Add Minutes to Your Day by Scheduling Your Social Media Posts

These days you can make yourself crazy trying to post and update and engage with every social network your business happens to be on. But that doesn’t mean you can slack off – those profiles have to be monitored and maintained.

Automating your social media updates is the best way to keep your posts regular and up-to-date. And the good news is that it’s easier to automate than you might think thanks to both built-in and third-party schedulers. While you shouldn’t rely solely on automation to update your social media profiles, here’s how you can use a few social media scheduling tools to free up some of your time.

How to Schedule Facebook Posts

The built-in scheduler on Facebook is easy to use – simply go to the sharing dock and select the type of post you want to share. This could be a video, image etc. At the bottom left corner of the sharing tool, a small clock icon will appear. Click on it and select the date and time you want the post to go live.

The post button will now change to “schedule.” Click on this and you’re done! The tool allows you to schedule between 10 minutes and 6 months out, at 15 minute intervals. It will also let you select a date in the past. Once you do this, your post will appear immediately, but in the right place on your timeline.

To see all your scheduled posts or manage them, go to your activity log by accessing the admin panel. However, you’ll only be able to edit the time, and must delete the post and reschedule if you want to edit the text or other content.

How to Schedule Tweets

Twitter also has a built-in scheduler for both promoted and regular tweets. To schedule a tweet, go to the top right of Twitter Ads and click on the “Tweet” button or click on the “Compose Tweet” button in the Creatives Tab.

Once the tweet box appears, add your image, video or text, and then select “custom delivery.” This will allow you to schedule your tweet up to 12 months in advance. Each tweet can be scheduled at an interval of one minute. To manage your scheduled posts, go to the Creatives Tab and filter your posts to show only scheduled posts. You can then edit, reschedule or delete any of them.

You can also use Hootsuite to schedule tweets. This tool can be used as a web or mobile app and it allows you to schedule posts by date and time, and even sends email alerts when the posts go live. You’re able to add images, location and files and even target particular countries on Twitter or shorten links. You can use its Autoschedule feature if you need to post constant updates, rather than picking particular times and dates for your scheduled tweets.

How to Schedule Pinterest Pins

Currently, you can’t schedule pins within Pinterest, but there are paid platforms that you can use for scheduling. Here are two of the most popular:

• Curalate: This is an ideal tool for heavy Pinterest users. It has fantastic analytics that are useful for monitoring product launches, etc. Starting at $99 a month, Curalate provides access to up to four users. From the dashboard, you can select the board and time to post pins, and also edit the URL. Additionally, you can batch your scheduled pins into different campaigns.
• Viraltag: This is a more basic tool priced at $4.99 a month. Log in with your Pinterest account, and use the Viral Tag bookmarklet to post pins. This tool allows you to schedule and post only online pins, and does not allow you to upload original content to the scheduler. However, it lets you see whether you have repins, likes or comments.

How to Schedule Instagram Updates

There are several schedulers that can be used to make updating your Instagram account easy and convenient. They include:

• ScheduGram: This tool lets you upload multiple photos and videos, edit, add effects and crop before scheduling. You can use it on many Instagram accounts, and give access to many users, which is useful when working within a team. It’s a paid service with several packages to choose from.
• Onlypult: This is a web-based tool that only allows you to upload single images. You can use it to manage several accounts, and it provides multi-user access. Edit your images and add filters before you post, or delete your posts easily. This is also a paid service, which starts at $12 a month.