Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

It's Time to Ditch Your Social Media Scheduler

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 380

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Can rethinking your approach to social media scheduling drastically improve your engagement? 

Find out as I challenge the conventional reliance on scheduling tools and advocate for a more hands-on, direct engagement strategy.

Today's episode is all about rethinking a common tool in our digital marketing toolbox: the social media scheduler. Inspired by my work on revising "Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth" and my analysis of various content types, I've come to realize that the traditional approach of scheduling link-based content just isn't cutting it anymore. Platforms continue to deprioritize this type of content, and staying ahead means diving deeper into the feed and engaging in real-time. 

We'll explore why relying too heavily on scheduling tools can actually hinder your visibility and engagement, and discuss practical steps to become more nimble and present in your social media strategy. Plus, I'll share insights on which platforms and content types can still benefit from scheduling, and a method to balance scheduled posts with spontaneous engagement. 

Whether you're a digital marketing pro or just starting out, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you make a bigger impact on social media. Let's dive in!

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Speaker 1:

Social media has changed, but has your social media marketing changed? In fact, are you still using a social media scheduler? Well, I'm going to give you another way of thinking about why you want to use less technology and spend more time in social media if you want to be successful.

Speaker 2:

So keep tuning in to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast, to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time.

Speaker 1:

This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neil Schaefer. Hey everybody, neil Schaefer here, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 380 of this podcast. Before I get into today's topic, I want to give you some of the latest news that I am watching that I recommend you watch. You know, every week I look for updates that would be of interest to you as your digital marketing coach, and you know, email marketing is usually the hardest one to find new information on. It really is a mature and stable industry. Social media, believe it or not, is pretty stable as well these days. I mean, meta has a big event coming up, but really where the news is happening, the trends that I think you need to stay aware of, happens really in the search and AI space.

Speaker 1:

So an interesting update that Cloudflare and Cloudflare. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but if you have a website, we often use a CDN or content delivery network to cache our web content throughout the servers around the world to deliver faster performance. I am a proud user of Cloudflare's enterprise service, which actually is included in my BigScoots website hosting plan. If you're on WordPress, I highly highly recommend BigScoots Scoots website hosting plan. If you're on WordPress. I highly highly recommend Big Scoots, and they just announced that they are going to create a new marketplace that will let websites charge AI bots for scraping. And this really gets down to the conversation of is it ethical for AI bots to scrape websites? Well, I guess, if you have information out there in the public because you want to get indexed in search engines, I don't know if there's any ethical issues about that. But should AI bots pay for including your information in large language models? And we've seen big brands like the New York Times and big publishers make agreements with open AI. But what about the businesses out there, especially if you operate in a niche industry and you create niche content that's very, very hard for large language models to source, or you run your own website, like I do, and you're adding valuable content, valuable contributions to our understanding of various topics, on an almost daily basis. Well, now there's going to be a way to monetize that if you are on Cloudflare, so that's a really, really interesting development. I think we are going to continue to see more. There's still a lot of tension between large language models and AI scraping and the content that's created by businesses and content creators, so keep tuning in to what's going to happen there.

Speaker 1:

Also, there was a really, really great article that I wanted to share with you from Ahrefs, and it's all about how to optimize your content, for it used to be called SGE, or Google's search generative experience. Now they're just calling it Google AI overviews, and these are the overviews that you see at the very top of websites. Now it was announced back in May 10th of 2023. It was launched in May 14th 2024. And recently, on August 15th 2024, they have expanded this to the United Kingdom, india, japan, indonesia, mexico and Brazil.

Speaker 1:

So it is beginning to permeate the internet and most businesses that get a decent amount of search engine traffic are really worried. How is this going to affect them? And this, you know, the advice that Ahrefs gives, together with all the advice about how do we get our content to appear in AI search results, is really the same, and it really is about if you rank well organically, you have a better chance of ranking well in these AI overviews. So, you know, the first thing is obviously target direct match queries. So if you can achieve first page rankings on Google, I mean, ai overviews are often sourced in the top search results. So at the end of the day, they are a byproduct of having really, really good SEO, and in fact, they say, the higher your content ranks, the greater the probability of its inclusion in an AI overview. So there's a little bit more advice here, and once again, you'll want to go to neilschafercom slash newsletter and make sure you sign up, because I share all the links and more information there on a weekly basis. But it's just another indication that this is nothing new, that these old best practices are still important.

Speaker 1:

Now there is one different thing I'd like to point out is that this is just for the AI overview box in Google. But AI search engines are not limited to just backlinks to understand authority. They're not limited to just spidering the web. They grab content and mentions from anywhere and everywhere and they're really good at making meaning of that and understanding the context behind it. And this is where you see a lot of people talking about search everywhere optimization. So that is a little bit different, although there's always been a part of that. You know we've heard about like social signals. If you do well in social media, somehow the search engines are are looking at the social signals as well, but it really does indicate that volume of and this is what some people are preaching. I don't see the data to back this up yet, but just volume of mentioned, the better.

Speaker 1:

Your PR is right. Another reason why I'm leaning into book publishing now because it's going to get my name out there. It's going to get my book names that are associated with me out there and hopefully it's going to help me have better PR, better digital PR. That's going to help me long-term as a personal brand in the landscape of search engine optimization. All right, well, that's the gist of the news that I wanted to report on this week, on to my personal updates. So thank you once again for all of your support for maximizing LinkedIn for business growth.

Speaker 1:

The 99 cent sale does end at the end of this month, that is, september 2024. I will be increasing the price of this book, so this is your last chance to get it at this launch price. Make sure you go to neilschafercom slash. Maximizing LinkedIn for growth that's one word, and you'll see a directory of all the different retailer sites in which you can buy the book. I mean, even if the price goes up to $1.99 or $2.99, it's still going to be a bargain for the content that I deliver. And if you're curious, if you go to the Amazon reviews, you'll see it's already collected a number of five-star reviews, as well as some endorsements, and I'll share with you the latest endorsement, from none other than Joe Polizzi, founder of Tilt Publishing and author of Content Inc, as well as, I mean, the godfather of content marketing, and I quote a masterclass from one of the real LinkedIn influencers. If LinkedIn is important to your business, this book is a must read and thank you, joe, but I think that really says it all.

Speaker 1:

Switching over to digital threads you're going to hear a lot more about this and I do hope, either today or tomorrow, to be uploading it to Amazon and putting it on pre-sale for an October 1st launch. I do plan on having a pre-sales campaign for digital threads. If you want to take advantage of that and get access to a webinar that I plan to do on my recommendations and how to use ChatGPT for all of your digital marketing, including all the different ways in which I personally use it, I think this is going to be a very special webinar. It is the first time I am doing this and it is only going to be for those that take part in the pre-sales campaign and if you take part in that. It's going to be real easy. You basically pre-order and then send me a screenshot and then I will invite you to the webinar and even if you can't make the webinar, you'll get a recording. So, once again, neilschafercom slash newsletter to make sure you hear about that special offer. And it's going to be very time limited, like you'll have only a week to act upon that. All right.

Speaker 1:

Well, lots of things going on, but today I want to switch gears and I want to talk about the topic of scheduling content in advance for social media, and it really comes, or, I should say, the way I'm thinking about this has been inspired not just by writing digital threads, but even more so, by writing Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth, and it's actually a revision of Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth, and it's actually a revision of Maximizing LinkedIn that I'm working on as we speak, based on an analysis that I did of different content types on LinkedIn what's performing well, what isn't, that I prepared, actually for those that saw the webinar for my pre-sales campaign for Maximizing LinkedIn I know that was a real roundabout way of saying it and, at the end of the day, what LinkedIn has done, like what every other social network has done has really deprioritized link content and the thumbnail that used to come when publishing link content is just a fraction on LinkedIn of the size it used to be, to the point where it just doesn't make sense to publish link-based content. And I think that a lot of schedulers that we use that I use are really on the default understanding that there is a lot of link content that you have. You have new blog posts, you have new webinars, new events, new promotions, and a lot of it is link-based and you can recue you know good performing links from social media and basically create a queue that is several months old of essentially link-based content. And I think that a lot of big businesses I know I myself, because I publish four blog posts a week this has been how I operated as well and the problem is that that content just is not going to perform well. And when you read digital threads, you're going to see a graph of social media referred traffic to my website over time and you'll see just how small it has gotten and it's not going to increase. So it's really about and I talk about this in digital threads this link and bio approach.

Speaker 1:

But, more importantly, you really need to be active in the feed to understand what to publish in the feed. This is social media marketing 101, but we sometimes and I am guilty of this as well, which is why I want to talk about it we sometimes get over-reliant on these scheduling tools and we feel the need to schedule content in advance and we can check that box batch process and move on and I realize it's effective. But it's really ineffective if your content isn't getting any visibility. When you are in the feed on a daily basis, not only do you understand those new content types, new ways of expressing content, you know changes in content. For instance, when you are in a social media scheduler, there are certain types of content that you can't schedule in advance. You can't schedule threads in advance, like you know, multiple posts on X or even multiple threads on threads. You can't publish polls in advance. You can't publish carousel posts on LinkedIn in advance. There's all these different things and in fact, you might think that your links are getting more visibility when they're not. And in fact, you might think that your links are getting more visibility when they're not. And you might think that your photo is getting maximum visibility when, if you're in the feed, you realize that LinkedIn is really prioritizing images and really, I think, compared to what I understood before, you can post that an even larger image size than you might have known. You don't realize if your horizontal videos or your vertical videos are doing well, based on what you see in the feed. You don't see that on LinkedIn and I'm really leaning heavily into this for this revision that I'm writing for Maximizing LinkedIn on collaborative articles. You don't see those collaborative articles come into your feed. So if you spend more time in the feed, you inevitably find that you know what this content that I scheduled a few weeks ago. It just ain't working. And when you look at your analytics, it's even more so. That point Now, looking at my own social media scheduler and those that know me I'm a huge fan of Social B and I still use them.

Speaker 1:

I do believe that there are some platforms where it is still okay, like Twitter, and I still say Twitter. Twitter is still based on link content. It's not to say that link-based content still does as well as it used to, and it's not to say that Twitter still has the same active user base that it used to, but that is one platform and also just the volume, generally speaking, compared to other platforms, where it's okay to publish more content on X that need to actually have, you know, at least a few posts a day to be seen. I think it's okay to continue to rely on social media schedules Not ideal, but it's okay. Pinterest is another one where Pinterest, in essence, is a search engine. So it is okay, and I'm a big fan of pin generator. We'll put the links in the show notes and I do still use that to schedule my content. I think that those are fine.

Speaker 1:

Short form video is an interesting one For me. Short form video was the final frontier for me to sort of get active on TikTok and other platforms and I still batch process and I still schedule videos and they have done okay. They do better on some platforms than others. If I want to take it to the next level, maybe I won't, but for now I think it's still okay for those platforms, and I'm talking TikTok, youtube Shorts, instagram Reels. Scheduling YouTube videos, I think is okay. So, neil, well, where the heck should we not be scheduling in advance?

Speaker 1:

I think it's those strategic networks where you want to make the biggest impact and where you have the biggest potential to have the biggest impact For me right now, that's LinkedIn. Just because of the visibility that you can get on LinkedIn that is really, really hard to get on other platforms. I would say the same thing with Instagram. Instagram also still has a lot of potential, as well as the short-form video platforms of TikTok and YouTube. But many people that I know, like myself, they have a hard time of constantly creating that content anyway for those platforms, unless you're a true, you know, tiktoker or video content creator. So if scheduling is the first step to get your content out there, I say go for it.

Speaker 1:

But I think, especially when we look at LinkedIn, when we look at Instagram now I don't mention Facebook, because the potential for a Facebook business page to have content that goes viral is, you know, I don't want to say next to nothing, but it's very, very low at this stage. So when you look at it that way, right, if you could ditch the scheduling tool and if you were publishing similar content on a LinkedIn that you did on a Facebook or on an Instagram, you can see how, when you publish at the moment or you're using different formats that you can't use a scheduler for, you could actually be doing similar things on these other platforms as well, using their native features, using the Facebook poll native feature, which I know is not readily available as it used to be, but definitely Instagram has a poll feature and it may only be on stories, but I think you get the point. So the idea is we need to be a little bit more nimble, we need to be living more in the feed. I think that's really the important thing. And the scheduler not only does it take us away from the feed and understanding what is trending at the moment in the feed, but it also takes us away from the engagement, and I think the whole idea is let's schedule our contents, that we have more time for engagement. But I think a lot of businesses they check the box. It's like did we publish three posts this week? Okay, great, let's move on. You gotta remember the engagement because you gotta remember the way that algorithms work. They look for social signals and if you're just publishing content and having a one-way conversation without engaging with other people, you might have your super fans that continue to engage with your content, but I tell you, as human beings, we're going to be engaging more with those that engage with us, so you need to make sure that you add that, and I think this is my belief.

Speaker 1:

If you're a human being and you're checking the newsfeed on a regular basis, spending time there, you will naturally comment as you go through that feed as things inspire you. You will naturally comment as you go through that feed as things inspire you, and that is also going to give you hints as to what content you should create to get comments yourself. Look at what inspired you, in fact, and well, I'm stepping ahead to the AI webinar that I'm planning. You know, if you ended up commenting on five different posts, copy and paste those posts in the chat GPT and ask them are there any common threads that made you want to comment on these posts? Now, maybe it was because they were a friend of yours or you hadn't seen them in the feed in a while. There's lots of different reasons, but if it was just the content, this is going to be a really, really important point.

Speaker 1:

And another point here about the content is when you're in the feed, you begin to see the ultimate importance of having a good hook. This is especially important on LinkedIn. You have to press the more button to see the entire content. Will you press the more button or not. That comes down to the hook. But the hook is universal, whether it is on social media, in a blog post, in a video, in a podcast which is why I have that teaser to begin my podcast the hook is critical and, like I said, you're gonna lose your skill if you don't spend more time in the feed. And that's really.

Speaker 1:

I know that I've come a little roundabout here, beginning talking about social media schedulers, but it's really about spending more time in the feed and letting yourself be inspired and being influenced by the feed. It's no different than SEO optimization of your content. We often optimize based on what is ranking well at the top of search results, because we know that Google's AI has favored that content for those search queries. So there has to be something winning about them, and it's a lot of different factors, but at the end of the day, the newsfeed is showing you content that is winning and over-reliance and scheduling tools can keep you away from seeing that. Now, if you're like me and you want to sort of, you know you still have content that you want to add to scheduling tools and maybe you continue to do it for certain networks or certain formats, like I suggested. But if you want to sort of put a pause on it, like I'm starting to do with LinkedIn, do this Schedule a time to publish at like 1 pm every day.

Speaker 1:

Turn it off, first of all, and a social be as a convenient feature where we can turn on or off the publishing queue for each social network. Put your times to post at like 1 PM and make sure you publish new content in the morning and let it be something that inspires you, either from your feed, something that you saw on the internet or email that you got, or something personal that you want to share. And for that day, if you don't want to publish something, then when it's noon and if you haven't published something, turn on your queue, publish something, then turn it off again later in the afternoon and that way you know your. Your reward, if you can publish in the morning, is you don't have to publish a scheduled post, but you always have a backup. You always have that queue there that you can always pull into.

Speaker 1:

If you don't have the time to go into the newsfeed or to share something or you have nothing to say, that's totally okay and that happens. But instead of relying on the scheduling tool as the first priority. We rely on it as a second priority. So I'm not going to throw away social B. It still has its use. But I think, in the grand scheme of things, if you deprioritize it and prioritize these other aspects of social media marketing, for which there is no tool other than you, your eyes, your brain, going into your feeds and being emotional and being inspired and being creative that, my friends, is the best tool that we as human beings have and, in this age of AI, it is that tool that will help us win the battle in the newsfeed on any given social network.

Speaker 1:

All right, well, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I do like to share what is on my mind with these solo podcast episodes and really bring different concepts and themes together to create some new insight, not just for you but for myself. So I hope you enjoyed this topic. If you have any questions or any comments, I'd love to hear back from you. Always, neilneilschafercom. Find me on social media. Review this podcast. Take a screenshot, let me know. We'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

And obviously, every other episode we have interviews, and next week we have an awesome interview with Andy Lambert, who is one of the co-founders of Content Cal ironically a social media scheduling tool now a product manager over at Adobe Express. Now he was on my podcast last year. He's also the author of a book on social media marketing for the B2B side. Last year, we talked about how social media is the engine for B2B growth. This year, we talk about the future of personality-led growth. It's really this intertwining of personal branding, employee advocacy, influencer marketing, brand advocates, social media marketing. It was a really awesome conversation, so make sure you hit the subscribe button and that is it for another episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is Neal Schaefer, your digital marketing coach, signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your Digital Marketing Coach. Questions, comments, requests, links go to podcastnealschaefercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at nealschaefercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your Digital Marketing Coach.