Social Media for Product Launches and Events: Announce Before, During and After

What tends to go wrong with announcements

The usual problem is posting everything on the day, with nothing before or after. People who did not look at social media that day miss a post made on launch day. For events where people have to clear their schedule, you need to announce well in advance.

Next, announcements get pushed back because preparation is so busy. In the week before launch, product and venue preparation takes all your hands and there is no time to write social posts.

Then there are changes. When a launch date is postponed or an event is cancelled, announcements you had already scheduled may still go out.

How to plan announcements

Plan several announcements counting back from the launch or event date. Here is one example.

When you announce the same thing several times, change the angle each time. Repeating the same text gets skipped, and SNS TOWN's pre-publish check also warns about text that is too similar to recent posts.

How to run it in SNS TOWN

Plan announcements on the calendar

In the week or month view of the calendar, line up your announcement dates. Press an empty slot to create a post for that time, and drag a scheduled post to move its time. Your usual post cycle schedule appears on the same screen, so you can avoid piling announcements on top of regular posts.

Load announcement text in bulk with CSV

When you have many announcements, list the dates and text in a spreadsheet and bulk schedule from CSV. You can import up to 350 rows at a time, and if even one row cannot be read, nothing is imported, so you never end up with half the posts scheduled. You can finish scheduling every announcement before the busy week before launch.

Post to two networks at once

X and Threads, and a Facebook Page and Instagram, can be posted together with one switch on the compose screen (Cross-posting).

Use short links for sign-up and purchase pages

Use short links for links to sign-up or purchase pages. The number of clicks per post is shown by day, so you can compare which announcement worked.

Building excitement

Giveaway campaigns

On X you can create giveaway campaigns that take entries as replies to your announcement post. There are two methods, a draw and an instant win, and you can add a keyword, a follow or a repost as conditions. Up to 100 winners, and winners are notified by reply or DM. Campaigns are a feature of the Enterprise plan (Pricing).

Auto replies

On X and Threads, auto replies respond only to replies that contain a set word. For example, write in the announcement post "Reply 'details' and we'll send you how to sign up", and the person who replies gets the sign-up instructions. You can also set it to require approval before replying.

When plans change

If a postponement or cancellation is decided, first stop every scheduled post at once with Pause all scheduled posts. While paused, nothing goes out when its time comes. Then choose which posts to edit and which to cancel, and resume. Scheduled posts whose time has already passed go back to drafts when you resume, so announcements from the paused period will not all go out at once.

Things to watch out for

Prizes have limits

The value of prizes in a giveaway is capped by Japan's Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations. How it applies depends on whether a purchase or visit is required (Consumer Affairs Agency of Japan: overview of premium regulations).

A campaign that anyone can enter just by replying or following does not require a purchase, so it is considered an open sweepstakes. But if a purchase is a condition, such as "send a photo of your receipt to enter", it is a general sweepstakes. The thinking is summarized in Social media campaigns and Japan's premium rules.

Keep "limited" and "first come" truthful

If you write "first 100 people" or "limited quantity", cut off at that number. Representations that make conditions look better than they really are may count as misleading representation of advantageous terms under Japan's premium and labeling law.

Frequently asked questions