I was just wondering if anyone had any recent experience of using a social media scheduler? Social media takes up so much time, but it does drive people to my shop, so is obviously worthwhile. I don’t want to be a slave to it though, so wondered if a scheduler might help, especially for Twitter. Tweets are very ephemeral (but do drive traffic in their short shelf life), but I don’t want to spend every waking hour tweeting.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
I’ve used the Twitter scheduler and it did work (when I set it up correctly that is 
) and was pretty easy to use. No idea if it made any difference to traffic but meant I could post something during ‘X Hour’ without being on stand by to do it - reminds me that I’ve fallen out of the way of doing it. I suppose the only thing is that you wouldn’t be there to respond to any chat in the moment and respond to other posts if it’s for a specific hour but you could pick that up after. Hope it brings you good things 
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Thank you. I have participated in various Twitter hours before and normally struggle to keep up 
.
I was thinking of more general usage, so I could spread tweets at various times of day but schedule them in advance. I could deal with any responses in one hit. It sounds like it might work from what you say, so I’ll give it a go. Thanks
I use FB schedule as easier to think of a post write it and then move on, means you can do a post when it suits you and schedule.
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Thanks. I like the sound of that 
Yes I schedule my FB posts, I can do a week’s worth at one go which is more efficient for me.
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Ooh I didn’t know we could do that
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I schedule on FB, Instagram (via FB) Twitter and Pintrest, I don’t do it for very post just days when I know I’m going to be busy or have to head into the office for the day job. I don’t think it makes a huge difference to views as long as you don’t schedule all your posts and then ignore them as they might get flagged as spam so I try to do a mix of real time and scheduled.
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I’ve known it was a “thing” for a while but have never used it, so it’s interesting to hear others’ experiences.
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Thank you Max. I was thinking of only scheduling part of the time anyway for those days when there doesn’t seem to be time for social media. Yes, I agree it can look spammy if you use the scheduler to post and run. It will take a bit of managing I think.
I’m probably most likely to use it on Twitter, as tweets have such a short shelf life and it seems you have to tweet more to get the same impact as on other platforms. My shop visitors from Twitter are increasing and I don’t want to lose momentum or followers through lack of tweets, if that makes sense.
Hi Chris,
I’ve used Planoly and Preview for Instagram, both of which allow you to schedule posts. Definitely helps take the pressure off. You can also lay out your feed to make it more aesthetic, if that sort of thing floats your boat. It also means that it posts to facebook on your behalf if you link your accounts.
No experience of twitter.
Sarah
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The Facebook business suite allows you to schedule posts (go to the calendar), and you can send them to IG and FB at the same time, customising the text for each if you wish.
If you’re on a laptop/desktop you can also copy your hashtags!
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I’ve used Planoly, but it’s a paid service and you are very limited as to what you can publish or how much you can publish.
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Thanks for the advice folks. I’ve been playing around with a free Twitter scheduler for starters. It works well and I can see the value if it. It should make life easier.
Every time I add a new listing to my shop, I click on the Twitter icon link. The main pic from my new listing and a link to my Folksy shop are ‘tweeted’. Anyone on Twitter clicking the link takes them straight to my Folksy shop. It helps as my statistics show views & impressions from Twitter.
I use crowdfire to schedule tweets. On the free version you can schedule up to 10 and you can set it to tweet at the best time rather than put in actual times. Also it saves a list of your tweets so if you want to send it again at a later date you just click on reschedule.
Thanks Carol. I’ve started using “Tweetdeck” which is quite nice to use, but it sounds like Crowdfire might have some extra features.
I’m seeing quite a consistent rise in shop visits from Twitter, so I should capitalise on it. Instagram has taken a dive recently. Must be the algorithms, or I am being punished for not making videos (which seems to be the big thing there now!).
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I use Later.com - it’s brilliant. You can post about 28 (I think) posts each, to Pinterest, FB, Instagram and Twitter per month. It’s very easy to use and saves soooooo much work.
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Thank you. I can see the benefit of this. I’ve been scheduling Tweets which has saved lots of time. Scheduling the others will be a huge help.
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