This practice has been a little controversial because some people believe that it can sometimes feel a little bit like spam. Therefore, you have to be careful on what you are auto-posting, and how much. If you do it right, then it can definitely help with your productivity. Here are ways to automate your accounts on the top social networking sites, so that you can enjoy other aspects of your life.
MakeTechEasier has an article, “5 Easy Ways to Schedule Your Tweets,” that details five services for Twitter that allows you to schedule your tweets.
Facebook and LinkedIn (HootSuite)
HootSuite, already featured as an auto-scheduler for Twitter, is the ultimate way to auto schedule your posts in just one central location. It is a web-based application that provides a way for you to manage your different social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc.).
When you are ready to schedule your posts (or tweets), you just have to type it and change the date and time. The neat thing about HootSuite is that you are able to pick-and-choose which accounts these scheduled posts will go to. It can go to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It’s very easy and quick, and you don’t have to recheck to ensure that the date you chose is still correct.
Posterous
Posterous now provides its users a way to schedule tweets. When you are creating a new post via the web or the bookmarklet, you now see a check box called, “Schedule this post for the future.” When you check it, you are given instruction to enter the number of days or weeks that you want the post to appear. The only thing that I don’t like is that I prefer a way to enter a time and date. You actually can enter it, but the instructions a little misleading.
If you edit your post, you will see the date and time. The post is marked private until it is published.
When it’s scheduled the way you want, then you will see a little clock icon next to the post. Definitely something that many people have been looking for.
Tumblr
Tumblr provides an easy for you to share anything. It helps anyone, regardless of his/her interest, be able to setup a blog quickly and seamlessly. Tumblr is easy to customize to make it look and work the way that you want. Like Posterous, if you try to post something using the bookmarklet, it is a little misleading. I placed the date and time as shown below. However, when I went to edit the post, the date and time was completely different than what I placed.
In this area, you are able to set the actual date and time that you want to use. As Posterous, Tumblr needs to work on the way they schedule their posts.
What kind of application do you use to schedule your posts? Do you think it’s a good idea for people to do that?
