Author: Jim

Let’s start off with a confession before I start the diatribe. I LOVE scheduled posts on social media. I use them ALL OF THE TIME. From blog posts to Facebook posts to Twitter posts, my only desire is to find ways to schedule my Instragram photos. (Put suggestions in the comments!)

With that out of the way, I’m going to admit that I know I’m playing with fire. Take this example from Unmarketing as an example of how things can go sideways:

There was a RadioHead concert scheduled tonight in Toronto at Downsview Park. Tragedy struck, and some of the staging collapsed before the show, where at least one person died and many more injured.

LiveNation, the promoter for the event also tweeted that the show has been cancelled, so people would not head to the venue.

The problem being a half-hour later they sent another tweet, this one obviously pre-scheduled to get people to tweet about the show!

I’m so terrified of pushing something inappropriate that I put a task in my emergency communications plan to check and turn off all scheduled social media posts as soon as possible. That said, they can be so helpful, and this post from Fast Company last week let me feel better about my choice:

[After six months of not scheduling tweets, I found] my new followers’ growth curve came to a halt, the amount of valuable content I shared dropped dramatically, and thus so did the number of retweets of my material. Granted, my realtime engagement level in creating relationships with current followers remained about the same. In the months I used the automated tweet rotation, my twitter following more than doubled organically, whereas in the last six months, the engagement approach alone only saw an uptake of approximately ten percent. It seems that by not having the “meaty” content continually being shared, growth stalled.

My conclusion is that automation used in the wrong places, in the wrong way, will kill your online potential and your brand reputation, but done properly, it can be hugely valuable to grow your followers and to contribute value.

The author, Allison Graham, notes that there is one important thing to consider when thinking about adding scheduled tweets to your repertoire. Content does not equal connection. Since social media is (or should be) all about interaction, just posting stuff and ignoring the conversation that grows around it is worse than not posting at all. Scheduling posts allows you to seed conversations throughout the day and week without having to be present to research and write those seeds at that minute. But be sure to encourage and participate in those conversations!

If you’re interested in learning more about scheduling posts, I use Hootsuite for specific timing of Twitter posts (after figuring out the best time to post from Crowdbooster), Buffer to sprinkle stuff throughout the day without caring when it’ll post, and Facebook’s new post scheduling tool for my personal feed and the Pages I manage. If you’d like more information on scheduling, please don’t hesitate to touch base with me!

Denise Graveline of the Don’t Get Caught blog has been on a bit of a mission this summer to get people to onto the hottest new diet; the Press Release Diet.

It’s an interesting idea that recommends PR folks and PIOs give up press releases. Like cutting Oreo’s out of your diet (which I could never do), it won’t be easy but it’s for the best. She recommends that you stop issuing press releases and instead issue updates to the media and public via regular social media updates. The idea stems from an experiment done by the Library of Congress a few years back where they didn’t issue a single press release for a new initiative and instead relied on disseminating word via social media. (The PDF report is really that interesting.)

Her latest post on the Press Release Diet is about a small, local government communications shop that has given up on press releases and instead relies on social media, website and email for their external comms. They’ve found that making the switch has provided a number of benefits and lessons learned and mention seven specifically:

1. Happier internal clients
2. Happier reporters
3. More time for planning
4. Improved creativity
5. Focused choices in social sharing
6. Implementation takes time
7. Improved public response

Check out the links above for more on the Press Release Diet, or Ms. Graveline’s other recent post here. And, interestingly enough, I wrote about something similar earlier this summer, too.

Yesterday I kind of pulled the rug out from under a few people with that whole "Your Audience is a Lie" bit. Today, we talk about what that means for us as communicators (but I’m still not walking it back).

So, let’s say you agree with me about the audience and you can no longer write a message for a person. We know they won’t sit there and wait for your message. They’ve got fifty thousand other messages streaming at them at the same time, and many of those messages (especially for folks in public health) counteract. (And let’s not pretend like our government messages are nearly as slick as our, ahem, competitors.)

Assuming that your message does get through, what if they don’t necessarily agree with what you’ve said? What if they talk back? What if they tell their friends (who tell their friends, etc.)? I think that’s the essence of Mr. Livingston’s post, that our "audience" is not a passive observer or sponge. They are now friends, stakeholders, enemies, crazy people.

They. Talk. Back.

Inserting that idea into your communications flow is the first step towards the future of communications. We can no longer stop at "audience receives message," we now have to build in feedback loops. And (this part is really important) actually use them to engage in conversations and improve our messages and learn how to do our jobs better–directly from the people who know best!

Beyond those newly empowering conversations, there are even better reasons to shift away from an audience-centric model of communications: to stop limiting ourselves. Messages written for one audience will only succeed with that audience. There is no latitude given for serendipity or kismet.

People are not meant to happen upon our messages and be moved. But like cat videos and hours whiled away on Wikipedia, our modern, information-addled brains learn through these so-called weak ties. We see something that looks slightly askew or interesting or novel and we investigate. When was the last time you found ten minutes of attention to devote to a brochure written for your "audience type?" When was the last time you promised yourself you’d only look up one thing online, and then came to your senses an hour later looking at a Wikipedia article about Helen of Troy?

I say let your content be free, and reap the attention of people who may not necessarily fit into your target audience.