Social Media Sharing Apps on a Budget
Social Media Sharing Apps on a Budget can be tricky but we offer advice on how to do this without breaking the bank.
Most of these techniques will run on the free versions of the apps we utilize.
Social media sharing apps without subscription fees presents a challenge since each free product has limitations but overall it works out OK for our needs.
Why Use Social Media Sharing Apps?
You may wonder why you would need social media sharing apps if you
only have a single account or even a couple.
It’s not that difficult to share a page by copying a link to social networks like Facebook or even schedule it on a Facebook Page.
Posting becomes trickier when you have several networks and you don’t want to spend all your time at the computer sharing.
You may also want to schedule post so they hit all at once.
We generally schedule our posts in the morning and let the apps handle the schedule.
In our case, we have:
Facebook, Facebook Pages – Downs SEO, Downs Consulting
LinkedIn
Houston-Galveston IT Consulting Services (LinkedIn Group/Page)
MailChimp Newsletter
Twitter accounts (DownsNumber, RandyRDowns)
Future Posting
At some point these services may become unavailable for free or go away entirely so we will probably end up with a paid service somewhere down the road but for now the free services suffice.
The nice part about subscription services is they are much more versatile and can probably handle most of your posting needs via one application.
Buffer
Buffer is one of our favorite social media posting tools. The free version
will only let you use five social profiles and buffer 10 posts maximum.
The free limitation is further limited to just one of each service so you can’t post to a Facebook profile and Facebook page, for example.
We don’t find this too big a burden since we would not want to post the same article to multiple Facebook pages and profile.
We suggest posting relevant content to your specific pages. In our case, we don’t post the same content to Downs SEO as we do our Facebook profile. Not everyone is interested in seeing SEO posts that we post on Downs SEO. In any case, the pages really need unique content since there may be overlap with the subscribers to the pages and profile.
That said you can post to specific pages with the paid version but we prefer separate accounts so that we don’t get confused on what to post where.
Primarily it works with Facebook (profile, pages, groups), Google +, Linked In, and Twitter. Pinterest is a recent addition and seems to be for the paid version.
We have the seven-day trial and it’s pretty cool. It’s not as Automated as the share pages since you have to select both a Pinterest board and photo but we like it so far.
The paid version allows ten social profiles and one hundred posts in the buffer. Currently that costs $102/year. You can also use multiple pages & profiles from the same source and allows Pinterest.
How About the rest of Social Media Accounts?
Buffer covered sharing pages with Facebook (profile, pages, groups),
Google+, Linked In & Pages, Pinterest and Twitter but we only get 5 networks at most per account.
We can designate another user to share some of our accounts so that takes care of most of networks but we still have a few left out.
Enter Hootsuite to the Rescue
Hootsuite is another favorite of ours. It includes Instagram but we are limited to 3 social media profiles with the free version.
Since we already have three setup we are not currently scheduling posts to Instagram but that’s a minor inconvenience.
We use Hootsuite to post to Twitter account Twitter account – DownsNumber, Facebook Page Downs Consulting, and Houston-Galveston IT Consulting Services (LinkedIn Group/Page).
There doesn’t appear to be a limit on the number of posts so we schedule technical post as we run into them. Mostly we save SEO posts for one of our Buffer accounts.
One quirk we notice with Hootsuite is that it seems to ignore our Houston-Galveston IT Consulting Services (LinkedIn Group/Page) when posting from our phone. Posting from our PC picks up all there accounts.
The Professional version includes 10 Social Profiles so that would be nice but it’s $10/month. We might consider that in the future but for now Buffer does most of the heavy lifting.
Social Media Communication
Hootsuite allows easy interaction with the accounts but interfacing
directly with the social network works for us.
We keep multiple computers and browsers open to the various account plus we get notifications via email.
For now that keeps us within our budget.
How About Using Facebook Directly?
Facebook works pretty well by itself. If you have access to the pages it’s just a matter of flipping from one to another.
Better yet open multiple browsers with the account you want.
You can schedule posts on pages but not your profile. The only issue her is that you will have to post the same article on your other networks.
That’s time-consuming and both Buffer and Hootsuite free editions help in this regard.
Don’t Forget Instagram
Instagram works nicely at sharing posts with Facebook so you can kill two birds with one stone. Still its slow walking through the Instagram filters and such to just make a post.
We use it occasionally but don’t share much on Instagram for our business.
Our Setup
We have multiple computers (PC, laptop) side by side with multiple browsers open on each.
Laptop Setup
Firefox
Facebook Page Downs Consulting
Twitter account – DownsNumber
Chrome
Buffer Account for Downs SEO, RandyRDowns – SEO posts.
Facebook Page – Downs SEO
Twitter account – RandyRDowns
Facebook open on the laptop to distinguish which accounts we are dealing with. Mostly Twitter is the determining factor.
PC Setup
Buffer Account for Twitter DownsNumber, Facebook profile, Google+ page, LinkedIn, and Pinterest (trial).
We don’t need Facebook open on the PC since we get email notifications.
WordPress And the Newsletter?
One of the most important social media sharing app is a plugin for WordPress. We use Jetpack Publicize and it publishes our blog post out to all the networks we have set up.
Likewise we have MailChimp for WP setup to publish our posts to our newsletter.
Isn’t That Complicated?
Yes it’s complicated but it works for our Social Media Sharing Apps on a Budget.
It would be definitely easier to use one application to post to all our networks but that’s not happening for free.
We suggest starting small and see how it works for you.
If a paid application is in your budget we suggest you go with Buffer or Hootsuite for all your networks.
Try the free product first to see how it fits your needs.
