Is it still worth scheduling posts on X? Elon Musk's advice changes the game

If you do a lot of social media work, you might be surprised by Elon Musk’s recent comments that X deprioritizes posts with links, which he contributes to “lazy linking.” For those relying heavily on X for outreach, this could mean fewer clicks and lower engagement on traditional link-based posts.

Musk’s suggestion to place links in the comments rather than the main body of a post highlights the platform’s evolving content preferences, encouraging users to upload their content directly to the platform and provide engaging posts.

Evaluating the effectiveness of scheduling posts

Scheduling posts is a cornerstone of many businesses’ social media strategies, allowing experts to ensure a consistent online presence at all times. However, X’s algorithm adjustments prioritize multimedia content and reduce the visibility of posts with external links, making the efficacy of scheduled posts more uncertain. Even the best-timed posts may struggle to reach their intended audience if they rely heavily on links.

News organizations, online magazines, and many other businesses will need to question the return on investment of scheduling their content on X.  While scheduled posts can maintain activity, their impact diminishes if the algorithm suppresses visibility.

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Alternative strategies to enhance engagement

Elon Musk suggests posting the link in your post comments to prevent reduced visibility. By including a call to action in the main post and the link in the comments, users can maintain their content’s visibility while still providing an avenue for external engagement. However, this can be challenging as many of the most popular social media hubs don’t have that feature implemented in their platform.

Content on other platforms, like Facebook and Instagram do not penalize posts for including links as much as X does. As a result, social media managers may not feel the need to adopt this workaround.

Manual effort and workflow inefficiency

Adding links to the comments can take time and effort, especially for users managing multiple accounts or posting at scale. Requiring someone to return to a post after it goes live to add a link disrupts the streamlined workflow that scheduling tools aim to provide and increases the likelihood of human error.

To address the workflow slowdowns, some platforms and tools are exploring AI-driven solutions to automate comment management. While this could bridge the gap between scheduling convenience and algorithm-friendly practices, it’s not yet a standard feature in most tools. Therefore, posting links in the comments is currently the best way to get the highest visibility on X.

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