To schedule or not to schedule?
That is a question.
Lately, I’ve been working a lot with scheduling content for different campaigns and clients. I’ve found myself exploring in depth the various ways we can do it, the tools available and the energy around scheduling content too.
I’ve been heading up the social media for The Common area at Glastonbury Festival and working with Rebecca Campbell and her team on Discover Your Spiritual Practice, offerings that both launched on Summer Solstice. They have both been amazing experiences, and I’m so grateful to have had these magical opportunities. As part of this work, scheduling content has been both a bugbear and has also saved the day – I’ll share more on this in a minute…
So what do we do? To schedule or not to schedule … That is indeed a question…
And my answer is, yes, ideally we need to use these tools to schedule content AND yet we need to create/post in-the-moment, real-time content, in today's social media landscape too.
There is a space and need for both.
It also depends on who you are and the size, engagement and MOMENT of time you are in with your audience. The digital space is so dynamic that it really is a dance… Scheduling takes the pressure off, allows for teamwork and for you to be strategic, to plan ahead with your communications – but it comes with its own unique set of complexities and energetics too.
I mentioned in my last article that you never need to ask for permission to take time off social media, and while this is true, sometimes you and your business need to keep an active presence on social media, in which case scheduling content can really take the pressure off.
Using scheduling tools as part of your Strategy of Love can really help make your life easier, giving you more space to create, space to collaborate and share the load of social media, alongside the ability to take space to refresh your creative soul, and to live your embodied life to its fullest.
I often get asked these questions about scheduling:
‘Isn’t planning and scheduling posts inauthentic?’
‘Doesn’t scheduling affect the reach and the algorithm?’
Some of you might feel that the only genuine posts are the ones done in the moment, without any forward thought or planning. Or that using a third party messes with your reach (or is it the energy behind the post themselves doing that?!). Planning and scheduling can absolutely ease some of the pressure to be online all the time and it is a good way to share your message and your medicine in an organised and strategic way that supports not being attached to your phone on the regular.
But there are many sides to it and ways to do it, and as I told you, it’s not without its complexities. On-the-fly and off-the-cuff posts are always going to feel more real and true to life, a way to bring your audience into the moment with you, and in my experience, they DO get more engagement and travel further in the world wide web. But does it mean we should do it for all of your posts and comms? Absolutely not – that would be exhausting, unprofessional and rather impossible.
When you share a post to your timelines in the moment on the daily, this takes you out of the moment and into your phone, out of embodied life and into the digital world. You end up posting about life, and living through your device, rather than living life itself. Plus you can often end up not being as strategic too, getting trapped in the ‘WTF do I post today?’ feeling, that then becomes a burden or a chore. Which often results in burnout.
Scheduling and automation is a gift within the digital dimension and there is a happy medium. I’ve been finding this middle ground with my clients recently because it isn’t a straightforward answer. It’s actually, as with all social media, personal, subjective and unique – much like the algorithm, and much like life. No two people are having the exact same experience of social media, and nor can they. There may be commonalities but just as we have unique experiences in the same set of circumstances offline, the same is true online.
But coming back to scheduling, trust that can still create heartfelt connective content, you can still bless your posts, and your message will still reach whoever needs it when you schedule and automate.
As long as your posts come from the heart and are true to you and your mission and your brand, then you’re still being authentic – you’re just granting yourself space and peace of mind by scheduling it to go out into the digital dimension as and when you want it to – and if you have a team working on your social (which in this day and age – depending on the size of your account and business – can be very helpful if not essential!), then using collaboration and scheduling tools are the only way forward that makes sense.
So where do you start with scheduling? There are a number of scheduling tools available – with more options popping up every day it seems – with a range of features and prices. Here are a few different tools in the current world of scheduling. (Note: I am not affiliated with any of these platforms, these are just some that are on my radar or that I have been playing with/investigating or using recently.)
Meta Business Suite aka Creator Studio:
If you use Facebook and Instagram you can now link and schedule these at the same time through Meta’s new business suite. If you have a remote team, and your social media is focused around Meta’s platforms, it’s an easy win. The Planner tool is pretty good (as good as Sprout Social, a paid option below), where you can schedule stories, get top-level analytics, including around your paid and organic media, and how they work together, plus set goals around reach and engagement (bringing in more gamification I notice!). Also, it’s free. Being owned by Meta means you will not suffer any third-party disconnections, although it can be a bit glitchy, much like Meta itself. Unfortunately (and what has got in the way for campaigns that I’ve been working on) you can’t schedule videos longer than 1 minute to insta, or add stickers and interactive features to Stories or schedule Reels. So this one still has a way to go to be really really good, but as a free tool it is still pretty helpful and I’ve used it with the Glasto The Common Team as a central hub for us to be able to see what’s going on and going out and collaborate with the team more easily.
Sprout Social:
I’ve been using Sprout Social for a whole decade now, it’s easy to use, has great analytics and consumer listening tools and it is easy to schedule across multiple platforms at the same time. It is often used by bigger organisations and teams due to the cost and functionalities available. However as with many scheduling tools right now there are limitations to scheduling new mediums, such as Reels. It has just released scheduling for TikTok, which is great for users of that platform. And Sprout are always developing and adding to their offering, which is often limited by the social media platforms’ API themselves. It allows scheduling to YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter and can be used by teams, with different permissions for different team members. However there is no free plan and it can be pretty expensive: $89-$249 per month, with a cost per user as well. It was a forerunner in the market but cheaper ones are catching up, so be interesting to see how they stay ahead and stay worth the cost.
Planable:
I’ve just found this one – it’s a scheduling tool designed for collaboration and the approval processes for teams that need that layer, who think visually and don’t want to be working from spreadsheets. It’s nice to navigate, is used by Social Chain Steven Bartlett’s agency, and has grid, timeline and diary views of what is scheduled. This can be great for visual thinkers and feelers – who want to see what is scheduled rather than just know what is scheduled. It’s not too expensive either, there is a free layer and it costs around the $25 mark per month plus additional costs per team member, which is pretty reasonable in the space. You can also schedule Reels here, although at the moment you can’t do automatic posting, only push. However, I have heard on the grapevine this week that third-party Reels scheduling API is on the way very soon. This one doesn’t come with any analytics though.
Canva or Adobe Creative Suite Express:
A new trend has emerged where digital content creator tools now have the ability to schedule content too. If you use Canva or Adobe Creative Express (formerly Spark) for creating graphics, you can now schedule them directly after you create them. Nifty and useful if also paying for a scheduler as well as a graphics creator – which usually cost around £10/$15 per month, however it doesn’t come with analytics.
All of these tools have different pluses and minuses and there are many, many other options available – too many to list here – so it’s a matter of finding which one works best for you, your budget, your business and your way of working solo or as part of a team.
What I observe and notice about scheduling is that it is a very personal process, from the scheduling tools people like to use and how it works for them. Last week when I was running socials at Glastonbury Festival, I had pre-planned and pre-scheduled a range of posts, from daily stage lineups to uplifting affirmations and information, that totally saved the day – as the internet was rubbish! And especially once the festival-goers arrived, I couldn’t even use 4G on my phone easily. If I hadn’t prepared and prescheduled content, my job would have been a lot more stressful! Plus the scheduled stuff did its thing, and allowed me to have a lie-in! We were able to have content going out before we got up, which was good, especially as our stages didn’t close until sunrise. This can also be useful if working across multiple timezones for your audiences. However, once we were there and living it, some of the scheduled posts no longer felt right where they were placed in the flow of what was going on, and so every day I was moving some things around so that the flow felt good and aligned to that moment. This is something that I see with clients too – it is a natural part of the scheduling process.
You can prepare, plan and then still want to edit, tweak and move things around so that they feel right in that moment, on that day, in that way. That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with prepping and planning, or with what you have prepped and planned. In fact, it gives you the framework and the container for you to go another layer deeper into the authenticity of the content and the feel into the flow of communication that you want to send out into cyberspace, without having to do it all in the moment.
As ever there is much to discover and dance with here, do let me know if you use any scheduling tools and what you think and how you feel about scheduling your social media content?
Many of the people I coach are quite avoidant, resistant or struggle with scheduling (including myself for my own stuff!) So I’d love to get into this more with you.
Get in touch by reply or say hi through my website or on the socials.
I’d love to hear how it makes you feel.