One of my personal goals for the next couple of months is to become more efficient in my meal planning and preparation. I’ve spent several hours researching various methods such as once a month cooking. The idea of spending one whole day doing all the preparation for a month’s worth of meals is attractive to me. The key to this idea is batching like tasks such as browning all the ground beef for the month at one time then separating and seasoning it as needed for specific meals.

Once a month cooking is similar to what we’re focusing on in the blog posts this month on DBI.  Taking one idea and creating multiple posts from it is a great way to improve your efficiency in writing. Last week, I introduced this concept and offered the three steps I use with clients to develop posts.  In order to illustrate how this strategy works, I’ll be using our basic idea of scheduling social media and writing posts covering this topic from three different perspectives.

This week, we’re looking at 3 tools for scheduling social media updates.

Buffer

Buffer is one of my favorite scheduling tools. The free plan allows you to schedule up to ten updates daily for two social media accounts. Updating to their Awesome Plan gives you unlimited updates for up to twelve accounts. Buffer is extremely easy to use and adding the available extensions for your browser makes it easy to share content you find anywhere on the web.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a powerful weapon in your social media arsenal. Hootsuite allows you to schedule and manage multiple social media streams in one place. In addition, you can use Hootsuite to share your blog posts via the RSS function. Hootsuite also provides analytics and you can create reports to add to your media kit or for your own reference. Hootsuite is easy to understand and use.  In addition to the free plan {which I use}, Hootsuite offers a paid plan which is an excellent tool for social media teams.

CoSchedule

While I have not used CoSchedule, many of my blogging friends are absolute fans of this method of planning and executing social media in connection with blogging. For $10 a month, CoSchedule allows you to create your social media posts while you are writing your blog post and it works with Buffer as well. CoSchedule is a great tool for those who are looking for a way to do as much as possible with every post at one time.

While there are countless other tools available for scheduling social media, these three are among the most-used and most-recommended in blogging circles.  If you are looking for ways to more efficiently schedule social media updates, any one of these tools is a great place to start.

What tools do you use for social media scheduling?