PostCron Review and Tutorial Update
Update 2019: I used to have a referral link for PostCron, but they removed their referral program without notification, and when I made an enquiry about it vanishing, their previously highly responsive support line went silent. It was an excellent program as a consumer, but probably not for the business. I have no objections to revisions to their business model, but what I do object to is poor communication.They have since implemented a new referral program for subscribers, and my thoughts on their product haven’t changed. But for various reasons, including Facebook implementing their own scheduling mechanisms, I no longer use PostCron on a regular basis.
In December of last year, I wrote my first review of PostCron as a social media content scheduler. Since then, they've updated the interface for the service, and added a couple features I find extremely helpful, so I felt this deserved to be revisited. If you read my original review, you'll notice a few similarities, but hopefully you'll find some new things.
Interface
There has been no change to the general workflow from the old interface. Once you have logged in, you are immediately presented with the Dashboard.
The layout is pretty much the same as before, but the visual elements of the interface have been given a little spit and polish to make it look a little less dated. Gone are the headings, but it still feels quite intuitive, and if you were a user of the previous interface, everything is still in the same place. You'll find the accounts list at the top, followed by the single post box, the bulk upload tool, then your queued posts list.
Account List
Clicking on any of the social media icons on the right will allow you to select the account type, and you will be asked to authenticate to grant PostCron access to post to it. Accounts you have already added will appear on the left with a thumbnail of the associated profile photo, and visual cues to help distinguish between social media platform and account type.
Accounts which will be posted to when you use the scheduler will have full colour icons, and disabled accounts will be in greyscale so that it's clear to see which accounts are being targeted. You can click on these icons to toggle the state between posts.
Publish Single Post
Use this section to schedule individual posts ahead of time. Simply add your post links or text, click Add Photos to add your images, and click Schedule. This will pop up a date/time selector where you can choose when you want to publish your post, and when you click Done, it’s queued up. If you click on the down arrow next to Schedule, you can also choose to publish the post immediately, or at the next predefined time.
The image posts feature was the biggest change since my original review. Previously, you could only share one photo per post, forcing you to create a photo collage to share composite content. But now you can attach multiple photos to a single post. This is fantastic, and such a time-saver.
There is one quirk to take note of however, the one photo per post thing was a limitation of the Facebook API. So the way PostCron have implemented this feature is as an album. When you attach more than one photo to a post, it will create an album with the name set to the time the post was scheduled, and the album and each photo's description set to the post text. Personally, I feel it's a little clumsy, but that's more a fault with Facebook than PostCron. As a user, you won't really notice a difference, and the photos are still navigable in the same way as a regular photoset post created in the Facebook interface.
Warning: Be mindful that you don't go overboard with the number of photos you share in this way, because uploading too many photos at once puts you at risk of Facebook Jail.
Bulk Uploading Posts
I said this before, and I still feel this is true: One of the things that put PostCron ahead of other similar services is their bulk upload feature. You set up a spreadsheet in CSV (comma-separated variable) format, and add any number of posts to be scheduled at a specific time, with a photo, embedded link or just plain text.
Watch this video to see how you can use the spreadsheet to generate your posts:
No matter what business you're in, if you have a sequence of posts you want to share at intervals, this spreadsheet will allow you to do it in a quick and easy way. For example, a Direct Sales consultant running a Facebook party can plan a whole party in advance as a template. For each party, update the dates, and change the names and a few of the details or posts to tailor the content for the host and their guests and it's ready to go.
If you're releasing a series of connected informational posts, you can use this tool to stagger their release. Or if you're going on vacation, and need to ensure you're still regularly sharing content with your followers, this is the tool for the job as well.
Reviewing Queued Posts
Below the publishing interface, you’ll see a list of all your scheduled posts and where they’ll be posted to. The details of the post (excluding images) can be edited in this interface as well. However, there's an annoying bug where if you edit the text, it will lose all your line breaks and the post will be shared as one block of text. Until it is fixed, just double check your post before you schedule it, or just delete and reschedule the post.
You can also see your recently published posts by clicking on “Past posts” and if you need to, republish them. This is pretty helpful if there’s a recent post you need to share to another location.
Per Account Settings
If you need to customise your accounts further, clicking on My Account at the top right, then Social Media Accounts will show you a list of your accounts. For each account, you can set predefined times, a watermark to apply to all the photos you upload, and connect bit.ly to shorten your long and cumbersome urls to something a little more easy to digest.
It's a minor change, but the previous interface only allowed you to set these options globally, and not on a per account basis. Great if you maintain multiple brands, or have different audiences to target.
Setting Predefined Times
These are the default times set by PostCron. If you schedule posts using the predefined times, each new post will be allocated to the next predefined time. For example, if on Sunday night, you schedule 5 posts, post #1-4 will be scheduled at 9:11am, 12:33pm, 4:39pm and 8:41pm with post #5 scheduled at whatever the first time is set to on the following day.
This feature is really useful if you only schedule a few posts in advance, and just have content that you want to go out at the next optimal time for social media sharing that you've determined for your audience. For more posts, you would likely be using the bulk uploader with these same times.
Pricing
Both pricing and referral program have since been revised.
PostCron offers free and paid pricing tiers.
A free account (the offering has been revised since my original post) allows you to:
- Add up to 6 social accounts.
- Have up to 10 scheduled posts. You can schedule up to 10 posts ahead of time and as they are published, you can schedule new ones.
You don't have access to the bulk uploader or watermarks, but if you are just starting out, this is quite serviceable.
Their paid plans start at USD$9.99/month which is about average for this type of service. And you can get a 15% discount if you pay annually.
However, the big pull is the referral system. For every referral who signs up, you get 10% off your plan, and the person you refer also gets 10% off with no cap. So if you refer 10 people, your account is free (or 9 if you were referred by someone else).
In terms of direct sales, if you’re building a team, and each of your team members uses your referral link, effectively you not only get rewarded by your company for growing your team, but by PostCron as well. In our Australian team, we’ve actually tried to encourage this so that each team member will sign up for PostCron under their sponsor to spread this love around.
Conclusion
About nine months on since I first started using PostCron, and I'm still pleased with PostCron for its time-saving features, allowing me to maintain engagement with my customers at times that suit them. There is also an Android app, with an Apple app coming soon. But, if you're not fortunate enough to have access to the app, the website is also quite usable on a mobile phone. Either way, you can schedule posts on the go, or if you're on vacation, and still be able to arrange for posts to appear at the right time in the right timezone.