The Drawbacks of Social Media Publishing Platforms
In 2024, a time where there are more social media apps than ever before, marketers are finding themselves stretched thin trying to manage a presence across the multitude of different channels.
Whether you’re posting content on Meta Products (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads), Byte Dance Products (TikTok, TikTok Notes), X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, Snapchat, or one of the various other social media platforms, there is one thing that’s clear: keeping up with social media marketing (organic and paid) increasingly takes more time- and that’s without even considering search engine marketing (and other marketing efforts).
This is the reason why many marketers have turned to social media publishing platforms.
Social media publishing platforms have become tools for marketers who are seeking to minimize the amount of time it takes to manually post content to individual sites.
Along with saving time, other benefits such as streamlined analytics and scheduling features make marketers’ lives much easier and better organized; however, despite it’s advantages, there are several drawbacks and limitations associated with these platforms that you should consider as well.
The Benefits
1. Time Efficiency
One of the most significant advantages of social media publishing platforms is the ability to schedule posts in advance.
This feature allows marketers to plan their content calendar efficiently, ensuring a consistent online presence without the need for daily manual posting.
2. Centralized Management
Platforms like Later, Sendible, and HubSpot enable users to manage multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard.
This centralized approach simplifies the process of posting, monitoring, and engaging with audiences across various platforms, saving both time and effort.
3. Analytics and Insights
These tools often come equipped with robust analytics features, providing insights into post performance, audience engagement, and overall social media health.
Marketers can use this data to refine their strategies, optimize content, and demonstrate ROI to stakeholders.
However, remember to always check each individual platforms’ native analytics hub, as often details are not in-depth enough to make valuable insights.
The Drawbacks
1. Algorithm Limitations
While scheduling posts is convenient, it can sometimes work against you due to social media algorithms.
Platforms like Instagram and Facebook prioritize real-time engagement and may penalize scheduled posts, resulting in lower reach and engagement rates.
This limitation requires a careful balance between scheduled and real-time content.
2. Limited Functionality
Despite their comprehensive features, social media publishing platforms often have limitations compared to native social media apps.
For instance, certain types of content, such as Instagram Stories, Reels, or LinkedIn Articles, may have restricted functionalities or be unsupported for scheduling, depending on your social media publishing platform.
Additionally, some platforms don’t show in-depth analytics for each platform, which means you can be missing out on crucial data for your social media strategy.
This can hinder a fully integrated social media strategy, especially as social media platforms roll out new features that may not yet be compatible with your chosen publishing platforms.
3. Learning Curve
While these platforms aim to simplify social media management, they come with their own set of complexities.
New users might face a steep learning curve, requiring time and effort to understand and effectively use all the features.
Some platforms don’t have the greatest user-interface, which can unnecessarily overcomplicate processes.
Additionally, based on which publishing platform you’re using, you may need to adjust your processes to best collaborate with team members.
While scheduling posts are easy with publishing platforms, planning may not be.
Understand that, even though a feature exists within the publishing platform, it may not be the best for your organization to use.
Proper planning tools are crucial to refining your strategy, and can help simplify a steep learning curve by mitigating the majority of collaboration and workflows on a more user-friendly or familiar software (i.e., SmartSuite).
4. Potential for Over-Automation
The convenience of scheduling and automation can sometimes lead to over-reliance on these features.
This can result in a lack of spontaneity and real-time interaction with your audience, which are crucial components of building genuine relationships and community engagement on social media.
Overall, companies should be taking the time to understand the latest trends and features on various social media platforms to best utilize each platform.
3 Key Takeaways: What Should You Do?
Social media publishing platforms can come in handy for mass publishing, but understanding the limitations of your platform can truly help you find success with social media marketing.
To maximize the benefits of social media publishing platforms while mitigating their drawbacks, here are a few strategies:
Combine Scheduled and Real-Time Posts: Use scheduling for regular content but remain active in real-time to engage with your audience and respond to current events or trends. This is especially important for any content you put out that receives engagement, as responding to comments with videos or text-replies can help nurture your audience in becoming customers.
Native Platform Use: Complement your use of publishing tools with native platform features, especially for content types that are not fully supported by third-party tools.
Regularly Review Analytics: Continuously monitor the performance of your scheduled posts and adjust your strategy based on the insights provided by both the publishing platform and the native analytics.