It's Time to Ditch Your Social Media Scheduler

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 .

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 . 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 .

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 . 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 .

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 . 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 . 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 .

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 .

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 .

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 .

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 . 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 ?

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 .

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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 .

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 .

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 .