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Buffer is a very popular social media scheduling application. The tool makes it easy to share content and automatically schedule the distribution to Twitter,
Facebook, Linkedin, and
Google Plus. Now, it works by staggering content throughout the day so you'll set the pace and then Buffer will do the rest. What's nice is it lets you continue to add content to your queue, you don't have to worry about when to post it or about posting it too frequently. Simply fill Buffer with content and off it goes. Now, Buffer will also give you analytics about each post which lets you quickly see what ideas are working and what aren't, and both free and paid plans are available.
I really love the simplicity of Buffer.
I've always been a fan of tools that focus on doing one thing and doing it well, and with their add on extensions, you can grab content throughout the day from various websites and have the
peace of mind that your audience is receiving timely updates. Now, in a later movie,
I'll be showing you a tool that lets you identify the best times to post content and you can feed those instructions back into Buffer to create a well, optimized platform.
So, to get started, I'm here at bufferapp.com, and right away, we're presented with the options to log in, here on the right-hand side of the screen.
It's really easy to set up. You can
sign in with Twitter, with Facebook, with Linkedin or using your email account. Now, I'm going to sign in with the
Twitter account for a brand called H+
Sports and to do that, I'll choose the
Sign in with Twitter option. From here, we need to authorize Buffer to use our Twitter account and we'll do this here on the Twitter website. So, I'll go ahead and enter my Username and
Password, and then choose sign in, and there you go,
Just like that, we are logged in and our Twitter account is now established with Buffer.
Now, the individual plan that we just set up is free and you'll be restricted to one social profile for each network, so one Twitter account, one Facebook account, and so on. You'll also be restricted to storing ten posts at a time and one thing that's a big bummer on the individual plan is that you can't vary your schedule. So, if you set it up to deliver a message at 2pm and 5pm everyday, you can't make that noon and 4pm on Saturday, unless you upgrade. So, the individual plan is free with restrictions but the awesome plan, as Buffer calls it, is ten dollars a month and it unlocks the ability to have ten social profiles and up to a hundred posts in your queue along with the ability to set the time and frequency of delivery by day.
Honestly, I really think at ten dollars a month, Buffer is a great value. Now, on the free plan, you'll get nagged a lot to upgrade, so as you navigate the site and click on options that aren't available, it's going to prompt you with the option to upgrade. You could always choose not to, you'll have the free plan forever, but if you do decide, they do make it very easy to upgrade right here in the
interface. So, now that we're logged in, you'll notice here on the left-hand side of the screen, we have our accounts view, and this shows us with the checkmark that our default account is our Twitter one, and it's also the only account that we've added.
If we wanted to add another account, we could choose the option below here for Facebook or to connect multiple accounts, the bottom option, or we can choose the + icon here next to the accounts heading, and from here we can review the options and you'll notice that under Facebook for example, we can connect more than just a profile, we can connect our page or even a group, and that gives us more control and flexibility about who we're sharing our content with. Now, I'm going to leave it just set up for Twitter for now but it's just like we set up for Twitter, click any of these options, and follow the prompts.
- published: 22 Mar 2016
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