Posted by on Aug 17, 2011 in Social Media | 7 comments

There are so many tools out there for scheduling tweets and Facebook updates. It makes it so easy to act like a Ronco Rotisserie Oven and “set it and forget it.” In some ways, this makes a lot of sense–for instance, if you have a happy hour that starts every day at 5:00, why not schedule a tweet promoting it at the same time every day? 364 days out of 365, this will work with no problems.

But all it takes is one different day.

As you may know, we’re an Indianapolis social media company. And on Saturday, August 13, Indianapolis suffered one of its worst tragedies in recent memory as a stage at the Indiana State Fair collapsed in a freak gust of wind. At least five people are dead, and more than 40 were sent to hospitals with injuries ranging from bruises to broken backs. On social media, it was all anyone was talking about that night.

Except for the auto tweets.

I won’t name names, but automatic updates promoting half-price food deals, coupons, or blathering on about events at the state fair the next day all came off as being in extraordinarily bad taste amidst the thousands of tweets from grieving Hoosiers. They rang false and callous and uncaring and lazy. It did not make me want to buy from these brands.

That’s not to say there is no place for scheduled tweets–mostly I don’t object to them if you can make them look organic and spontaneous. But you can’t “set it and forget it.” Social media feeds on news, and news changes from moment to moment. You have to be ready and willing to adapt and change as circumstances do, and to get those autoscheduled updates off when tragedy strikes.

We’re still thinking and praying about those affected by the tragedy at the fair–we hope you are, too.

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  • http://gosestories.com Chuck Gose

    Sunday morning I shared an image of a Facebook post from a State Fair-related account. You could clearly tell it was a scheduled Tweet based on the content and within a few hours it was taken down (which I don’t have a problem with). A discussion broke out at Blog Indiana about this very topic so it is very important for accounts, especially local ones, to be conscious of the messages scheduled.

  • http://www.visitindiana.com Jeremy Williams

    We (@VisitIndiana) ran into the same issue. We had some tweets and FB posts (as well as some promoted tweets and accounts campaigns on Twitter) scheduled for the next several days as we were working to promote the fair and I made sure to shut them down immediately. I also made sure that all of our bloggers knew that we weren’t going to be posting any other state fair related blog posts for a few days as well.

    Although, I think this incident really teaches that you need to always keep an eye on your accounts, more than it teaches that you should never schedule tweets or other posts. Scheduling can be very helpful for ensuring that timely content goes out when it should, but someone should always be keeping an eye on things to make sure scheduled posts aren’t going out at inopportune times.

  • http://www.roundpeg.biz Lorraine

    Chuck/Jeremy,
    Thanks for you comments.

    I think scheduling tweets is a great time saver. We rely on it heavily as part of our client support package. However, scheduled tweets don’t absolve you from staying engaged. They work best when you use them to maintain a basic level of content, and build on top with timely, relevant interactions.

    And like any marketing, you need to make adjustments as conditions change

  • http://www.twitter.com/stevenshattuck Steven Shattuck

    Would adding a #scheduled at the end of the tweet (every scheduled tweet?) have lessened the impact?

  • http://www.vbbassociates.com Hilde

    Agree with this. Although scheduling tweets makes it all easier, it does work against itself. Recently I responded to someone´s tweet – it was about an evening do somewhere – and never got a response. Tried a DM with same result. Turns out this person is never on Twitter and has some software working for him.
    I find it takes away a bit of what Twitter really was about – social media. The above experience and the original post make it look like anti-social media.

  • http://www.roundpeg.biz Allison Carter

    @Chuck–Your post was one of the inspirations for this post, actually, but since I didn’t want to name names, I didn’t link to it, though it was a great example.

    @Jeremy–That’s why you and the others at Visit Indy are so good at what you do–you take the time to pay attention and do social media (and scheduling) properly and responsibly. Thanks for that.

    @Steven–I don’t think so. Casting back to my feelings last night, they still would have come off in poor taste. I already knew that most of the posts that so irritated us were scheduled, and it didn’t help.

    @Hilde–Ouch! Not even checking your DMs? Now that’s lazy. Thanks for the comment.

  • Jesse

    Good post. I’ve seen and worked for many companies that LOVE to schedule tweets in bulk. I think largely this stems from not really knowing how to use social media well, but being told that they must do it, so they have some entry-level worker schedule 30 pre-rendered tweets. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but very obvious that they are “mass-produced.”