As I recently mentioned in my BlogWorld recap, I met Leo Widrich, one of the guys behind the Buffer App for Twitter sharing.
Now as many of you might know, I’m a huge fan of HootSuite for my Twitter management needs. For the longest time, I have heard people raving about Buffer, but I figured I didn’t need another app to schedule tweets since I could already schedule tweets in HootSuite.
What I didn’t realize is how much simpler Buffer really is. Let me demonstrate.
Before I begin, as a disclaimer, I didn’t get any freebies, payment, sponsorship, etc. from Buffer for writing this post. If you choose to use my referral URL to sign up for Buffer, I don’t get paid – I simply get extra Buffer scheduling space.
Tweet Scheduling in HootSuite
The simplest way to schedule tweets in HootSuite is by using the bookmarklet which you can find in your HootSuite dashboard when you hover over the Tools menu.
Once you drag the Hootlet to your bookmarks bar on any browser, you can click on it while viewing a page you want to share. Then you’ll see a popup allowing you to choose the social profile to share it with along with the option to send the tweet now or schedule it for later using the calendar.
If you need to remember what scheduled tweets you have in the system, you can go to your Publisher menu to see your scheduled tweets.
Now as you can see, I made an oops and scheduled two tweets to go out at the same time. To change that, edit the text, or reorganize the tweets, you have to edit them individually using the same scheduling calendar.
Tweet Scheduling in Buffer
Now, let’s take a look at the Buffer difference. When you setup your account, you start by entering your preferred tweeting schedule. I like to send my posts at five minutes after the hour. This means that my tweet will come across someone’s feed after all of the automated Twitterfeeds that usually happen right at the top of the hour.
For easy Buffer sharing, you can grab the Buffer bookmarklet for any browser’s bookmarks bar or install the browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Then, when you’re reading an article you want to share, you click on the Buffer bookmarklet or button installed by the extension (I use the one for Chrome) and get the following scheduling popup.
Here you can select your preferred profiles to share the tweet with and edit it as you so choose. Then you can post now or add to Buffer. To see your pending tweets, you just go to your Buffer dashboard.
Since you set your preferred tweeting schedule, you can’t accidentally set two at the same time. To edit the text, simply click on the pencil to edit. If you do notice you want to rearrange, you can simply use the Drag to Reorder to move them around.
