Using Publer to easily manage social media

A couple of years ago I joined the Greater KW Chamber of Commerce to join their Peer to Peer groups. In the Marketing P2P, we talk about tools that different people use to help with marketing.

Many of us are solopreneurs or micro-businesses. We often don’t have time to keep up with social media, or don’t have the budget to hire marketing companies to help us.

I’ve been slow to adopt social media. I started on LinkedIn, then Facebook and Twitter, then Instagram and Google My Business, and recently Pinterest. I’ve posted a couple of short videos on YouTube as well.

I tried some of the tools mentioned to me: Hubspot, Buffer, Hootsuite, Later, and a few others.

One thing missing from all the schedulers I tried was the ability to post to all my social media channels. Most offered three channels on the free plan, or had a limited-time free trial. Since I don’t post that often it wasn’t long enough for me to test it, so I ended up posting most things manually.

I have no idea how I happened upon Publer, but I am so glad I did! It is making my life so much easier, and I recommend it at P2P meetings.

In June I signed up for their free plan for a few months. These are the features of their free plan that enticed me to sign up:

  • 5 social accounts (choose from FB, IG, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, GMB)
  • 50 scheduled posts
  • calendar view mode
  • auto schedule
  • delay between posts

I didn’t have Pinterest yet when I signed up, so I could schedule all of my social media posts with the free plan. Amazing!

Here’s how easy it is to create posts and customize them for each channel. First, type your message and select your channels:

creating a post in Publer

Post the same thing to all channels with one click, or customize your post for each channel. I often add different images, and I always tag people and add hashtags for each account.

customize Publer post for each channel

I usually add a delay between posts to each account:

adding delay between posts in Publer

I’ve recently started to schedule follow-up comments, too. in one Marketing P2P meeting, we learned that LinkedIn’s algorithm doesn’t like links in the main posts, so I’ve started adding them in a comment:

adding and scheduling follow-up comments in Publer

After a few months I realized I was going to stick with Publer. After years of searching, I finally found something that worked well for me.

The only limitation of the free plan that affected me at the time was it only kept a 24 hour post history. I couldn’t look at the calendar and see what I posted two weeks ago, so I decided to upgrade to a paid plan. They have two paid levels: Argentum (silver) and Aurum (gold). 

Here’s where Publer really stands out from the crowd. You can pay monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annually, and save off the monthly rate. And for only $2 more per month each, you can add more social media channels.

Publer.io plans and pricing

As soon as I finish setting up my Pinterest account, I’ll add it to my Publer account.

Here are the features I love with the Argentum plan:

  • unlimited scheduling and drafts
  • media library with unlimited storage
  • integration with Canva
  • automatic RSS posting
  • scheduling follow-up comments
  • eternal posts history

There’s more, but those are why I upgraded. I recently started using the Canva integration to create images for my posts.

Using Canva with Publer.io

I use the RSS feed to automatically pull in blog posts from my website:

adding RSS feed for blog to Publer

Very soon I’lI upgrade to the Aurum plan for multi-photo posts, and hashtag and content recommendations. Hopefully that means I no longer have to track hashtags for each channel in a spreadsheet (although I do love spreadsheets). 🙂

Publer is always adding new features, and they have wonderful support. i’ve used their chat support a few times, and they have great support docs and blog. 

If you’ve been trying to find a scheduler that works for you, give Publer a try. There’s no time limit for the free plan and it lets you post to 5 accounts. You may find, like me, that it’s so easy to use and the paid plans offer so much value, that it’s worth it to upgrade. I wish I’d found Publer sooner!