Authenticity and transparency: the pillars of social media – or at least, according to me. Why, you ask? Because when you use these principles in content creation, you are humanizing a brand, making it more relatable to your audience, which in turn makes your audience comfortable enough to engage with you. It’s easiest to implement the principles when writing “live” content because this practice embodies what social is all about – making connections in real time. You might be wondering what I mean by “live” content. Live content is the practice of posting content in real time as it is occurring rather than scheduling content days in advance. For example, your mom (or your cousin, boyfriend, friend) doesn’t schedule her posts about how excited she is to see you this weekend; she just posts the content in real time as she is feeling her emotions of excitement.

Here are the top five reasons brands should create and post content in real time:

1. Making new friends – authentic connections, just as in real life, happen on the fly in social media networks.
2. Crisis or breaking news – scheduling content increases the risk of deploying content in times of breaking news in the world or during a crisis with your brand. Letting your followers know about a 50% off sale while there are natural or man-made disasters occurring makes your brand seem incredibly insensitive and clearly out of touch.
3. Important events – if you are not “in the moment” on your social networks, you may miss out on a wonderful opportunity to live-tweet ribbon cuttings, big announcements and third-party endorsements.
4. Changes in schedule/weather – if you are speaking about a particular time of an event or how lovely the weather is, this could definitely cause confusion if there is a last-minute change in either of the above.
5. Forget to engage at time of posts – I’ll quote business author @AllisonDGraham: “You can automate content, but you can’t automate connection.” Enough said.

On the flip side, as a social media manager, I understand the time constraints of live content creation. Sometimes, it just isn’t practical or efficient. My philosophy here, as with most things in my life, is everything in moderation. I believe this also works well as a formula for live content vs. planned content. While there have been a plethora of online articles and blog posts that suggest a magical formula of 50/50 or 60/40 planned content vs. live content, I have my own formula: It depends. It depends on your brand or organization, its goals and objectives for social media (yes, you have to have those) and, most important, what your followers expect out of your social media networks.

If and when you do decide to post live content, please remember:

1. Be careful to use good grammar – you can’t use spell check now!
2. Make sure your facts are accurate.
3. Be fun and creative (if appropriate) – this is when you will get the best results.
4. Don’t overlap scheduled and live content – the tone will be completely different and throw everyone off!

But, remember, the most important lesson of all, whether you are posting live or planned content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest, is, to quote Marshall McLuhan, that “The medium is the message.”