Schedule Your Google Plus Posts using HootSuite

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When it comes to social media, it is very important to update our followers with the latest content. When we post regular updates, our followers are likely to get engaged and high engagement is always desired. Google Plus is one of those which should not be ignored.

One easy way of posting regularly is scheduling posts. Google Plus does not have an inbuilt feature to schedule our posts. However, there are third party tools which allow us to do so. These tools usually cost us, but their basic features are usually available for free. For Google Plus, a great tool called HootSuite is there to help us out in scheduling posts.

The tool can be accessed at HootSuite.com. The very first thing to do is sign up at the website. Signing up is painless due to the integration of social media logins. The steps to posting in social media accounts are very simple; thanks to the great user interface of HootSuite.

After creating an account with HootSuite, follow these detailed steps to schedule Google Plus posts:

Step 1: Add a Social Network (Google Plus)

  • The first thing to do is add a social network. From your profile or streams tab, find a button that says “Add a Social Network”.
  • Connect with your Google Plus account in the next step. Authorize the app and select the Google plus page(s) that you’d like to post to.
  • Click on Finished Importing to finish adding your social network.

Step 2: Creating a New Stream

add-a-stream

  • Hit the Streams tab from the links on the left. Create a new tab if not present already.
  • In your blank tab, click on a + (Plus) button which is present in the bottom right of your screen.
  • “Add a Stream” section will slide out.
  • In add a stream; you will see a dropdown from where you have to select a Google Plus page to post to. Usually it is already selected.
  • Next, in the top of your page, you can see an input box that says “Click to select a social network”. Hover over it and you will be presented with your Google Plus pages.
  • Click on one or more of those to post to them. Use the pin button to keep them selected while making multiple posts.

Step 3: Composing a Message

composing-a-message

  • In the top part of the same page (Stream page) , you will see an input box that says “Compose message”. Click on it to expand it.
  • In the message part of the input box, enter your status like message for Google Plus.
  • Input the link in the same location as the message and it will start to generate link previews with thumbnails. You can remove the link from the message after the thumbnails and link details have been generated.
  • “Add a link” input box is only necessary if you are shrinking your link. I choose to not make use of this feature.
  • You can add pictures as well using the attach option.

Step 4: Scheduling a Message

scheduling-message

  • Click on the “Scheduling” button which looks like a calendar icon with the number 30 on it.
  • Choose a date and time. Hit the schedule button to confirm it.
  • You are done scheduling a single message to Google Plus.

Step 5: Auto Scheduling with HootSuite

At times it is necessary to auto schedule posts, if you have a number of posts that you need to post at different days and times. It is not convenient to select date and time for each and every post if you have a lot of those. For this you will have to turn on the AutoSchedule option present in “Scheduling” feature.

autoschedule-options

  • In AutoSchedule, you can turn it to “On” to enable auto scheduling.
  • To configure the time and dates of auto schedule, hit the gear like icon and you can configure:
    • Days you want your messages links to be posted.
    • Number of messages per day.
    • Posting hours like 1pm to 9 pm.

Step 5: Verifying or viewing your auto scheduled posts

After setting up everything, you can check whether everything you did is correct or not. For that use the “Publisher” link available in the left menu. There you will be able to see your scheduled items, their details and their future post dates.

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