Hello, Internet fans. It is Ryan. It is Wednesday, May 27th. That means it is Social Media Wednesday, and as usual I have Sarah Giometti with Provaro Marketing on the other side. Good morning, Sarah.

Sarah Giometti: Good morning, Ryan. How are you?

RP: I’m doing great, thank you very much. We’ve got a lot of content to talk about. We’re going to discuss social media tools, and these are tools that you can use to make your life more… Definitely save you a ton of time, while vastly improving your visibility and credibility online, on say Facebook, Twitter and other media accounts out there. We’re going to do a broad overview of what we picked to be the top three. And then in the following weeks, we’re actually going to do an individual review on each one of the tools, so if you’re looking to incorporate a social media tool into your marketing mix, you definitely want to pay attention. Sarah, we picked three. What are they? And let’s go from there.

SG: So we picked three. The three that we picked are very popular. They’re also three that you and I use, so we know them really well. And they’re cost effective. So there are a lot of social media scheduling tools to help you be efficient in your social media, especially for a small business owner who may not have a ton of time for this. It’s all about efficiency. You need to figure out how to do it as efficient as possible, so that you can actually get it done and do it consistently and on a regular basis. So the three we picked are because they are cost-effective for businesses and we’re familiar with them.

RP: And the other thing I was going to say. We talked about the efficiency part. I think one of the biggest complaints that business owners have when it comes to social media is, “I don’t have the time, especially Twitter. If I’m supposed to post let’s say 15 to 30 times a day, if I’m constantly having to log in every half hour or hour in order to post new content, A] I’ll be up 24 hours, and B] it’s just horribly inefficient.” And that’s where I think the real benefit of these scheduling tools comes… Well, I should say that’s where it started from, was being able to schedule things in a group, being able to bundle everything at once, schedule your entire day essentially at one time. And then now some of them are starting to… Or actually they came out. They incorporate aggregates into them, where they’re actually finding new content.

SG: Right. Because yeah, looking, not only having to log in every 30 minutes to an hour is so inefficient, having to find the content’s the same way, where you’re looking at different blogs that you follow and scheduling them one by one is really, really inefficient. And so these tools will help you be more productive, especially in things like Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn. Facebook, I still say you should manually do Facebook, but it’ll help you curate content and you can manually post on Facebook. You just get a better reach in Facebook when you do it manually versus using a tool.

RP: And Facebook, you can schedule post out over time, so it’s not like you have to be on Facebook all day long in order to post content. And we shouldn’t be posting that much content, or we should not be posting that much content daily on Facebook for most people. I think the big issue has always been Twitter. In order to really be engaging on Twitter on a regular basis in order to be effective, I should say, to be on Twitter, you really have to engage a lot because Twitter does not filter their news feed. And therefore when you post something, it’s going to get really fast depending on the number of followers that the person has.

SG: Right. Twitter’s in chronological order versus Facebook is based on your behavior and what they think you want to see at the time that you log in. So you’ll see things that are out of whack on a time basis, whereas Twitter is strictly chronological so the minute you post something, if you’ve got followers that have several hundred thousand followers and they’re not really using lists. And even if they are using lists, and it’s kind of a big list, you’ll get buried really fast. You do need to post often so that you have the best opportunity to be at the front of the news feed when your followers are getting on social media or on Twitter.

RP: Okay. Go ahead.

SG: Nope, go for it.

RP: I was going to say we’ve gone five minutes, I don’t think we’ve named the three yet. Maybe we should do that. And I’d like to start with Hootsuite. Simply for me, Hootsuite was the leading edge. They are one of the first. They’re not ‘the’ first, but I think they gained a lot of notoriety. I used ’em way back when it was free, while they were still trying to get visibility and get the momentum going. And they’re still going strong today, and they’re very cost-effective.

SG: Right. They’ve had some hiccups along the way with outages, things like that. They’re still the behemoth of choice because they’re also only $10 a month to start with, and you can have multiple accounts on there. So for an agency, it’s really cost-effective because I can have all of my clients in there for only $10 a month and do all the schedulings.

RP: Or if you’re a serial entrepreneur and you have multiple businesses, and you need to manage multiple accounts. And we should state for those people that don’t know that, with these tools, essentially, and again we’re going to go into them in detail. We’ll do screen shares and all of that in the following weeks. But essentially what you have is, you have one tool, that has access to your Twitter account, has access to your Facebook account, possibly your Google+ account, and some other social media tools. And what you’re able to do is you’re able to post content into those through Hootsuite. So as an example, if you had two different businesses, instead of having to log in and out of Twitter to get into each one of those accounts, you could actually put that information directly into Hootsuite. Is it still column based, you have one column for one company and one column for the next?

SG: Not really. So yes and no. They’ve got columns and tabs. So I’ve got a tab for each account, and then within the tab, I’ve got a whole bunch of columns for the regular news feed, lists, things I’m listing for, messages, things like that. So you can customize what you’re seeing, based on… On each tab, based on each account.

RP: Okay. And I personally haven’t used Hootsuite for a couple of years. Are you able to actually interact, or if people makes a comment or they retweet something, does that show up on Hootsuite, so you can actually interact with them directly through the platform?

SG: Yes, and that’s why a lot of people like it, is that it’s a one stop shop. You can do everything you possibly need to do in it.

RP: And I think that’s really important, because one thing Hootsuite does not do right now, but we understand that they’re rolling it out. Maybe they have rolled it out or they’re rolling it out shortly, is to be able to aggregate content, where you can say, “Alright, hey I’m an SEO guy. I need to find out SEO feeds, so I’m going to bring in different people that are in my SEO space, and I want to bring their RSS feed, I want to bring their Twitter feed, I want to bring their Facebook feed, into one area. I want to funnel it, or aggregate it into one piece of software.” And the other two that we’re going to talk about today, and we got to move on because it’s already 9:54, is going to be, Bundle Post and Post Planner. One of the things that they’re able to do is bring that content in. But you’re saying Hootsuite does, or they’re rolling that out shortly?

SG: They’re rolling it out. I haven’t played with it yet. I was just scheduling stuff last night and saw it pop up in my scheduler, that I could try it now for customized content made specifically for me. It’ll be interesting to see it on mine, because I have so many different businesses in there, so I’m curious to see how it works out. But they are trying to roll that out, because that is the next step and like you said, we’re going to talk about Bundle Post and Post Planner, who do aggregate. Once you set it up, you can aggregate the content. And it makes it really easy to do your 15 to 30 posts a day on Twitter, because it’s one stop shop to put all the content and create your own custom content as well. And so, Hootsuite looks like they’re trying to join that game to stay relevant.

RP: I think that’s important. So, you mentioned agency Hootsuite, very prevalent in the agency, or again, if you’re a serial entrepreneur, you have multiple businesses that you’re managing, Hootsuite, very powerful tool. I think the one advantage that Hootsuite’s going to have over the competition is definitely the price point at $10, and you have access to multiple accounts. Where I think the other ones are a little bit more expensive. I know with Bundle or Post start at seven bucks a month, but you’re limited to two accounts. So I have my Twitter account, my Facebook account, and that’s it. If I want additional access or if I want to add more accounts, I have to pay more per month. And then the second thing is that on Hootsuite, you can actually see who re-tweets you, you can actually see that in your feed and interact with that individual at that time.

SG: Even though we’ve talked about it for agencies and for our serial entrepreneurs, this is also great for a sole entrepreneur. You got one business. You want to be on social media, ’cause you can put everything in it and interact with people on the fly. So, it’s a good solution across the board for a lot of different options, or a lot of different situations, and a lot of different people. And yeah, you can interact with people, you can apparently now curate contents, and schedule everything out for all your different accounts.

RP: Okay. Let’s… ’cause we’re running out of time, let’s move forward. Bundle Post and Post Planner. You’re using Bundle Post, I’m using Post Planner. I think they’re pretty similar as far as features and whatnot. There are some key differences. I think the big difference between these two and Hootsuite is the interaction. I can schedule content in Post Planner and push it out, and that’s it. If somebody responds, I’m not going to be able to be in my Post Planner platform and see that somebody retweeted me, or you’re not going to get any of that interaction. It’s simply pushing content. On Hootsuite, it’s a two way conversation. Now the big difference, and this is why I went with Post Planner, and again, Bundle Post is very similar. But they aggregate content, and that was one of the things that, for me, I’ve got to be in a lot of different markets, just like you have to be in a lot of different market spaces. So, having a central funnel where I can bring various experts in, maybe social media, maybe SEO, maybe video marketing, I can create individual folders for whatever it is that I want.

RP: It could be Auto Repair Shop.

[12:11] ____… It could be Dentist. I know with Post Planner, I can bring an RSS feed in, I can put their Twitter handle and bring that content in, I could put their Facebook page and bring that content in. The other thing that I really like about Post Planner is that it actually will… You have an option to see how popular a post is. So depending on the number of re-tweets, the number of likes, the number of re-shares, it’ll actually bring that content up to the top, so you can see what’s being talked about and discussed. And I think it’s a Five-Star system that they have. And the content that’s shared a lot, it has a five-Star and then it works its way down the ladder. What about Bundle Post?

SG: Bundle Post is really… I set it up for all the RSS feeds that I want to include. I can also do YouTube channels, things like that. It doesn’t have the rating system that Post Planner has, and it’s also not based on who I want to draw content from. So you do at least have to do a little bit of work up front, that there is no content to curate from without putting it in there. And so I’ve got a long list of RSS feeds and channels that I draw from, but once it’s set up, it’s set up. And so then I can just go in, pick an RSS feed, checkmark the articles that I want to use, and put them into the schedule. The down side with that, which I know they’re working on this and they’re going to be rolling out out pretty soon, I believe, is from Bundle Post, you export it and import it into a scheduling software. And so I export it out of Bundle Post and import it into HootSuite for scheduling. And so it is one extra step there. But like I said, I know they’re working on, at least for Twitter, being able to schedule directly to Twitter so you don’t have to have that extra step.

RP: I think that’s why I ended up with Post Planner, ’cause I looked at Bundle and I looked at Post Planner. The thing I liked about Post Planner was A] I could aggregate all that content and it kind of gave me a hierarchy of how rele… Not relevant, but how popular it is, based on likes and shares. And then 2] is I can actually post from the software, which I really like. And it doesn’t have to be aggregated content that I’m posting. I could actually type in my own stuff and then push it out. And then there’s also the Canva integration.

RP: It’s 10:00, so unfortunately we need to end this episode today. We’re going to, next week, and for the next three weeks, we’re actually going to do an in-depth review. We’re going to go through HootSuite next week, Post Planner the following week, and then Bundle Post the, actually I did that… We’re going to do Post Planner first? I know we agreed on this before we started. Alright, we’re going to do Post Planner first, then we’re going to go into Bundle Post, then we’re going to into Hoot Suite. And hopefully HootSuite will have their aggregate part rolled out and working at that point so we can share with you. And that way if you’re looking to post content through social media, get a bigger presence online, using one of these three tools is going to help you immensely. It’s just a matter of figuring out which tool is right for you. And it may be based on features but also just interacting [15:47] ____ with it. Some software is easier for it. So, any last words there, Sarah?

SG: I don’t think so. Just play with them if you’ve already got one. If not, wait. Over the next three weeks we’ll go into them in depth, and we’ll hopefully help guide you to the one that will work best for you.

RP: Alright, wonderful. With that, that’s the end of this show. Thank you very much. Make sure you come back next week and we’re going to talk about Post Planner and all the exciting benefits that it has to offer. Sarah, as always, thank you for your time, and I hope you have a great week.

SG: Thanks, Ryan. Hope you do too.

RP: Bye.