Facebook's newest additions to pages have community managers and social media professionals jumping up and down for joy! Finally, we now have the option to place controls around admins. With different levels of admins available, you will have more control over your Facebook community. The second addition Facebook made is adding the option to schedule your posts in advance. This change, more so than admin controls, may have big implications to the world of social media. Here are three bold predictions for what this small change will mean for the future of social media.
1. Scheduling posts will become a universally accepted practice. I constantly hear debates back and forth about whether scheduling posts is inauthentic or not. Many believe that if you are tweeting or posting, you should really be there to do so. Others (myself included) think that scheduling posts gives your content to more exposure. Communities don't live in the same time zone all the time and community managers may not be working 24 hours a day. Facts are that Facebook is now embedding this as a feature to pages. Even if you haven't scheduled posts before, you likely will now that the option is so readily accessible for you.
2. Scheduling posts will become a feature in all social sites. Since we are likely scheduling posts for weekends and holidays anyway, Facebook just eliminated the need for a third party. I would be surprised if Twitter and other social networking sites did not follow suit. The idea seems so simple that I'm surprised it hasn't been added until now. Soon enough, it will be standard when posting content that you will have the option to schedule.
3. The scheduling platforms of the world are in trouble! Yes, I'm talking to you HootSuite. Piggy-backing on reason #2, social sites are going to be eliminating the need for third party platforms. Those platforms that are solely for scheduling will become obsolete pretty quickly! If you plan on sticking around or having a successful business, you will need to have something elseappealing to offer customers besides just scheduling content in advance.
Am I totally off base or do you agree? Share you thoughts on scheduling below!