Let me start by saying that the goal for your account really matters here.
If the primary purpose of your account is to act as a placeholder (for basic brand awareness) and not to grow your business, then this post doesn’t apply to you.
But if your goal is to grow your business, or increase sales, or to connect with your audience, or to build relationships with your followers, then this post is definitely for you.
Secondly, I don’t believe scheduled posts get less visibility than manual posts, only because a scheduling tool was used…
BUT… Scheduled posts do tend to have a lot less engagement, because accounts who schedule often have a “Post-And-Forget” mentality which absolutely does affect the algorithm, and therefore visibility.
Social Media is meant to be engaging, which is extremely difficult to do if all posts are scheduled.
#1: Social Media Isn’t Meant to be “Post-And-Forget”
(AKA The Algorithm doesn’t like that)
An effective social media strategy (goal-dependent) needs to include authentic engagement with your audience. This is one of the things that tells “the algorithm” that your content is good, which means it’ll get shown to more people. If you “Post-And-Forget”, you’ve only done a part of what’s necessary to be effective.
Engagement with your audience takes time… which needs to happen if you want your content to perform well.
#2: Scheduling Won’t Save Time; Batch-Creating Content Does.
Most accounts who choose to schedule everything are trying to save time, but scheduling your posts ahead of time takes almost as much time as it does to post individually (You’re still uploading each post, adding captions and hashtags, etc).
The real time-saver is batch-creating content, especially when you are in your creative groove!
Rather than focusing on scheduling posts to get them off your plate, a better strategy would be to focus on being highly effective in creating your content.
#3: Relevancy is Hard to Predict (and The Algorithm really likes relevancy)
In Social Media terms, to be relevant means that what you share must resonate with your audience, and to do this, you should generate engaging and valuable content.
If you’re scheduling content weeks or months ahead of time it becomes extremely difficult to stay relevant and engaging.. and what is valuable to your audience now may not be as valuable to them weeks down the road.
Product/Service specific content doesn’t loose its relevancy, so that could, arguably, be scheduled…
But that should only make up about 20% of your content.
“Should I stop scheduling content?”
No. Honestly, you do whatever works for you.
I’m here to help you become effective in your Social Media Strategy, but at the end of the day, it’s your business and you’re in charge of what you want to do.
My recommendation would be to USE SCHEDULING AS A TOOL within your content strategy (ex. Vacation, or Product/Service Specific Info Content), but don’t use it AS your content strategy for all posts.
If scheduling content is what works for you (and you’re happy with your results) then keep doing that!
If you’re not happy with your results but you’re not ready to do it differently, I suggest scheduling time before and after your scheduled post to authentically engage with your audience.
