As an intuitive social media strategist, I get this question a lot. There are a lot of ways to answer this question. We like to create content when it flows the best and I post the same day I create it. A lot of social media managers and strategists will disagree with this method because “scheduling is king”.

There's so much content that is posted on social media, in fact, it was 777 million posts in 2019 according to Buffer. Most businesses are trying to adjust to the new normal right now, and it's social media that is going to take all of those companies to the next level. Why should you focus on social media? It's simple. The average person spent 2 hours and 24 minutes on Facebook in 2020, which is more than double the previous year. CEOs are more than willing to put their ads on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube these days because there is more time being spent on those platforms, especially the mobile apps, more than ever. This begs the question stated above: what kind of content should I post?

This past week SPB Productions was at the Facebook Community Boost conference in Atlanta, GA and it was an amazing experience. The Facebook Community Boost conference is a three day event held in almost every major city in the United States. The goal is to help entrepreneurs and corporations with their Facebook and Instagram pages. The event offered free - in person training from real Facebook experts and they also had booths where business owners can learn a lot of cool stuff that can really help their brand on Facebook and Instagram! I took down a lot of notes and I even got to speak to an expert about some of the pages I handle! Here's what I learned:

Studies have shown that too much Facebook can be a bad thing. In fact, there is an op-ed piece in the New York Post where they say that Facebook could be potentially damaging to your mental health. With the average Facebook user spending 50 minutes a day on the site, (or if you are like me, you're are spending more than 12 hours a day on it), and getting bombarded with tons of content, it seems like it might be getting a little too much for some. It might mean taking a break from the social media site all together.

"How you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?" Senator Orrin Hatch asks. Facebook creator and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, responds with a slight smile "Senator, we have ads". This moment was by far the strangest and funniest moment in the congressional hearing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. There were others, like Senator Roy Blunt, who didn't ask a question but made the comment about his son being an Instagram star and wanted him to mention that on the panel. While most find this funny (which I do), I also find this extremely disturbing. These members of Congress do not know how social media (or the internet, really) works, and in order for laws to be passed, they need to learn.

Since its inception in 2010, Instagram has exploded on to the social media scene as being one of the top social media platforms of the last decade. Filters, tags, and selfies has made Instagram a must-have on every smartphone today and with over 700 million users, Instagram has no sign of slowing down. In 2012, Instagram sold their business over to Facebook, which took it to another level, integrating their features for easier sharing on mobile devices. As a result, ads on Instagram have now become a huge deal.

Fake news. That's a phrase used a lot by our current president and while Trump's real news involves debunking global warming, Facebook is taking steps to make sure fake news like that doesn't spread. While I don't like to get political on my website, the truth of the matter is that a lot of people go on Facebook to get their news. Social media sites like Facebook were widely criticized for spreading false news without proper vetting. Without real fact checkers, disinformation often gets spread around causing riots from an uninformed audience. Pressured by the previous administration, Facebook has finally put their foot down on fake news.