Being a blogger oftentimes means having a social media presence. You want to promote your posts and if you offer sponsorships you want to promote your sponsors’ posts as well. You also want to interact with your followers as well. With so many social media platforms maintaining a presence can be difficult. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to tweet, post and pin all day long. Thankfully there are several social media scheduling tools that allow you the peace of mind of knowing that you can have a social media presence and not be present 24/7. Today’s Blogging Basics topic with Lindsay and I covers social media scheduling.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is my go to site for promoting my sponsors. I can easily set up tweets or posts to my Facebook page in advance. You start by linking up whichever accounts you would like to post to (1). Compose your message (2). Add the link to the post (3). Using the calendar icon (4) schedule the post or publish immediately (Send Now). You also have the option to include a photo from the post as well.
Hootsuite’s dashboard will show you your social media feeds as well as mentions and post you have made.
You can check the scheduler to see which posts you have scheduled as well. I like the fact that you can also receive an email to let you know that your posts were published.
Hootsuite also has the option to post to Instagram as well. As Instagram does not allow you to post from third party apps you would have to load the photo into Hootsuite, get a notification from Hootsuite to remind you to post, open Hootsuite and send the photo to Insta. It’s an easy process to set up and complete. I have yet to use this option as I use a different scheduling tool for Instagram.
Latergramme
Latergramme is an app that allows you to upload and schedule your photos to be posted on Instagram. You simply upload the photo, schedule when you want to post it, and you receive a notification at the designated time. Open Latergramme and push the photo to Instagram and post it. Another bonus of Latergramme? You can have multiple accounts.
Board Booster
Board Booster is honestly a Pinterest game changer for me. I joined after using a free trial and I have to say it is worth every penny I spend ($5 a month can’t be beat!). I mentioned Board Booster in this post along with Tailwind, but I can honestly say that for me, Board Booster is my Pinterest scheduling tool of choice. They make pinning on mobile devices a breeze.
I can literally spend 15 minutes pinning to my Board Booster Boards and sit back and relax knowing that Board Booster is keeping my presence in the Pinterest feed throughout the day.
How do you use Board Booster?
Once you set up an account, you will create secret boards of the boards of your choice. As you can see below, you would pick the board you want to create a secret board for. You then choose times for each board to pin. I have my boards set up so that pins are pinned throughout the day. You can pick how many pins you want pinned each day from each board.
Board Booster provides stats based on your pinning history.
Be sure to check out this post on scheduling pins on Pinterest for more detailed information on Board Booster.
CoSchedule
I’ll be honest with you; before I switched from Blogger to WordPress the one plugin that I heard the most about was Co-Schedule. Once my transfer was complete it was the first plugin I installed and one that I suggest to everyone. It is the only plug in that I pay for and it is worth every penny in my opinion. Don’t let the thought of paying for the plugin deter you. You get a lengthy trial period and if you blog about it and share your thoughts on it you get a discount.
The beauty of Co-Schedule is that you can write your blog post and schedule your social media promos for that post all in the same place. No more switching between tabs in your browser. You merely scroll down to the end of your posts, pick where you want to share your post, add an image and schedule the date and time. Simple as that.
CoScheudle also provides you with a calendar so you can see when you have scheduled your promotions. The interface is easy to use. You can simply drag and drop items and move them around on the calendar.
The stats that Co Schedule provides you are wonderful too. You have the ability to see what posts drove traffic to your site and how many times they were shared.
What tools do you recommend for social media scheduling? Be sure to check out Lindsay’s post as well!
