If you’ve read my checklist for promoting new blog posts, you know that as soon as you publish a new post to your blog, you’re supposed to promote that post to all of your social profiles and distribution channels. Then, after brief periods of time, you’re supposed to share it again. And again. Now, the frequency of those “reshares” will vary from channel to channel. Twitter, for instance, might get 2 – 4 tweets the day a post is published, a couple the next day, and another within the week. Google+, on the other hand, might just be 8 hours later.
Once we determine when we want to reshare a new piece, the real issue is remembering to do it.
Generally, when I publish a new article, I’ll use Hootsuite to schedule one or two additional tweets, but the rest are left to my memory. And yes, that’s a problem.
So you can imagine how excited I was to learn today that Buffer (the killer app for social media management) has upgraded their scheduler in an incredible way. Thomas Hanna of BlogPhoto.tv pointed it out to me.
This is an update to the Chrome Extension, so if you haven’t already installed that, grab it here.
New Buffer Scheduler for Social Media
The Buffer extension for Chrome made it very easy for users to visit any webpage or blog post and click on the Buffer icon to begin to queue up a share of that page.
If you’ve used this extension before, you’re familiar with the interface. The compose field is automatically populated with the title and link to the page, and your available social networks are listed as icons across the top to be selected at will. As soon as you select a network that generates link previews, like Google+, the link preview will be displayed for reference. You can also drag in an image to share instead. You can add it to your queue which will then share it in the next available timeslot per network, or choose to share now, share it next, or schedule it for a specific time.
What’s been added is a new tab at the top called “New Scheduler.”
This adds the dynamic of resharing that post on your terms.
As you can see in this screenshot, your previously selected social networks appear at the top, and you can add more by clicking the + icon.
Below each is a customizable schedule with the option of selecting or not, each of your networks.
So in my case, I want to reshare one of my most popular articles, “The Ultimate Guide to a Perfect LinkedIn Profile.” I’ve chosen to share it to my Twitter and LinkedIn followers, and really want to promote it hard over the next day or two. By selecting one of the reshare timeslots, not only am I activating that share to that network at that time, I am also given the option to customize that share. So while it will still be a link to the article, I can change the text so it’s just the same title that gets spammed over and over.
I can pull some text out of the article, phrase it as a question, share some other tidbit or perhaps one of the tips, and make each new share unique and interesting. You can also add a different image.
Once you’ve made some changes to each share, click on the Save button and move on to the next.
And note that while Buffer suggests the specific timeframes of 8 hours, 1 day, 7 days, you can edit those to whatever makes sense for you.
This is an incredible time saver, as well as a means to simply make sure it gets done! Use this to test time of day sharing as well as the text of your shares to better learn what resonates with your audience, and apply that knowledge to your next share.
Thanks to Margit from our friends at SiteSell.com for confirming that this feature is available to both free and paid Buffer subscribers.
Buffer continues to support Twitter profiles, Facebook profiles and Pages, LinkedIn profiles, Groups and Company Pages, and Google+ Pages. There is no official word yet from Buffer regarding this update, so no indication of whether or not it will be incorporated into the web app.