I get asked frequently how I manage to update my various social media accounts with fresh content on a regular basis. While life does get in the way sometimes, I am able to minimize disruptions by scheduling things in advance and working hard to get as much done as possible when I do find a few free moments. One of the tools that helps me do this more efficiently is Postling.
Postling is a scheduling website that lets you post things to your various social media sites from their portal. You can add a variety of social media accounts to your "brand," including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and Blogger. Once you've added the social media account, you can use Postling to update it, either by an immediate post or a scheduled one. You're also able to check your "stream" or the feed of posts that come from those you follow on a particular network.
I prefer to update my Facebook and Flickr accounts manually, and I use TwitterFeed and Hootsuite to schedule my Twitter posts. I signed up for Postling primarily to deal with a problem I've encountered with Tumblr. Tumblr can be a great marketing tool and I'm currently using my micro-photo blog there to promote my brand name, the indie community, and Zibbet. However, I have had a problem with Tumblr's internal scheduling feature. I would set a few photos to be posted over the course of the coming week and check in a few days to find that they hadn't posted. Ack!
Postling eliminates my need for concern. I simply create posts in much the same way I would in Tumblr. I add tags and set the date and time I want my posts to appear. I can confirm that the posts are set up the way I want them to be by checking the "Drafts and Scheduled" section (pictured below). I typically set up about two weeks worth of posts at once, and it takes me about 30 minutes or so from start to finish (depending on how long it takes me to find the pictures I want). I then set a Google Calendar alert to remind me when my posts are running out so that I can redo the process when necessary.
My understanding is that Postling has a variety of other features for paid members. As I only utilize their free service, I can't recommend those features. I will say that Postling has helped me keep my Tumblr consistently updated and for that reason I recommend checking out their free service if you're looking for a post scheduling service.
Have you used Postling? What are your thoughts on it? Have any other schedulers you use? Let us know which ones so we can check those out too!
Until next time,
Elle
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6 comments:
Great info! Thanks for sharing!
Tina
Glad you found it interesting. Thanks for reading!
Some very useful information. Thanks. I'll definetly check out Postling. Gosh! You're a busy bee.
I'm a newbie on blogging. I'd appreciate any friendly suggestions to improve my blog.
http://www.rjdesignhut.blogspot.com
Glad you found the post informative!
I checked out your blog and I love it!! I really think it's wonderful as-is. As you can see from my blog, I prefer to use pages for other things and use my tags (labels) to allow people to easily find my posts from my sidebar. However, this is a matter of personal preference. I also prefer to limit the number of posts I have on my front page at any given time to no more than 3. My page is graphic heavy, so this helps reduce load time and bounce rate.
Keep up the great work and feel free to shoot me an email if you have any specific questions! Thanks so much for taking the time to drop by my blog!
This is really interesting! You know I'm always in amazement at how you keep up with everything at once! ;)
About your posting issues with Tumblr, I was curious about how exactly you were scheduling your posts. Now that I'm getting into Tumblr I've noticed that there are apparently two options: "Add to queue" and "Publish on...". I'm not sure what the differences are between the two but I've been using "Publish on..." with no trouble. Perhaps "Add to queue" sort of saves posts like drafts until you decide to login and publish them later? Just a thought!
Hope things are going well your way!
Thanks! Yes "Publish on" is to post your entry immediately. And yes that works fine for updating your Tumblr daily...if you want to sign in to Tumblr every day. :)
The queue is definitely designed to be an automatic scheduler, not a drafts folder. For example, I queue 3 or 4 posts and then set them to post 5 hours apart. I log off, go about my daily business, and at 5 hour intervals my queued blog entries should post. However, I have noticed that this frequently does not happen. I may return to my blog in a few days to find one or two (or all) of my queued posts still sitting idly in the queue, as if it were a drafts folder. Hence the search for Postling!
It's a common problem (http://alwaysbaked.tumblr.com/post/2932170198) but I have no idea if Tumblr is doing anything to fix it.
Thanks for commenting and I hope you're doing well too. Hugs!
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