3 Good Reasons To Consider Posting Directly To Social Media

Posting to social media has never been easier. Social media management tools like Hootsuite and Buffer make it almost inexcusable not to post updates routinely to your social media networks.

And the benefits! Once you link up all your accounts, you can schedule posts to publish when and where you want them to, all from one spot.

No more logging into ten different networks. No more forgotten passwords.

And then there’s the time saved. Take a weekend and load up your queue with content. You’re set for the week.

But as novelist Nora Roberts once said, “When something comes easy, you usually let it go the same way.” There are a lot of myths about social media. And the notion that you can “set it and forget it” is just as flawed as the idea of social media being free.

Tools like Hootsuite offer amazing solutions to help you manage your social media. And for those who take the time to learn how to best use the platform, there is a tremendous benefit, even under the free plan.

But it all boils down to what you’re willing to do. For some small business owners, social media management tools are a way to get out of the hassle of posting to social media. The goal is just to load up the queue and get it done.

But perhaps there’s a better way to experience social media for your business. Try posting directly to each platform. Here are a few reasons why:

You’ll learn how to engage better.

Posting content is easy. The hard part is what comes next. Engaging, starting and participating in conversations.

To get an appreciation for each social media network, you have to spend time there to gain an understanding of how best to use it for your brand.

Over time, you’ll begin to identify major players and influencers, content trends, and even customer issues that you can solve.  You’ll see what content works.

Each social media network has a specific audience and spending time on the platform is the best way to learn who they are and how best to engage them.

You’ll have fewer networks to manage.

It may look cool to have five or more different social media icons run along the top and bottom of your website, but it’s uncool if they’re poorly managed.

If you aren’t using a tool like Buffer to schedule across all networks, logging into each platform to make updates may eventually become burdensome, especially if you don’t see any results.

But this may motivate you to reduce the number of networks you use, limiting them to what makes sense for your brand.

If you’re honest, you probably signed up for one or two of those because someone else told you that you should.  And that’s the wrong reason.

So go ahead and pick two or three social media networks. Spend your time there. You may start to enjoy the community. The more you enjoy it, the more involved you’ll get. And … you get the picture.

You’ll have access to platform-specific performance insights.

If you’re going to be on social media, it only makes sense to expect to see positive results. You want to know what’s working and what’s not. And if it’s not, why. This goes beyond notifications that someone has liked your post or favorited one of your tweets.

You need the facts. You need to know who your audience is and how they behave on each network. What content triggers the most interest and what fails.

And you can pull these numbers from most social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Instagram, however, is one of the exceptions. Use Iconosquare for help there.

Tools like Hootsuite also make these insights available. But, it’s something about getting those numbers from the network you’re on.

What you need to know.

Social media can be as easy or complicated as you want to make it. Its flexible digital architecture lets creators and curators of new and old content share and engage in unpreceded ways.

And social media management tools are an asset to it. But, if misused, these tools can serve as an easy way to spam your content across multiple networks simultaneously.

So if you’re reluctantly on social media, try scaling back and exploring one or two networks at a time. Post and engage there. Listen and learn. Transform your social media experience.