How best to post on social media

Tayo Elegbede

By numbers, an average of 550 million tweets are posted daily; 300-hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute while Facebook receives 55 million status updates a day. And 70 million photos are also published on Instagram a day.

Round the clock, streams of data are produced, reproduced and shared by online brands – individuals and organisations – keeping the space in a restive motion. The Internet world is one of unending activities.

This is an affirmation that the social media space is not sleep-friendly and would continue with an increasing number of smartphones and decrease in data prices.

However, the big question is: how do you cope with such speed?

Also, how can brands achieve qualitative and frequent content sharing on their social media platforms using either the manual or automated posting systems, or at best combining both approaches?

With this ever-growing rate of content consumption on social media, there is the need for brands to step up their social media visibility through increasing posting schedule and frequency. After all, social media are not a machine or a closed system. Yet, content is to be on a regular flow.

Manual posting is the deliberate process of humanly sharing (posting) content to your social media account(s) without assistance from any automated software or platform. Manual posting is also known as live posting, relying solely on human input and manual effort.

Conversely, automated posting is the dissemination of content through the aid of content management tools such as Hoot suite, Buffer, CoSchedule, RSS feeds and others. Automated posting involves the use of re-purposed content.

One common automation practice is the linkage of Twitter accounts to Facebook pages and vice-versa such that posts on one end of the platforms will show on the other.

My observation reveals that content from Twitter are often not effective on Facebook due to Twitter’s 140-character limit. That is not adequate for Facebook’s larger-messaging status. Similarly, Facebook’s longer posts leave Twitter user guessing about the completeness of thought expressed.

Either automated or manual posting, the essence of social media is being social, which comes with real time engagement, humanness and value.

When manual works

Social media is all about human engagement and connectivity, and the ultimate goal of brands on social media is to build and strengthen relationships with customers to achieve shared benefits. Manual posting gives you this opportunity. It helps you to establish real ties with your audience. Actions, such as instant reply, comments on random posts, retweeting, and favouriting, create increased engagement and build human-like bonds between you and your audience.

Twitter followers want to be sure that they can get responses to their complaints about a brand even at the middle of the night in a matter of minutes.

Therefore, manual posting creates instant brand connection and loyalty. Although some organisations who utilise automated posting method to schedule response time, such reactions may be overtaken by other events. For instance, a reaction would have become viral before the scheduled response time.

Here are some guidelines for utilising manual posting techniques:

1. Be as human and real as possible. Nobody wants to speak with a robot or answering machine.
2. Start and engage in conversations by asking and answering questions to learn what is important to your customers.
3. If you run a large social media team, delegate team members to run shift in order to keep up with developments.
4. Be prepared for criticism, negative feedback and, of course, positive ones. Instant replies or reactions can make or mar these.
5. Be creative with your live communication flow. Follow a sequence but not a script.

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When automated works

Automation generally helps in saving time and resources on social media content sharing.

Automated posts could either be pre-approved or unapproved. While the pre-approved ones include content scheduled via some social media management board, the unapproved ones are automatically curated through RSS Feeds and other third party platforms for reposting/retweeting and shared without approval from your social media platforms.

While the pre-approved automation system ensures the certainty, quality, consistency, the unapproved automation system is largely uncontrollable.

Here are some guidelines for utilising automated posting technique:

1. Pre-purpose all content to align with the demands of your audience.
2. Curate or adapt content to suit each platform.
3. Observe strict timing (without oversharing) using the pre-approved system or platform.
4. Do not abuse the unapproved system, as it could lead to content flooding.
5. Be creative with your automation policy.
6. Review and revise frequently to offer a variety to your audience.

In conclusion, both manual and automated posting systems can be effectively mixed for optimal online performance.