Tracx adds predictive scheduling to help decide when you should see this news

In my latest study for VB Insight, the message was clear. Most big brands use social media in “broadcast mode” — delivering news, articles, product details, and blog posts to their followers, rather than engaging with them in conversation.

For certain industries and organizations, broadcasting on social media is a valid approach. The obvious question, then, is “when should I post on social media for best effect?”

When are the majority of your followers most likely to be online to see your message? Do different segments and demographics come online at different times? And does that change on a platform-by-platform basis?

To answer these questions, a new predictive scheduling solution has been launched today by social media marketing tool vendor Tracx.

Before we get into how it works, let’s get into the problem of effective social media scheduling, and why all that “best time to post” advice is self-defeating.

Whether delivered as part of a blog post, news article, mini-research paper, or world record-breaking webinar, many have determined — through analysis of tweets, status updates, image posts, and more — the so-called “best” time to post on various social media networks.

However, there is an inherent problem with the rationale behind this research, and the results.

If everyone followed these rules and posted at those exact times, they would cease to be the best times to post.

Your optimized update is likely to get completely lost in the resulting noise of everyone following those same rules.

Finding your personal optimized posting time is the right way forward, rather than adhering to the aggregated analysis of thousands of users. But truly predictive scheduling has had its ups and downs over the years, and few have really nailed it. I wondered what led Tracx to develop this feature, and why is it so important to their customers?

“Our heritage and core strengths started in the world of analytics,” Eric Berkowitz, vice president of solutions engineering at Tracx, told me via email. “Earlier versions of our product primarily focused on synthesizing intelligence and actionable insights from social conversations. As we turned to address the challenges of optimizing brand engagement, we knew that we could draw from this strength.”

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It is also true that some of the solutions available today aren’t really performing any kind of analysis. For example, when you auto-schedule posts in Hootsuite, what appears to be an intelligent choice of posting time is actually based on nothing more than an editable selection of times, none of which are worked out through analytics.

“Many social engagement platforms already in the market had developed systems based on dry workflows and business rules which lacked any data-driven intelligence,” Berkowitz said. “When we turned our focus to engagement, we knew it would be critical to infuse customer and community insights derived from our analytics engine into the engagement process. We’ve injected social intelligence directly into the engagement process so that our customers can make the smartest decisions based on their social campaign goals.”

Like other social media marketing tools, Tracx allows for the bulk uploading of messages, which it will then optimize and deliver at the right times based on a number of factors. But it doesn’t just optimize for time.

“In addition to optimizing time-to-publish, the recommendation engine makes predictions about the content type (text, link, photo, video) as well as the demographic profile (age, gender, location) that should be targeted to maximize impact,” Berkowitz said.

Tracx’s new predictive scheduling solution has one limitation I can find. Posts are scheduled to go out on the :00 and :05 minute marks. Although not a big issue, for really granular and truly effective scheduling, I always like to see solutions that are capable of posting at any time, since many other products already hog the :00 and :05 slots.

But that minor gripe aside, Tracx has a solid solution for a real problem that fits those who use social channels for broadcast messaging. And if the message goes out at the right time for the follower, but not necessarily for the employees of the brand sending it?

“Tracx offers a mobile application that supports real-time social feeds and all publishing and engagement functions, including scheduling and compliance workflows, such as approval chains,” Berkowitz said. “Tracx also offers email alerts based on user-defined business rules, such as engagement rates, sentiment, and location. Customers can publish, engage, and monitor response from the convenience of a mobile phone.”

And what about the “out-of-office” problem, where you need to engage with someone who replies to your message with a question, but nobody is available at that time?

“Responses can be automatically assigned to individuals or teams based on any chosen criteria, so that when personnel become available to re-engage, everyone has visibility into ownership responsibilities,” Berkowitz said.

In a world where social media could more accurately be described as “broadcast media” — especially for big brands — it is important to ensure as many people see your message as possible. Today, it looks like Tracx is closer to solving that problem than many before it.