How to Schedule Your Social Media Updates with Buffer

Lately I've been thinking about how social I am ;) Now I'm on few social networks and gladly they haven't been overwhelming me to ditch one by one. I have my own limit and even I don't wanna put all eggs in every basket, but where I need. Let's work on what works. How about you? Where did you spend most of your time online lately? You might like to be called as a Social Ninja. So what are you - A Facebookerberg, RTwitterista, GooglePlusician, Pinterestarian or LinkedIndiano? Add yours if not listed. FYI, I'm a little kiddo ;)

Sharing is Caring

Whatever social network it is, you might have been sharing interesting piece of content on your favorite platforms. It could be a blog post, article, image, video or anything which is shareable. Now the next question is ~ When you share these interesting content? Let's think for a moment. Yeah... Most probably it's when you are online. Isn't it? For example, if you read a blog post online, you might share it rightaway onto your favorite social networks using share buttons implemented on that page or using a browser extension or so. If you have published your own blog post, next time you would share it again too. I know, the content you are sharing with your friends and followers could be filled with such important facts and may be it's just for them to be knowledgeable of. Of course my friend, "Sharing is Caring".

Less Reach + OverSharing

If you sharing content one by one WHENEVER you are online, then most probably they will be seen by the folks who are online at that time unless someone specifically explore your profile page which is rare. Though it's helpful for your friends and followers, what if it's the time where most of your followers are not online? Now your message is not broadcasting efficiently and reach would be low.

Well, it's not ONLY about the reach though. Even if you share updates when most of your friends and followers are online, if you keep flooding or over-sharing content, then your shared content may not get enough attention too. Just imagine you are seeing 10 links shared in every few minutes by the same person in your Facebook news feed. May be you will check out some of links if you think they are interesting, but not everyone. If he/she keep doing it everyday, you might lose interest in content shared by that person too. Now tell me ~ Would you enjoy over-sharing by other friends? If not, others won't enjoy over-sharing happen from you too. It could be lead to unfollow you. But you might doing it unwittingly.

More Reach + OverSharing

You know, we always have enough room to learn through mistakes we do. Let's think beyond the "Sharing and Caring". What if you can prevent over-sharing and get more exposure or reach for your content being shared? That would be interesting. Isn't it? Just keep a note of interesting content you wanna share, and share one by one without overwhelming your friends and followers. I know... I know... You are busy enough to do it by yourself and you have other things to do. That's why we have so-called "Online Tools". We have been talking about scheduling updates via HootSuite lately too. Let's take a look at another interesting tool that will help you on this scenario - Buffer.

Buffer Updates

Simply, Buffer is a tool where you need to fetch the interesting content you wanna share and it will share them automatically throughout the day. How interesting it is? You don't need to worry about sharing anymore. It will share content, even when you are hiking outside with your friends. It saves your time and reaching more users will benefit many friends and followers too. Buffer is not only responsible of sharing content, but also offer you analytics for your shared content to see the potential reach and how many users was actually interested in your shared links too.

Further, you can select the days with more engagement to send updates. For example, if your friends are mostly online on weekends, you can set your post about a new recipe to be shared in coming weekend rather than sharing right after publishing it on your blog where no one would be interested. Gonna use it for your business? Don't worry, you can add more members to manage your Buffer account too. However, for now, you can make use of Buffer for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn social networks and FREE account allows you to buffer maximum of 10 updates per each social profile you have connected there. The Buffer browser extension makes things much more easier unless Buffer button is already implemented too. I'll take you through all of details at the steps.

My Experience with Buffer

I was using Buffer since I get to know about this tool from a passionate Twitter friend of mine ;) Yeah, you gotta guess who she is. Usually I'm sharing content right after reading them and it's mostly on Twitter and Google+ though. I was used to flood Twitter with bunch of tweets and I had no idea whether they have been helpful or not. But Buffer developers offers another great tool for tweeps to find what are the days and time with best engagement - Tweriod. It's capable of syncing those time slots with your Buffer account and even you don't wanna think about when to send tweets either. Anyway, REMEMBER, they are tools not human beings, so will depend on statistics they collect and may not give a boost at first few days. I'm hoping Buffer will add Google+ profiles into their list too.

Right now, you can use it for Facebook and LinkedIn. But you need to take care of time slots to be shared. It will definitely save you from over-sharing at first place though I'm not sure about reach yet. If you have a rough idea of when your friends and followers will be online, then you have room to maximize the reach without a doubt. You can use it along with another social media management tool you have been using and personally I recommend it for Twitter mostly though. As I say, you gotta play and see how it will goes for you. Who knows? May be you will start loving it more than any tool and upgrade to paid awesome plan too ;) Now let's play. WAIT... Before you play, there are instructions for you. Let's follow this way.

Steps:

1. First off, you need to sign up for a new Buffer account to start with. You can easily sign up using an existing social profile too.

2. Once you sign in to your Buffer account, navigate to Connect page to connect your social profiles - Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Note: In FREE account, you can connect only one account per social network, either profile, group or page. For example, you can't connect both Facebook profile and page. So make sure you gonna connect which you would love to schedule updates regularly.

3. After connecting your social profiles successfully, you can start scheduling updates. Ohw... BUT wait. Still you need to set up few important settings before you go. Now jump to one of your connected accounts from left pane.

4. Now on the right pane, you can find the Settings tab which let you manage individual settings for each account you have connected. Click on Settings tab and make changes to below settings for now.

Note: Make sure to go through following settings for each of your connected accounts.

Link Shortening - Link shortening is vital for Buffer when it comes to providing analytics for your scheduled posts and it also reserve more space especially when you send updates to Twitter as you can't exceed 140 character limit.

You can see few link shortening services offered by Buffer there and use the one of your choice by clicking on Use button corresponds to. Further you can connect your own bit.ly account using Connect Bit.ly button and access analytics at your bit.ly dashboard.

Team Members - You can invite your friends or someone you know to manage your Buffer account and top up with interesting updates eventhough you are climbing Mountain Everest. I don't think your individual profiles may need a helping hand (Correct me if I'm wrong), but for brand and business accounts this would be a life and time saver. Use Invite a Team Member button to invite a person via email.

5. Now you are all set up except for scheduling. Buffer is send your updates throughout the day, so you don't wanna miss it, right? Jump to Schedule tab and start by setting your preferred timezone to send updates in Schedule Timezone field.

Note: Make sure to go through following settings for each of your connected accounts.

Now pay attention to the days over there and select the days you wanna post updates. Selected days will be highlighted in green color and non-selected will be greish like for Wednesday below.

Thereafter start adding time for your selected days to send out your updates with Add Posting Time button.

Note: You can use Tweriod to find best time to tweet and directly synchronize with your Buffer account if you have no idea when your Twitter friends and followers be online.

6. Now you are ready to go. Click on the Share field on top to start.

7. Now construct your message as usual. If you have added a link, by default it will apply the Twitter link shortening settings to the link you have added if you gonna send it to Twitter, to make sure it won't exceed 140 characters limit. But don't worry, when same update send to other networks, the specific link shortener settings will be used.

8. Once you done with the message and selecting profiles to send your update, click Buffer button to send it at the next available schedule time. You can use Share Now button if you wanna share it instantly.

More Information:

* You can view all the scheduled updates for each account at Buffer tab.

Further there you can take control of scheduled updates eventhough they are already scheduled. Hover your mouse pointer over an update and related options will be visible.

* You can view all analytics for your sent updates on Analytics tab.

* There are 2 more options available and will be useful for you, under Settings tab - Reconnect and Remove.

Reconnect - This is a very useful setting if you are experiencing that Buffer not sending updates a social network as it intended to. Reconnect feature will establish the connection again with your social network and make sure your updates gonna get posted as you scheduled.

Remove - It's self-explanatory. Isn't it? Simply it removes the corresponding account connected with your Buffer account and you can connect again from the Connect page.

* You can easily use Buffer on your web browser, mobile device and other platforms to top up your Buffer account without even visiting your Buffer account. I always make use of Browser Extension to schedule interesting links find on the web in no time. Find all the apps, extensions and guides at Extras page.

Enjoy :-)