Time to jump back in…
I’ve already told you why I find social media a necessary evil and how it is something I manage accordingly. In this article I’m going to share what I’m actually doing for the BMCS relaunch itself, right now, as it is one of those situations where I feel I need to use social media. This is not a “here’s how to do it” guide. It’s a “here’s how I’m doing it” update and we’ll see what happens next.
Where I started: LinkedIn and Pinterest, nothing else yet…
Rather than trying to be everywhere at once, I have picked two platforms to focus on — LinkedIn and Pinterest. First mistake? We will see. Realistically, they appear to be the ones most likely to drive traffic to the website. Facebook, X, and Instagram can take a back seat on this occasion while I’ll test drive a slightly revised approach.
On LinkedIn, I’m posting from my personal profile as the primary channel, with the BMCS business page as secondary — my understanding is that personal profiles simply get more reach and engagement on LinkedIn than business pages do (which oddly makes sense to me), so that’s where the real activity happens. My plan for these first couple of weeks is to schedule daily posts — a summary and a post extract — to highlight the categories and topics that will form the foundation for my feature articles.
Pinterest is a different kind of platform entirely and I’m treating it as a long-term discovery channel where a pin posted today can still be driving traffic in a year. So, initially, it is less about immediate engagement, more about steadily building a collection of pins that point back to the content library as it grows. Again, that starts with the category and topic introductions.
The templates…
I have built a small set of Canva templates rather than designing every graphic from scratch each time — it is something I have done before, but this time from the beginning rather an afterthought. This includes an Article Share template (landscape for LinkedIn, a 2:3 vertical version for Pinterest), a Quote/Insight Card (square, for LinkedIn), and a Pinterest tall pin format. Nothing very exciting, but they are fit for purpose and provide consistency in the message.
Two things worth mentioning about this exercise.
- An afterthought dilemma
My initial templates were based around a brighter colour palette – I’d forgotten to update my brand colours in Canva to the softer, updated brand palette I was using on the website. I’d created a batch of 100+ graphics using these templates and was on the verge of posting when I realised the ‘mistake’. So, post first, change later and hope nobody notices? - Get to know your tools
Prior to the first post, I went back to revise my templates with the latest brand colours. And it finally occurred to me, after years of using Canva, that you can use pages for far more than just creating a document or presentation. Rather than having individual templates for each pinterest post, I could put them ALL in the same template. Imagine that? From there it only took a few minutes to recreate the graphics for each post, so dilemma over, correct brand colours from the start. It’s an example of just how easy it is to overlook the most obvious of solutions.
Scheduling — genuinely still undecided…
Since I was last regularly posting on social media, the scheduling management platforms have all progressed (as you’d expect). Metricool, a new one to me, seemed to be a popular recommendation largely for its Pinterest support. But then, as with many solutions out there, a stumbling block: It would appear LinkedIn posting isn’t available on their entry-tier plan, which is the tier that actually made sense for what I need right now. So that’s on hold. Buffer’s the likely alternative, as it is one I have used previously.
For now, I’m just using each platform’s own native scheduling tools directly — and honestly, both work perfectly well for what I currently need. It takes a few minutes to schedule posts a couple of days in advance and then let it do its thing. The one real limitation: I believe it is not possible to schedule the first comment on a LinkedIn post via their own tool – turns out to matter more than I expected (more on that below) – and oddly, it is an option on some of the scheduling platforms.
An early lesson: “Ah, that’s why they do it”…
I don’t know about you, but one of those minor irritations in using social media is having to click through to the comments to find the link for the headline article. I’d never given the logic much thought.
I have noticed suggestions, however, that a platform’s algorithm noticeably deprioritises posts that include an outbound link directly in the post body — it reads as “this post wants to take you off the platform” and therefore gets shown to fewer people as a result. Is there truth in this? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is true. A suggested fix which would explain the logic: post the content and the graphic with no link at all, then add the link as the first comment underneath.
Did this link quirk cost me a bit of reach before I caught on and made adjustments? Who knows, it’s hard to make sense of the analytics so far as it is still early days. But, it has been nice to see a couple of friendly faces pop by to check out my profile to see where I’ve been hiding all this time.
What’s next…
This is genuinely running in real time. The scheduling tool decision needs to be made one way or another, Pinterest needs more time before it’s fair to judge, and I’ve no doubt I’ll find a few more platform-based lessons the hard way before this settles into something I’d call a proper rhythm.
At the moment it seems business as usual; post to social media and oh, is that a black hole I see? I’ll write a follow-up once there’s enough activity or feedback to actually make sense of it.
