I don’t know how they do it).
From My Personal Experience:
I have never had a problem or noticed a difference. If anything my engagement went up because I was more consistent with my audience. However, the downsides are that there are still ultimately some manual components such as still engaging with your audience, answering comments, or reposting the content to your stories.
There have even been several times where I forgot about a scheduled post, posted it at the wrong time, or didn’t post at all and I would have to manually repost it. Not every method is perfect.
What The Experts Say:
Instagram has a public code available called an API (application programming interface) so that other legitimate apps can connect to Instagram and schedule posts. Infact, there are several platforms such as Later, who are official partners with Instagram to ensure security with their users, as well as their content not being affected on Instagram or other platforms.
Social media platforms such as Instagram, profits off of scheduler apps by giving them access to app API info so you can automate your posts.
My Recommendations:
Always check or try to exclusively use a social media scheduler that is an official partner with the platform you intend to post on.
If that is not clear, try to stick with the bigger brands of the bunch as they are more reliable/secure for your account. For example, Hootsuite v.s. Loomly
If all else fails, see if your platform has their own social media scheduling platform or automation feature!
What Do I Use?
Personally, I use Creator Studio by Meta, where you can automatically publish posts to Instagram and Facebook. It’s obviously safe because it’s owned by the creators of those social media platforms and does the job the best (in my opinion).
What’s your experience with content scheduling websites/apps?
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