I recently became responsible for managing the NYJavaSig social media. I’ve been using TweetDeck for scheduling Twitter posts. Today I researched scheduling Facebook and Linked In posts. Here’s what I learend

Buffer

Buffer.com was recommended to me. I like it. It is free for up to three channels/connections. There’s a limit on how many posts you can have in the queue at the same time, but it is way higher than I would need.

Once I registered, I immediately dropped the Pro trial so I could see what it would look like for me. Connecting Facebook was pretty easy. I had to sign in with Facebook to connect. It got dropped once and I reconnected. But after that, it seemed happy.

LinkedIn was tricker and I encountered two problems:

• On the dashboard, there were buttons to connect instagram and twitter. So I though the limit of three social media channels was only those three.
• I later learned you can click “manage social channels” and get access to your LinkedIn Account or a LinkedIn Page. However, it is not possible to schedule posts into a Group because LinkedIn has disabled that API

HootSuite

I learned about HootSuite from a linked in article about scheduling posts. I had two problems

• HootSuite wanted permission to see my contacts. Why? This is not needed in order to post on my behalf. I didn’t want to give that.
• It is no longer possible to schedule posts into a Group anyway because LinkedIn has disabled that API. (Yes the same problem as Buffer.)

Conclusion

I decided to split and use TweetDeck for Twitter and Buffer for Facebook. I may consolidate later. But I might not. I really like TweetDeck for Twitter!