Content By Dawn

As a small-business person who writes content for other businesses, I understand the value of time. I also know that a large part of how we relate to our customers and target audience is through content marketing on social media.

Whether we use Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or the myriad of other social media platforms out there, it’s important to stay up-to-date and in the forefront of our customer’s minds. A great way to do that is by posting regularly across the social media spectrum.

One of the ways that I’ve utilized the social media aspect of my business is by using the scheduler option on Facebook and setting up scheduled posts using the program Hootsuite. It’s great in that you can use it for its obvious intention – to schedule posts to go out periodically throughout the day, week, or month. However, I’m finding that when I use scheduled posts that connect to all of my social media networks at one time with the same content, I lose authenticity in my posts and have less engagement overall.

In other words, what may work for Facebook doesn’t translate well to Twitter and vice verse, and it shows in the lack of responses, follows, and likes. For example, last month I set up a “question of the day” post on Hootsuite to send out every day to my Facebook page, Twitter account, and Linkedin profile so I can engage with my fans and followers.

I’ve had more feedback on Twitter than the other two, and by adding a hashtag so tweeps can find my post on Twitter, it makes my posts look weird on Facebook and Linkedin. Yet, if I don’t have the hashtag (#), I’m not utilizing a really awesome feature on Twitter.

When I schedule my blog posts to hit all three of my social media platforms, I get more responses from Facebook. Linkedin has been the hardest to generate any responses from at all, and the post is too long in Twitter and gets lost in the shuffle of hundreds of tweets that happen each day.

Needless to say, in the course of a year I’ve tried different ways to schedule posts to “save time” and find that although scheduling a post is very efficient in theory, I need to schedule certain types of posts with Facebook than with Twitter or Linkedin and so on.

As I head into another month, I’ve decided to stay as authentic as possible in the content that I post and how I post it, and I think I’ll find more engagement too.  The only way I see that working is by setting up my posts differently for each platform – simple questions or statements on Twitter, posting my blog posts and detailed content to Facebook, and as for Linkedin – well, I haven’t figured that one out yet. But I will!

Scheduling posts is a great option, but with anything it can be misused and misunderstood. It’s always a great idea to stay on top of what works and what doesn’t in your business, and social media engagement is no different.

What about you? What have you found works for you and your business? Is it better to schedule the same content along all of your social media, or for you to post relevant content differently for each platform to make the most of the engagement you’ll get?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I work with businesses, marketing agencies, publications, and web designers providing quality content development and communications services. Find out what my clients have to say about me, and when you need a quality content writer you can contact me here.

Related articles

• Social Media Strategy for Small Business 2013: A Totally Honest Look at Social Networks (amsterdamprinting.com)
• HootSuite Can Manage Most Of Your Social Media Accounts (getlifestrong.wordpress.com)