In February I wrote a post on the importance of getting a strategy and getting organised if you want your social media efforts to be effective.
Then this morning not one, but three, people told me that they forgot to post their content on twitter during last week’s #LancashireHour. And that’s how it is right? We have good intentions then life happens and we forget.
And I forget that not everyone has figured out the right tools to help them, so this post is about sharing tools that you can use to schedule your social media posts to ensure your good planning isn’t wasted.
Below I have shared three different tools, all of which offer a good free option
- Hootsuite is the grandmamma of social media scheduling and still has the largest number of registered users. The layout doesn’t work for me, but the platform offers so much more than scheduling and they have good platform training which you can access HERE
- Personally I am a Buffer fan, it’s easy to use with a nice ‘clean’ layout, plus they have a library of useful social media marketing information.
- Recently I have been talking with a British company Content Cal and whilst for me it’s not as simple as Buffer, I like the new tools that they offer including space to store our incomplete ideas and what is essentially a campaign creation vision board. And all the tools are free to individual users.
I skyped with Andy last month and he then created this Quick start, how to video for us.
Essentially the scheduling platform you choose must be down to personal preference and many people use more than one as they offer different things. The key is that they have to work for you or you wont use them.
Once you have got your plan together scheduling your posts frees you up to use your time on social media to have conversations and do research – and that’s where the magic happens!
Over to you, which is your favourite social media scheduling tool? and why?
** It’s important to be live in the room during a twitter hour, just like any other networking event, but that doesn’t mean we can’t schedule the content we want to get out there too. That way we can then relax and join in with the chat.
Because it’s hard to get inspiration when you work alone I offer monthly coaching / supervision sessions for the social media manager, to bounce ideas around, get a plan and to provide an accountability partner. If that would work for you / your social media manager drop me an email at jane@janebinnion.com.