The Problem with Scheduling Social Media Posts, and a Solution

This morning I saw a tweet from Eater promoting an Aug. 21 video, “This 180-Day Dry-Aged Steak Was Caused by a Flood.” In light of the massive flooding in Houston, this tweet was unfortunate (and has since been removed). Any communications professional with social media experience can guess what must have happened: Eater likely scheduled the tweet as much as a week ago (see the Aug. 21 tweet) and then it simply went out as scheduled. An innocent mistake.

This is not the first time a social media post has had bad timing, and it won’t be the last. But you can try to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. How? Some would suggest not scheduling posts at all. By sending all posts live, you can consider what’s happening in the world around you before you post, and avoid posting something you shouldn’t. But that approach isn’t practical for everyone. So what’s the other solution? Treat scheduled posts like they’re live posts. Here are two ways to do that: 

• First thing Monday morning, check the week’s scheduled posts. Do any of them tie back to the weekend’s major news events? If so, is the tie a good one or a bad one? The bonus here is you might discover an opportunity to capitalize on positive news from the weekend.
• Monitor breaking news and as soon as something major happens, like Hurricane Harvey, check your scheduled posts. See if any of them might come across as taking advantage of a tragedy, or seem insensitive. If so, you have three options: Rewrite them, reschedule them or delete them.

The few minutes you spend each week on the above suggestions could save you from embarrassment and improve your overall social media efforts.