One of the most important principles in social media marketing is consistency.  You have to post consistently good content to be successful.  Yes, the content has to be good as well, but today I want to focus on consistency.  I find that clients who are starting out with social media struggle with being consistent.  In order to overcome the struggle, I like to suggest one of my favorite tools: Bufferapp (Buffer).  Buffer allows you to schedule when you want your posts to go out.  You decide if you want your posts to go out Monday, Wednesday and Friday or every day of the week.  Also, you decide how many times a day your posts go out.  The good thing is that you can change the posting schedule for each of the social networks you have attached to Buffer.  So, you can have 3 tweets go out every day for Twitter, but only one post for LinkedIn.  Once you have decided on your posting schedule, all you need to do is fill Buffer with posts.  Up to 10 posts per social network are free.

I like that I can add Buffer to my Chrome toolbar.  When I am browsing the internet and I come across a great post that I want to share, I just click on the Buffer icon and I can add it to my queue.  I do have the choice at that time to post it immediately or schedule it for another time.  It is really quick and I don’t need to worry that I am not consistently posting.

There are two things you need to watch out for:  one is that Buffer only lets you post to your Google+ business page, not to your profile.  The second one is that Facebook really doesn’t like third-party scheduled posts.  The posts get very little visibility.  My recommendation is to schedule your Facebook posts in Facebook directly.

If you like to see Buffer in action, here is a short video that will show you how to use Buffer: