- Esther
Good morning and welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. I'm Esther
- Melanie
and I'm Melanie.
- Esther
And today we're talking about scheduling platforms. Which ones do we use and which ones can you use that won't cost you anything.
- Melanie
Well, we've all got to start from somewhere.
- Melanie
And when I first started up, my go-to was HootSuite and
- Esther
Yeah, Mine too. Mine too, they were very good.
- Melanie
Oh, absolutely. And Buffer was originally free a while back. I don't know if it still is, but
- Esther
We're going back a few years, though, Melanie.
- Melanie
Yeah, steady now
- Esther
Just saying you've been in business for a long time.
- Melanie
Yes, that's yes. Good recovery.
- Esther
"laughs"
- Melanie
But no, I still use Hootsuite actually, but I only share content that's mine on HootSuite, and then I share other related content and sort of, I suppose, less self-promotional content on other platforms.
- Esther
So when you say other platforms, do you mean like their native scheduling platforms or do you go the whole hog and pay for these big expensive ones that are all singing, all dancing and do everything for you. Tell the truth!
- Melanie
Well, there's plenty of singing, dancing ones. You're absolutely right, but you don't have to pay them all for them because there are different levels.
- Melanie
Now, as you know, the difference between myself and Esther is she's a full range digital marketing agency and does websites.
- Melanie
I'm a sole trader and I don't do anything but social media training and management. So there is a difference in between us already. And I don't need the all singing and dancing plans the same way you do.
- Esther
Yeah, yeah.
- Melanie
But I also have the flexibility with all of these plans and you do too, that if I want to, I can go up a plan or down a plan depending on how busy I am. Ohh, that rhymed.
- Esther
"laughs"
- Melanie
So, yeah, there is a lot of flexibility with plans. And...But when you start, you know, you've got to wait for a decent cash flow.
- Melanie
I get that completely. And then once you've got the cash flow, then you can start exploring the paid for platforms. But I see no harm in continuing to use the free platforms.
- Esther
I agree. I agree completely. We are all for saving money where and when you can, as long as it doesn't cost you your business. OK, so there are all these ones that, yes, they're free and but they come at the cost of their logo on your stuff
- Melanie
Yeah
- Esther
Or their name on your information. So just be careful whenever you are using things, obviously, then you hear all these stories. Are all these feebles or old wives tales? You can call them old social media.
- Esther
It's only been going, what, ten, fifteen years of "uhh Facebook hates it when you put something on that wasn't directly added via Facebook". And "ohh, if you don't use Facebook creator studio, then you're doomed to be placed down the algorithm to the bottom of the list", "Nobody will ever see those publications"
- Melanie
Well, I think there was a case for a while ago, but, you know, with becoming such an adaptive society now and Facebook understands that everybody is at different levels of their social media journey. So they're just making it easier for, you know, regular visual creators in creative studio because there's so much versatility in there, so many more apps. You can add music, you can add filters.
- Melanie
You can see all sorts of weird and wonderful wizardry in there... Try and say that drunk and...
- Esther
"Laughs" Well, that's OK, something for the weekend.
- Melanie
So, you know, you can have a little bit more fun with it. And, but it doesn't matter where you are in your social media journey, the whole point of scheduling platforms is that it can help you get around your standard message and get that prepared and ready. But that doesn't mean that's where you stop.
- Melanie
You also have to continue putting up fresh content as it happens on a daily, weekly basis as well. So, you know, if you've heard you've won something or you've decided to sponsor something, that's your opportunity to go on top of your current schedule to content and try and look at what you've got scheduled so it doesn't clash.
- Melanie
You're not putting something up the same time as another announcement because then it looks bad and badly thought out.
- Esther
Yeah. And on that topic, if something major happens in the news, look at what you have coming up. Is it still appropriate? Is it still viable that it goes out because you don't need to be promoting something that might no longer happen, you know, like when covid hit, the coronavirus hit. Everybody, all of a sudden, everything got closed down, everything got canceled, but I was still seeing publications of our, you know, such and such an event coming up and in person, and I'm going.
- Esther
"Humm...Are you sure? Are you sure? So you just have to be very careful and pay attention to what's going on in the world. Also, pay attention to what is trending. You know, your trending topics on Facebook and Twitter are a great place to review your content for the day and see if you're actually going to be going against something that's being said or if you're going to be fighting to be seen through what other people are saying and through what's trending at that time.
- Esther
Twitter. A platform for scheduling. What would you say?
- Melanie
What I'd say for them to is actually got a lot easier because you can schedule within the back end of the Twitter profile and the whole separate dashboard.
- Melanie
And it's actually quite easy to schedule through there, I found. But I'm also, I hate change. So I still stand to use my third-party platforms to actually schedule as well. Swedish... I seem to have lots of fingers in different pies, but I seem to put all of my content in various different areas, depending on where I'm at at the time, what kind of content I want to put up, and where I can get my analytics from because I can get my analytics from everywhere.
- Esther
Yeah, and it's very important to be looking at your analytics, too. But whenever you're just mentioning there by Twitter, we will come back to analytics and if we don't have time today, then some other day.
- Esther
But "Laughs" when you mention Twitter, I love TweetDeck. I love scheduling on TweetDeck. I love following chats on TweetDeck. It is just so easy. You don't, you know, jumping around all over your screen trying to see new notifications and it all just flying past TweetDeck makes it that little bit easier.
- Esther
That's my personal choice. Not everybody likes it. There came a point where they weren't updating it anymore, but they seem to have come around and they're now allowing gifts. And we're waiting for a few more updates to be going onto it. But hopefully, they will keep it around because a lot of people do like it. It's a Web app, so you don't need to be paying for it. It's just you just download it onto your onto your desktop.
- Melanie
It's a handy one, actually, for the newbies, because it's very easy to get around and to add streams to it. I'd say it's moderately easier to do that on TweetDeck than it is on HootSuite, to be honest. But I never really particularly got on with TweetDeck because I'd already started on HootSuite.
- Melanie
So when I went to go and use it for a client once, ugh boy... It depends on where you start, I think.
- Esther
Yeah, yeah, that's true. You know what I like about scheduling tools that one of the ones that we use is Social Pilot. And what I like about it is that I can bulk schedule so I can put all my tweets. For example, there's always...
- Esther
Well for my clients, I always have more tweets going out than a lot of other platforms. So when you've got a hundred tweets going out over the course of 10 days, 15 days, then it's easier to write them all in an Excel spreadsheet, save it as a CSV and just put them all up, add your images and that's it.
- Esther
Rather than putting it in, scheduling a time, putting it in, scheduling a time. And I also like about Social Pilot is that they can curate content for you as well. They go and find content about whatever topic that you want to talk about, whether it's sales, marketing, social media, depending, you know, clients are wide and varied in our line of work aren't they, Melany?
- Melanie
Oh god, yeah!
- Esther
it's not, you know, your run-of-the-mill information that we're looking for.
- Esther
So it's easier to go in and be able to find that. "ohh, ok, so here's a news article that came out an hour ago", maybe in a different country, but still, you don't have to go searching Google for it. There are other platforms available.
- Melanie
Well, my go-to would be accesing your SocialPilot would be AgoraPulse. And the versatility that you're describing there, I actually get over two platforms. So I put my bulk uploads in HootSuite because I've actually gone on to the paid version.
- Esther
*Shocks* No...!
- Melanie
I know. I know. But it made sense because that suited my clients. And it's much easier for me because I can now, you know, multiple different regular content.
- Melanie
And I love the bulk that we do on there, very similar way as yourself. And I get all of my content from Post Planner.
- Melanie
There's other people's content or QUUU promote as well. Buffer And then finally my favorite go-to Inbox zero and reporting. And by the way, we're not getting paid by anybody,
- Esther
No, no we're not, although if they would like to pay us.
- Melanie
Yeah. Any time guys we can give you.
- Esther
We'd be happy to promote anything that we like and use
- Melanie
But my go-to would be AgoraPulse.
- Melanie
I've used it for years, I didn't use them properly for the first year or two because I didn't really know what I was doing to be honest.
- Melanie
And then...
- Esther
That's the good thing about those platforms too. There are a lot of people in the background that are willing to help and that are there. And there are chats and there are webinars and there are people jumping on and just really looking to help you because they know that it's not easy to be going on and scheduling your publications and stuff.
- Melanie
And every one of them have got decent brand ambassadors in every country. So wherever you're listening to this podcast, trust me, there'll be somebody in your country who'll be looking after the brand here you can contact, who will help you, you know, either do it personally with you or directly to YouTube videos they've prepared.
- Melanie
And that's the sole point of these amazing tools. They don't just save you time, but they also offer you exemplary customer service. And they certainly have for us anyway.
- Esther
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, that's all we have time for today. We will be back talking about analytics of these ones at a different point because we just talk too much and run out of time.
- Esther
But join us again next week for more Monday Morning Marketing podcast. In the meantime, have a great day, Bye bye
- Melanie
Bye