Are Scheduled Posts Really Seen Less? Myth Debunked!
Lately we’ve been hearing a bit of chatter about the visibility of scheduled posts versus manual posts. Are they one and the same? The short answer is, yes. A post is a post is a post. Facebook doesn’t care whether you use a third party app, like CinchShare, to schedule your posts or if you manually post your content, but let us explain in more detail so you can pass this information along to others and feel confident and secure when scheduling your posts!
It’s actually an old myth that scheduled posts are seen differently than manual posts. There has been a TON of research on this topic and through all that research, it’s been proven time and time again that scheduled post visibility is the exact same as manual post visibility. You can check out this recently released post by Buffer on this very topic and rest assured that you aren’t jeopardizing your reach by planning ahead and scheduling- you’re just being organized, saving time and working smarter!
Here’s what we learned from our own research:
When people go from not scheduling posts to scheduling, engagement can appear to be lower at first, depending on what you begin scheduling. However, the more engaging content you schedule, the more interaction your scheduled posts will receive. You see, it’s all about engagement for Facebook as it IS a social media platform, so whatever posts receive the most action will be the ones that are showing up in everyone’s Newsfeeds.
People often post their most engaging content manually, and then schedule their promotional content. If that’s the case for you, then engagement may be lower with your scheduled posts because promotional content typically gets lower engagement. However, if you schedule engaging content (personal pics of your kids, authentic questions, exciting news, etc.) your scheduled posts will receive more engagement which will result in Facebook showing more of your posts to your followers. If you need some ideas on engaging content to share, be sure to check out our blog post about the types of posts that you should be posting to grow your business and the ones you should avoid.
Another thing to keep in mind for those that schedule posts to Facebook Groups and Events, is that Facebook Groups and Events already have a captive audience and posts to those locations don’t rely on Newsfeed placement for engagement as group members and event attendees receive notifications for posts, according to the notification setting they selected. In fact, the only Facebook locations that rely solely on the Newsfeed for engagement is your Personal Timeline and Business Pages, and due to Facebook’s algorithm, Business Pages have extremely limited reach regardless of how you’re posting. That’s why we recommend directing your posts to Facebook Groups and/or Events, where you have a captive audience that has elected to see your posts, and you will most likely receive much better engagement.
Did you know that we use CinchShare to schedule ALL of our posts? It’s true! We schedule posts to our personal Timelines, to our Facebook Groups, to our Facebook Business Page, and to our Facebook Training Events where we have thousands attending and interacting with our scheduled posts every single week, so we can literally see that scheduled posts get fantastic visibility!
It really all boils down to the quality of the content you are posting and the sincerity of your engagement, so stop fretting about whether people are seeing your posts. They are! But if they’re not engaging with your content then there’s a problem, and we can help with that too! We invite you to check out our Reviews on our Business Page where customers are sharing their awesome feedback with us just like the one below, and make sure to join us every Tuesday night at 9pm EST where we offer FREE training on how to grow your business on social media!
