Something happens — a disaster, a war, a death people care about — and a cheerful promotional post goes out at nine because it was scheduled on Tuesday. The post is not the failure. Nobody checking is.
Know how to stop everything
Before you need it, find out how to pause the whole queue in whatever tool you use, and how long it takes. If the answer is “open each post and change it”, that is not a pause, and you will discover it at the worst moment.
What to pause and what not to
- Promotional and celebratory posts — pause
- Anything with an unfortunate accidental reading — pause, and read the queue with fresh eyes
- Genuinely useful practical information — often fine to keep, and sometimes the most useful thing you can do
- Ongoing service messages — keep, people rely on them
Saying something, or not
Not every account needs to comment on every event, and an obligatory statement from a business with no connection reads as marketing. Silence for a few days is a complete and respectable response.
Set a reminder to unpause. Queues stay paused for weeks because the person who stopped them was thinking about something else at the time — which is the whole reason they stopped them.