Use Buffer to Schedule Your Tweets

Today I’m going to discuss Buffer. This seemed like a natural follow-up to last week’s article about bitly, the link shortener.

Sharing Made Easy

Buffer is a great tool for sharing content with your followers on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can add the Buffer extension in the Firefox, Safari, and Chrome browsers and download an iPhone app. (However, I didn’t see Internet Explorer on the list. Maybe it’s coming).

Click on Buffer and the content is distributed to the three social networks, saving you the trouble of distributing them manually. (Yes, I know you can also schedule messages on HootSuite and the Twitter-owned TweetDeck.)

Optimum Timing

What I like about Buffer, though, is that you don’t have to do the scheduling. Buffer does it for you. Remember last week I told you that it was best to tweet in the afternoon, early in the week?

Well, if I were to post something late this evening and used Buffer to schedule it, the post would likely be distributed tomorrow.

You can add the Buffer app to your own Share This tool bar to help visitors spread your content, without their having to click on each social media icon button.

Or, when you’re visiting a website, if you see a story you want to share, you can click on your Buffer icon (see left) located in your browser. You will see a window pop up, as I did.

I visited Mashable and shared this story — “The iPad Mini is Inevitable” — by clicking on the Buffer icon. Here is what I saw:

Add to Buffer or Post Now

I had the option of scheduling my message or posting it immediately to all three networks.

Making it Easy

Populating your social media networks with content can be very time consuming. Buffer is an easy way to share content on the run.

If you’re reading your daily newspaper online, and want to share several articles, click on Buffer for each one. It will spread them out over the day.

You don’t want to overload your Twitter stream, for example, with an excessive number of tweets coming one after the other. It’s bothersome to your followers.

Tweriod + Buffer

After I finished writing this post, I read the latest issue of Social Media Examiner which ran a story about five Twitter tools, including a free app called Tweriod that works with Buffer. Glad that I can include this added information.

I’ve just signed up for Tweriod. As SME says, Tweriod “analyzes your tweets and your followers’ tweets to give you the best time and day of the week to tweet to get the highest visibility for your content. The analysis generally shows you the time and day that your followers are most active on Twitter, which helps you share your content more effectively.”

Then, you log into your Buffer account and it will automatically set the time that Tweriod suggests for your tweets. How cool is that!

Shortly after registering for Tweriod, I was emailed a report with optimal times for my tweets based when my followers are most active. Here is the report. Note that Tweriod suggests eliminating early morning tweets in line with bitly’s research.

Tweriod Optimum Times to Tweet

So that’s the story of Buffer and Tweriod.