Since I need to share a great many pages throughout the day, some from my website and some from others I like to spread them out and schedule them to my different social networks. One really efficient way that I have found to share the web with people when I want to is Hootsuite.
Hootsuite – in short – offers both a free and paid service that helps you share web pages, comments and content to your social networks like Twitter and Facebook book, quickly, easily, and when you want to. I can even plan out weeks in advance to share content and save myself time, and let’s face it time is money (or it’s even more valuable when it opens up time to spend with the family).
This is a short tutorial on how to use Hootsuite to share and schedule your content to up to five different social networking accounts. First, follow the directions on Hootsuite’s main page about pulling the Hootsuite shortcut to your bookmarks. This should be done after you set up your networks and Hootsuite account. It’s really easy, just click on the image they give you and pull to your bookmarking tabs in your web browser. I’m using it in Chrome, but it works the same way in I.E. I can’t speak for the other browsers.
Here in step one I have a page from Money Saving Parent I would like to share. I head to by bookmarks and click on the Hootsuite toolbar and a “pop up” window will open.
MONEY SAVING PARENT.COM
In your pop up window select the social network you wish to share to. You can select more than one and share across networks all at the same time.
MONEY SAVING PARENT.COM
After selecting your social network Hootsuite shortens the URL and offers you the chance to select an image to go with your post/share. You may need to browse through, but I find that most of the time it picks the right one the first time. Select your image or select “no thumbnail.”
MONEY SAVING PARENT.COM
After selecting your image look at the box where your shared page has a shortened URL and some words. Is that what you want it to say? If not change it (but not the URL) and you can even use hashtags or the @ to get a person, place or things attention. Commonly used tags will be stored in Hootsuite’s memory to make the next time easier.
Next select the calendar (top arrow) and a calendar with dates and times will be offered to you. Select the date and time that you wish to share this page/post/image and then select either “send now” if you want to send it immediately (which takes about 10 minutes or so to appear in your feed) or “schedule” if you want it in the future. I admit I’ve scheduled items as far out as two weeks or more.
MONEY SAVING PARENT.COM
Give it a try and let me know how you like it. Just because it works for me may not mean it’s the best for you but I know I LOVE it and it helps me get everything done when I want to do it.
I actually just started using Hootsuite, at the suggestions from you guys in the group. I absolutely love it and don’t know what I would do without it now!
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