Buffer – The Easiest Way to Schedule Your Tweets
I’ve been using Twitter since 2009 but I resisted doing anything to schedule my tweets until about 6 months ago. I don’t blog as a full-time job so I was in two minds as I thought it might across as unauthentic. It also sounded so complicated! I needed something literally for dummies. And I’ve finally found it and had great improvements using it over the last few months. More engagement, more clicks, and retweets etc. So if you also want to schedule your tweets then keep reading.
Buffer
The solution I found to schedule your tweets is called Buffer. Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that anyone can use with ease. It’s simple and quick and doesn’t take forever to set up. You’re able to schedule your tweets in advance and then Buffer will send them out automatically according to the posting schedule you put in place. Buffer also provides analytics, allowing you track engagement and interactions on the posts you’ve shared, which means you can see how your content is performing and which resonates most with your audiences. You can use it with Twitter but also all of your other social media channels.
Free Version
Your first step is to sign up for the free version. Connect all your social media accounts with just a few clicks. Then try it out and see how you like it. There are obviously some restrictions but you can still schedule up to 10 posts which is plenty when you are first checking it out. This just means you have 10 posts scheduled at a time in your ‘buffer’. You can then re-buffer popular posts, with the option to slightly edit the text or not, change the pictures etc.
Paid Version
After a while using the free version and loving how much it was increasing my engagement, I moved to the paid version. On the paid version you can schedule up to 100 posts, which means you can rack everything up and then leave it to do its thing. Just log into Twitter when you want to chat to people or post other things.
This ensures you are always posting consistent content so people get links to your blog or website at times of the day you wouldn’t normally have time to go on twitter. Perhaps during work time or the school run. It’s also great to schedule things so other people can see them during peak times in their time zone. The paid version costs $10 a month.
Different Ways of Accessing Buffer
I like to use the website itself but they also have a downloadable toolbar and an app you can use on your phone or tablet. If you install the toolbar it allows you to Buffer any blog post or website instantly. Perfect if you are in a rush.
How to Schedule Posts
What I’d never realised before is that it really helps to be aware of what times of the day your tweets and Instagram posts get the most attention. It had never occurred to me. To start with you will need to set your own times you wish to schedule posts, this can be simply done in the schedule tab at the top of the website. If you’ve got 10 you can schedule, then why not start with the full 10 per day and see how it goes.
Schedule your tweets on buffer for a couple of weeks, then you can then use the software to choose for you when your most popular times for engagement are. The Optimal Timing Tool will take a look at the past 5,000 interactions on your profile, as well as similar profiles in the same timezone, and provide you with a graph and suggested a schedule for the times with the most engagement. You can then update your Buffer schedule with those times or use them as a guide to come up with a new schedule yourself.
Schedule Your Tweets
Click on the content tab and put your cursor into the box at the top and click. Write in the box, add a link, add a picture then press schedule. You can include a blog link and it will automatically shorten it. You can manually add links, images and schedule them within the content section of Buffer itself.
Using The Toolbar
The Buffer Browser Extension is a great asset for your social media as it provides you with a quick way to share interesting articles and captivate your audience’s attention. The extension allows you to quickly share any page you land on to multiple social networks with the click of a button, resulting in fresh content always being shared at the right time and thus creating more engagement with your followers. You can download the toolbar for Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera.
Change Your Mind About What To Post?
If you write a blog post and want to tweet more about it that day, but you already have scheduled posts. No worries! Schedule it and it will go to the bottom of the queue. Then all you need to do is hover over the post you’d like to move and you’ll see a four-headed arrow appear on the left. Simply drag the post to anywhere you’d like in the queue.
To Share or Not To Share
It is so helpful to know what kind of posts your followers like to see or don’t like to see. Then you can ensure you do more of the popular ones, and less of the unpopular ones. If you keep track of this you can be more focused and able to understand better what your audience wants. You can also re-share content which is a really important social media strategy because it enables you to reach audiences who might not have seen your content the first time around. Buffer offers a couple of ways to make re-sharing content super quick and easy!
Filter By Popularity
Buffer gives you the option to filter your posted content and view the analytics of which posts were the most popular and the least popular. You may want to re-share posts that got the best level of engagement: These posts did well the first time around, so re-sharing them could mean reaching new people and having a similar level of success. Or you may wish to re-share posts that didn’t get much engagement and change the pictures or text a bit, try tweaking some things to see if you can get a better level of engagement the next time.
This was just a brief overview of the features Buffer offers that I personally like
Let me know if you download it and how you get on!