I was just wondering if there are applications out there that help you “schedule” Facebook posts like you can schedule blog posts?  What about Tweets?  Does HootSuite do all this or just “manage” your social media?

Thanks heather

@blogsbyheather Hi Heather

I would totally recommend Hootsuite for managing your social media, but please be careful for 2 reasons:

1. There is some evidence that suggests Facebook does not like scheduled posts from third-party apps (ie Hootsuite) and so weights them below direct posts to Facebook (using their EdgeRank system)

2. Scheduling, when done in moderation, is okay but do not rely on it. It is much better if you post live and are there to respond to comments (as opposed to being on holiday or sleeping).

Cheers
Russell Allert

Yup, gotta go with Hootsuite as well. Been using them for the past two years now, great from desktop or mobile with the iPhone app. Or you can use Tweetdeck or Seesmic.

Agree with Russell that you must be cautious with scheduling. Facebook does indeed penalize posts made from a 3rd-party, and repetitive use of scheduling will impact ‘authenticity’ of the discussion going on with your community.

Even though I hit enter with these posts the breaks do not show after posting. But I see breaks in others. What is the trick?Is it hitting enter twice?

@russellallert I think you are right about FB giving less priority to scheduled posts from things like Hootsuite. I was lucky enough to go to CES2012 and while I was gone I scheduled tweets and FB posts with Hootsuit, when I got back it seemed like their reach dropped for that week. 

@mattjham Thanks for that insight, Matt.

@casmccullough Hi Cas

I would be interested to know how you use bufferapp and whether you use the same posts for Twitter, FB and LinkedIn.

Russell

@casmccullough Good to hear, Cas!

I too have used Hootsuite, and it is a outstanding third-party app to use when scheduling posts or tweets. Just be careful though, as I have found that to much scheduling of posts and tweets has a tendency to take the “personal” touch out of your updates in customers eyes when used too often.

Have a wonderful day!

My 2 cents: I switched from Hootsuite to Sprout Social recently and I love it. I know a lot of people love Hootsuite but I found the interface to be a pain and it wasn’t very intuitive. They released an upgrade shortly before I left that had potential but I thought it lacked vision. 

Sprout Social lets you add “profiles” so you can manage Twitter, Facebook (personal and business), LinkedIn and Foursquare (in an upgraded version). It’s really user-friendly and it’s got nice stats that you can PDF for clients who like the pretty charts. It also has other tools, such as a people search. 

For me the deal breaker with Hootsuite (at least at the time) was that I would always schedule Facebook updates announcing my new blog posts; the problem was that the posts weren’t live yet and Hootsuite was unable to pull the data (title, description, url, image). So the updates were always messed up, unless I scheduled them after the post went live.

In Sprout Social you can add the title, description, url and image at a granular level so you have total control over how your post appears. For me, since I schedule blog updates days ahead of their publication date, that was a life-saver.

I’ll add one last thing - I’ve always found their customer service seriously above average. You can catch them on Twitter or via email and they respond almost immediately.

I love hootsuite and latest studies show that 3rd party apps aren’t as bad anymore for Facebook.