elle

The Best Social Media Schedulers for Sharing Evergreen Content

This post contains affiliate links for tools I use and recommend which means at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission if you decide to make a purchase.

I'm a big believer in scheduling (at least some of your) social media, not only because it saves time and helps to streamline your workflow but honestly – because I KNOW that when I don't schedule things in advance, sometimes they just don't get done at all! If you want to be active on social media on a regular basis (and at optimal times), sometimes it just doesn't make sense to be posting / pinning / tweeting / etc. while you could be working / sleeping / drinking too much wine / etc. – right?!

A while back I compared two popular social media scheduling platforms Hootsuite vs. Buffer, but as I noted at the end of that post, last year I switched to Edgar for social media scheduling – mainly for the ability to automatically recycle evergreen content. I love this feature! Recycling evergreen content saves a TON of time.

I had loaded up my Edgar queue with over 300 posts and things were humming along, but my one main issue with Edgar was pricing. Compared with the $10 plans I had previous paid for Hootsuite / Buffer, Edgar's pricing was $49/month which I was never really thrilled about spending. In theory, because Edgar automatically recycles content (something that we were doing manually with Buffer back in the day), it saves a lot of time (and time is $$$) so I justified that it was probably worth the premium – but since I also use Tailwind* for Pinterest scheduling, adding Edgar's fees on top of those was not really ideal.

At the end of 2016, I decided to look into some alternative options and came across Viraltag. I'm pretty sure I looked into Viraltag a couple years ago when I was comparing Pinterest schedulers, but since then Viraltag has added a number of new features including the ability to recycle posts (which is the feature I really loved about Edgar). So I decided to give Viraltag a try and around the same time came across SmarterQueue.

The Best Social Media Schedulers for Sharing Evergreen Content: Edgar vs. Viraltag vs. SmarterQueue

I thought I'd compare the platforms for anyone who is researching social media schedulers and is looking for a platform with a “post-recycling” feature.

PRICING

Viraltag and SmarterQueue* were the two best social media schedulers I found that had the evergreen content recycling tool I wanted AND were priced lower than Edgar.

Edgar is currently priced at $49/month or $539/year, Edgar can schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages, and groups) and LinkedIn (profiles and pages).

Viraltag plans start at $29/month or $288/year for up to 10 social profiles. There are additional plans for teams / agencies who need multiple users and/or more than 10 social profiles. Viraltag can schedule unlimited posts for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook (profile and pages), Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn (profiles and pages).

SmarterQueue* plans start at $19.99/month or $203/year for up to 4 social profiles. There are additional plans for people who need up to 25 profiles. You can schedule posts for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages and groups), and LinkedIn.

SIMILARITIES

All of these social media schedulers allow you to schedule evergreen content to multiple platforms. Why is this so amazing? Not everyone sees what you're posting. Recycling content is a no-brainer way to save time, and by sharing and re-sharing content, you'll get in front of new people.

With these schedulers you can also create categories of posts to share at different times. These can be posts from your own blog, other blogs, specific promotions or sales, inspirational quotes, etc. You can create various categories that are applicable to your business and share posts at different intervals.

All of these schedulers also feature a calendar view of your posts which is always nice. It makes it easy to visualize your content as well as edit and move things around.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Recycling content is a no-brainer way to save time, and by sharing and re-sharing content, you'll get in front of new people.” quote=”Recycling content is a no-brainer way to save time, and by sharing and re-sharing content, you'll get in front of new people.”]

DIFFERENCES

Curating content is one of the important parts of scheduling social media but Edgar doesn't really have a built-in tool to help you discover and share content. With Viraltag, you can connect your Pinterest, Instagram, or Flickr feed and share directly from there – so it makes is really easy to share visual content in particular. SmarterQueue is the best of best at curating content from anywhere in any feed whether it’s your Facebook feed, Pinterest feed, Twitter feed, or content from specific users or RSS feeds. Anything searchable can be created and saved in a feed and if you use Feedly to bookmark sites, you could even import your bookmarks.

When it comes to importing content, Edgar and Viraltag don't have the ability to bulk upload content. So if you have a spreadsheet where you keep track of social content, you won't be able to bulk upload. But luckily you can in SmarterQueue – and this will definitely save you time if you're moving from one social media scheduler to another.

In analyzing posts, Edgar and Viraltag both have basic analytics showing the number of times the post was shared and re-shared as well as your best times to post – but these analytics don't really compare to SmarterQueue‘s analytics. With this scheduler, you can see all the same stats on how many people clicked on your link or shared your post, but you can also see specific analytics around how much MORE engagement you received by recycling your evergreen posts. SmarterQueue integrates with bit.ly so you can see all of the stats on the links you've shared over time which can be more helpful that seeing stats on individual posts.

THE WINNER – SMARTERQUEUE

Of these three social media schedulers that I've used, SmarterQueue comes out on top. I don't think that Edgar is worth the price for what you get. Viraltag is great if you're looking for a tool to schedule visual content, but it feels like it's geared more toward Instagram and Pinterest users rather than other social media platforms. In my opinion, SmarterQueue is the best all around tool for scheduling evergreen content across all platforms AND it's more affordable!

Want to give it a try? Normally you get a 14 day free trial, but if you CLICK THIS LINK you'll get 30 days free to try out my favorite social media scheduler for yourself!

How to Optimize Your Images for SEO

Having images on your website is a big deal.

Humans process images 60,000x faster than text.

As online business owners, we know that a picture is worth a thousand words.

We know we have to invest in high-quality images to help take our website and online presence to the next level… which is why we take spend time and money to find the perfect images to reflect our brand, right?

But when it comes to optimizing those images, we usually drop the ball.

“According to Raven Tools, 78% of SEO issues are related to images.” — That’s a BIG percentage.

Learning how to optimize your images for SEO is a win-win.

Search engine bots can’t “read” images, so if they can’t “read” an image, they have no way of knowing what the image…is an image of.

When you start optimizing your images for SEO, you make it easier for those search engine bots to know what your images are.

When they know what your images are, they can show them in Google Image search results, as well as help reinforce the overall topic of your content so Google can better show it to your ideal audience.

So how do we avoid being part of that percentage and start optimizing images to HELP our SEO instead of hurt it?

Here are 5 ways to optimize your images for SEO:

Reduce the Size of Your Images:

If you’re uploading your high-resolution images to your website, you’re not only hurting your image SEO, you’re making your website slower.

When you upload a 3000 pixel wide image to your blog post, you’re making the browser work 2x harder. The browser has to first upload the original 3000 pixel wide image, THEN it has to re-load the image sized down to fit the area that it’s uploaded too.

So, for example, if the width of your website content is 800 pixels, your visitors browser has to load the 3000 pixel image AND the 800 pixel image. Now multiply that process by the number of images you have on that webpage…..see how that can turn into a pretty monstrous problem?

Before you upload ANY image to your website, double check to see what size you’re going to need. If it’s going to be in your main content area, maybe you only need it to be 600 pixels wide. If you’re uploading it to your sidebar, maybe you only need it to be 300 pixels wide.

Use Descriptive File Names:

By default, WordPress and Squarespace use your image file name as the Title of your image when you upload it to your website. So instead of having to go back every-single-time you upload an image, to adjust the image title, get in the habit of naming your images descriptively.

Typical file names are a jumbled mix of letters and numbers, like “DSC00829.jpg”. If you don’t change that file name OR the image title when you upload that photo, you’re not giving search engine robots ANY indication of what that image is showing.

Google can’t “read” images so it uses the file name and other data to be able to tell what the image is all about.

Image titles use hyphens-in-between-the-words-to-tell-search-bots-where-spaces-are-supposed-to-be. So when you’re naming your images, use hyphens, not underscores_like_this.

If you don't remember to save your image with a descriptive file name BEFORE you upload it to your website, make sure you're changing the “Title” before you leave that image upload page.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”When they know what your images are, they can show them in Google Image search results, as well as help reinforce the overall topic of your content so Google can better show it to your ideal audience.” quote=”When they know what your images are, they can show them in Google Image search results, as well as help reinforce the overall topic of your content so Google can better show it to your ideal audience.”]

Run the Image Through an Optimizer:

Image optimizers strip the image of unnecessary information like camera details, metadata, color profiles, embedded thumbnails, etc . By doing this it decreases the size of your image, without affecting the quality of it.

You can use a WordPress plugin like WP Smush It to bulk compress or automatically compress images when you upload them to your website.

If you have a Mac, you can download this app that's a super easy drag-and-drop: ImageOptim (this is the one I personally use).

Or you can take advantage of a free online image compressor like TinyPNG or Optimizilla.

Add Unique ALT Text:

ALT stands for “Alternative Text”. This ALT text will appear on your website in place of the image if for some reason the image cannot be loaded. It helps explain the image in a text format. ALT text is insanely useful for search engine bots and people with screen readers to help them understand what your image is all about.

By default, WordPress will NOT include ALT text when you upload an image, so it’s your job to take the time and manually add this information.

Be as descriptive as possible and add in the keywords and key phrases for the page that the image is going to display on (since the image and content should be related, this shouldn’t pose an issue. More on that next!)

Google even admitted they put a higher SEO importance on ALT text (Google rarely admits to SEO rules and importance, so I'd take this one pretty seriously!)

Don’t keyword stuff… Google hates that, and it could end up flagging your content, instead of helping it. For example, if you're writing a piece of content about a new pizza your restaurant is serving, you'll want to add an image of the pizza and give it an ALT text like this: “new gluten free pepperoni pizza Buffalo BY by Mariahs Pizzeria” – It's SUPER descriptive and even includes local keywords.

Don’t do this: “Gluten free pizza pepperoni pizza Buffalo NY best pizza pizza pizza pizza pizza”

Also, you don’t have to add hyphens to the ALT text.

Make Sure Your Image is Relevant:

When you’re choosing images for your website or blog post, make sure they’re relevant to the content they’re sharing a page with. I mentioned in the introduction that you’ll up the odds of Google knowing what your page content is about if your using related images.

Being the most popular search engine on the internet, Google keeps it real.

They don’t want to show their user’s misguided or irrelevant information.

They want people to find solutions and answers to their problems as quickly, and accurately as possible.

If you’re using images and visuals to help emphasize the point of your content, Google loves that.. what they don’t love is random images and visuals that end up confusing users.

Search engine optimization can be quite tedious, especially when you’re getting started, but once you have the foundation of it down, all it takes is the right habits to keep it moving in the right direction.

Learn about the 7 Types of Content that Increase Website Traffic & Improve SEO.

[one-half-first]

[/one-half-first]

[one-half]About the Author:
Mariah Magazine is web designer and developer that focuses on helping clients improve their website and online presence. Since the internet world is such an elaborate tool, especially for online businesses, she specializes in helping people relate to their target audience and getting their website to work smarter, not harder.

Website: https://mariahmagazine.com

Find Mariah on Pinterest | YouTube | Instagram | LinkedIn

[/one-half]

4 Elements Of An Effective Content Marketing Plan

Do you know why you create the content you plan to create?

So you publish a blog once a week and you post on Facebook every day, but what is your plan based on? Sometimes our plans are focused on the action we want to take, not the results we want from the action. The 4 elements of an effective content marketing plan force you to think about who you are actually speaking to, why are you creating the content you want to create, what the goal is of the content, and what you eventually lead to in order to grow your business.

4 Elements of An Effective Content Marketing Plan

IS IT RELATABLE?

I start every client call and every course I have by talking about how important it is to have a target audience (seriously, so important). If you're not relating to your target audience, you’re going to have a hard time selling anything to them. When you get inside the heads of the people in your target audience, you can really understand what they want, why they want it, where to find them, instead of just selling to them.

Take Action: Make sure you're connecting with your audience on a personal level in some way. Relate to your audience just like you would with a friend. You may be attracted to someone because you have a lot in common or because you are opposites and they are really knowledgeable in certain areas that you aren’t. If your audience is never saying things like, “I feel the same way,” or “You totally get me,” then they probably aren’t relating to your content and that’s a red flag.

IS IT ENGAGING?

If your marketing is boring or generic, you don’t have an effective content marketing plan. You need to be engaging your audience by giving them things to care about and helping them in some way. If you are just talking at them and not talking with them, you are not going to be engaging them in a conversation or helping them care about what you’re saying. So ask yourself, “Why should people care?” Any time you share content whether it’s a blog post or a post on social media, think about why people should care. Are you sharing just to share or are you sharing because you have something valuable or entertaining?

Take Action: Talk to your audience and ask them what they’re thinking. What do they want? Speak to a specific person, ask them a question or try to figure out what they might be thinking or feeling, and create content that way. You’ll see what happens when you create content that engages with a specific person instead of trying to appeal to a lot of people and hope someone responds. If you hear crickets, then you're not connecting with your audience and you need to figure out why that is!

[click_to_tweet tweet=”When you get inside the heads of the people in your target audience, you can really understand what they want, why they want it, where to find them, instead of just selling to them.” quote=”When you get inside the heads of the people in your target audience, you can really understand what they want, why they want it, where to find them, instead of just selling to them.”]

IS IT ACTIONABLE?

While engaging is figuring out the why, making content actionable is the how. Once people care about your business and whatever you’re selling, how do they take the next step to work with you or buy what you're selling? You need to tell them what is it you want them to do and how they can do it.

Take Action: Give your audience the call to action! Ask them to sign up for a free training, tell them to request a discovery call. With all the noise in the business space, it’s easy to overlook an opportunity and move on. You need that extra push of telling people what to do if you don’t want people to scroll away and move on to the next thing.

IS IT LIST-BUILDING?

If your audience is on social media, your blog, or YouTube, you don't own your audience the same way you do with an email list. Social media algorithms are always changing. Even if people subscribe to your YouTube channel or follow you on social media, they only view a very small percentage of what you share. But email? Everyone checks their email. More people are likely to see your content via your email list than any social media platform, average conversion rates are higher, and YOU are in control of your email list.

I'm definitely not saying other aspects of your marketing don't matter, but if email isn't a part of your marketing strategy I would seriously think about getting started now (sooner is better than later). #trust

Take Action: You should have multiple ways for people to get on your email list. Not everyone is going to be attracted to the same opt-in. The more ways you have for people to opt in, the more they are going to do it. It could be a free email course, a challenge, a checklist, or free training like a webinar. There are a number of ways to get people to subscribe. Your email list will build your relationship with your audience and lead to that ultimate sell.

Is it time to revamp your content marketing plan? Download my free content planning worksheets to help you get started!