6 Social Scheduling Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Reach And Reputation

You’ve been publishing a lot of content on multiple social media networks through scheduling.

Now, you save many hours weekly that you can commit to other important business activities.

But your social media performance has taken a hit in the process.

And you’re wondering if social media scheduling is worth all the hype. Or maybe you’re doing it wrong?

Before giving up on scheduling, go through these social media scheduling mistakes that often hurt the performance of many brands.

And if you’re making any of these mistakes, note them and cut them out of your scheduling strategy.

Let’s go into the details.

Social media scheduling mistakes that hurt brands

1. Failure to engage with comments and other users

I often see people who think that once you have a social scheduling tool, you just need 30 minutes to create posts for 2 weeks.

Then, they can forget about social media for the next 2 weeks.

But what if a prospect comments on your post, asking an important question?

What about engaging with prospects and industry experts on social media?

Publishing content is one part of a social media strategy.

Another important part is engagement. And if you fail to engage with other users, algorithms will stifle your reach.

Even more, you’ll miss many opportunities to connect with ideal prospects and get them interested in your product.

How to engage on social media

Many social schedulers offer inbox features, which let you engage with mentions, comments, and messages.

This helps you reply to post comments right in your scheduler.

But beyond these, you also have to schedule time to visit your audience’s favorite social networks.

Visiting these networks helps you engage with prospects and other industry professionals to reach even more people.

I often schedule posts on LinkedIn, but I also block time off to engage with other professionals on the platform.

If I only schedule posts without engaging, I’ll be limiting my reach and ignoring relationships that can lead to more work for me.

2. Failure to customize posts for each social network

The video specifications for Instagram posts are different from those of LinkedIn posts.

The number of caption characters for X (formerly Twitter) is less than that of LinkedIn posts.

You can leave your link in a LinkedIn post (or comment), while you have to direct Instagram followers to the link in bio.

But beyond these differences, each social media network has a general tone that works.

For example, LinkedIn tends to be professional while TikTok tends to be fun.

So, if you create a single copy and media version for multiple social networks, you’ll publish posts that look poor on some social networks because of the poor fit.

And when this content lands on your profile, it will smear your brand.

Followers may start thinking, “If this brand can’t create a proper social media post, how can they create a good product that requires more attention?”

With the ability to schedule posts on multiple social media networks at once, schedulers make this mistake easy.

How to create good-fit content for each social network

Even if you’re creating a post for multiple social networks, rework your captions and media to fit into each social network.

Some social media schedulers also help with this.

They allow you to customize captions, images, and videos for each social media platform.

They also provide previews showing how a post will appear on each social network.

Here’s an example from Vista Social:

Going through this process ensures every post you publish fits into each social network.

3. Running a rigid schedule through extreme events

You’ve scheduled social media posts for the next 2 weeks.

And one of your scheduled posts in the second week is a video of a customer dancing while wearing one of your gowns.

But towards the end of the first week of this schedule, an earthquake occurred in the country your ideal customers live.

Leaving your schedule as it is for the second week can be a brand reputation suicide.

Prospects and customers will see a dancing video on your Instagram profile when some of them are homeless.

They’ll see that your brand doesn’t care about customers during their hard times.

This is just one example of how rigid social schedules can land a brand in hot water with its audience.

Many other situations can spell problems for a brand if they leave their schedules on complete autopilot.

How to introduce flexibility into your schedule

One great way is to review your schedule regularly.

Even if you schedule 3 weeks ahead, you can review your schedule every week to ensure all the posts are still necessary.

Another way is to be proactive during extreme events like natural disasters or accidents.

During this period, log in to your scheduler and pause your schedule.

If you work with team members, you can send a message to them about how your brand will adjust its messaging during bad times.

While schedulers let you schedule posts for as long as you want, you need oversight and flexibility in the schedule.

4. Having the same posting frequency for every social network

You can publish 5 tweets daily on X and be fine, but repeating the same frequency on LinkedIn can look spammy.

In fact, your LinkedIn followers can become fed up with seeing your brand multiple times daily.

This mistake is easy to make because schedulers let you create one post and schedule it to multiple social media networks.

So, businesses may want to publish every post on multiple networks since it’s as easy as selecting the profiles.

This can lead to posting too much on some social networks or too little on some.

How to customize posting frequency for each social network

While schedulers let you schedule as much as you want, you’ll decide how many times you want to show up on each social media network.

For example, a weekly scheduling plan can look like this:

• 20 tweets
• 4 Instagram posts
• 3 TikTok videos
• 3 LinkedIn posts
• 2 Facebook posts

Once you have this frequency, you know the number of posts to schedule for each platform.

A scheduler like SocialBee lets you create a weekly schedule in the Schedule Setup where you can specify the time and day to publish content for each social network.

All you just need to do is create content for these time slots every week.

When you have a weekly publishing plan, you can have optimum publishing frequency for each social network.

5. Ignoring social media analytics

Many people start scheduling social media posts because of how many hours it can save weekly while aiding a consistent posting schedule.

Because of this, it’s easy to focus more on the time saved and the number of posts published weekly.

And these can lead to ignoring more vital metrics to your social media strategy.

If this happens, you can publish a lot of content that contributes little to your business growth.

How to track the right metrics

Businesses publish social content to achieve some goals, whether the content is published manually or through a scheduler.

These goals include:

• Brand awareness
• Audience engagement
• Product awareness
• Lead generation
• Sales 

To understand your social media performance, you have to track metrics connected to your goals.

Some social media management tools provide metrics to measure multiple goals.

For example, Sprout Social provides detailed analytics about your social media posts, including weekly email summaries.

If your desired metrics are absent in a scheduler, visit the native analytics section of each social media network.

By tracking social media analytics, you can detect improvement opportunities to drive better social media performance.

6. Using the wrong social media management tool

There are tens of social media management tools, but the wrong one can suffocate your strategy.

Some issues you can have with the wrong tool include:

• Limited scheduling options: Some tools make customizing posts for multiple social networks difficult, while some show no post preview. In some cases, you may get limited options to add media.
• Poor collaboration: If you run a social media team, you can have issues assigning tasks to team members.
• Limited engagement features: While some schedulers provide good scheduling features, they offer few engagement options to interact with followers.
• Limited analytics: The wrong social media tool will deliver few metrics to judge the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Using the wrong tool means you get fewer benefits from your social media scheduling tasks.

How to choose the right social media management tool

Choosing a social management tool involves stating your most important needs.

You should also consider your goals and how a scheduler can help you achieve them.

If you’re considering your options, check out my list of the best social media management tools.

Conclusion 

Every business makes mistakes at one point or another.

The key step is correcting those mistakes to improve business results.

Are you currently making any of these social media scheduling mistakes?

Use this guide to make the necessary corrections.

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