Above is me after 1 hour of posting to social media.
When I posted manually, I kept thinking there had to be a better way. I kept trying social media software, but nothing did what I wanted until I found MeetEdgar and Viraltag a few months ago. Actually, a super cool guy named Jim told me about MeetEdgar.
I have a love/hate relationship with social media.
I love the traffic.
I hate posting.
I despise paying a lot of money for inefficient posting as well.
I’ve tested so many social media software platforms over the last year I can hardly keep them straight.
Some are so complicated it drives me nuts.
For quite some time I barked up the wrong tree when looking for social media software. I looked for social media software that would do everything I wanted it to with every social media channel I run. That was a big mistake.
In the end, or at least for the time being, I’m using 2 different social media software services and together I get the best-of-the-best for every type of post on every social media channel.
The best part is my social media person need spend very little time managing all of this.
To recap: I use 2 different services because each specializes in its own way.
This article attempts to explain why I like both MeetEdgar and Viraltag and why I use both. I also tell you at the end if I were forced to choose one software option, which one that would be.
1. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a very cool social media software service.
I use MeetEdgar for 2 types of posts:
- Facebook Link posts; and
- Specific Facebook image posts I want published at specific times of the day.
Its claim to fame is twofold:
- Recycles posts;
- Enables categorization of posts.
On the surface these may seem like minor features, but if you use social media extensively, especially Facebook, you’ll appreciate these nuanced features. I know I do.
MeetEdgar’s Recycle Posts Feature
One problem with social media, especially Facebook posts is it’s a treadmill. Once your post goes live, you don’t benefit from that effort in the long run.
Moreover, many Facebook Page owners, including me, routinely re-post successful posts every month or every few months. It makes sense to re-post to Facebook for several reasons, which are:
- You have new fans who may enjoy the post;
- You can post it at a different time of day and so you may reach different fans than when you posted it previous times; and
- If it works once and it works again, you might as well milk successful posts for all their worth.
But the problem is…
When you re-post you must do the same work over and over.
MeetEdgar’s post recycling feature solves this problem.
When you create a social media post (see the channels they serve below), MeetEdgar will not only post it to the designated social media platform, but it will put that post into your library.
Your MeetEdgar library becomes a growing inventory of social media posts from which you can quickly re-post manually or in the event you don’t post for a day or two, MeetEdgar will post automatically from your library.
MeetEdgar helps you put social media on auto-pilot.
Categorizing Posts
MeetEdgar takes automating social media a step further by making it possible for you to dictate which type of posts are posted to Facebook at specific times. On the surface this may not seem all that important, but it is extremely useful. In fact, it’s this particular feature that keeps me with MeetEdgar because Viraltag also has re-post recycling capability (see below) except Viraltag’s recycling posts capability is not as granular as MeetEdgar’s.
What this means is when you set up your Facebook posting schedule, for each post slot, you can choose what type of post is posted to Facebook – whether a link post, image post, shared post etc. Sadly, MeetEdgar does not yet offer the ability to create and post videos to Facebook.
For example, suppose you post a variety of post types to Facebook throughout the day… perhaps 2 image posts and 2 link posts and 1 paid post for another company. You simply set up 3 categories in MeetEdgar (image posts, link posts and a separate category for the paid post). You then set up your posting schedule assigning which categories to your chosen time-slots. As you create your posts, you assign it to a particular category.
Another example: I often place paid posts to Facebook for various companies. However, I only post 3 of them per day, yet those companies provide me 10 to 30 posts at a time. With MeetEdgar, I can have an employee load up all 10 to 30 posts at one time with proper categorization which will then result in those paid posts posting to Facebook 3 times per day at designated time slots.
How I use MeetEdgar
Step 1: Integrate Social Accounts
The first thing you must do is integrate your chosen social media accounts with the MeetEdgar software. This takes a few minutes only.
Step 2: Set up your post categories
Step 3: Set up your posting schedule(s) for each social channel
Step 4: Add new social media content
Step 5: Keep best performing content in your MeetEdgar library
MeetEdgar FAQ
Which social media platforms does MeetEdgar serve?
- Facebook profile
- Facebook pages and Groups
- LinkedIn Company
- LinkedIn personal
Can you remove posts from the library?
Yes, you can delete posts from the library? This way you can build up a library of your most successful posts.
Can you select specific social media channels for specific posts?
Yes, you have full control over which social channels your posts are delivered to.
2. Viraltag
Viraltag is brilliant (check out my Viraltag review here). I use it by far the most of all social media software services I subscribe to.
Viraltag specializes in image posting to social media. It’s especially useful for pinning.
I use Viraltag for the following:
- Image Facebook posts
- Instagram posts
- Pinning on Pinterest (my favorite capability)
Since I do a lot of pinning, I use Viraltag extensively. It is without a doubt an indispensable tool in my arsenal for pinning.
Viraltag offers incredible scheduling control for social media, especially Pinterest.
A very powerful Viraltag tools is it’s Chrome Extension, which enables you to schedule all images on a web page as pins almost instantly. Think about that if you publish image-rich websites or are on an image-rich website – you can schedule dozens or hundreds of images on the page with a few clicks of the mouse.
Moreover, you can repin just as quickly and as you know repinning is encouraged on Pinterest.
My Viraltag Overview Video
Viraltag Scheduling options
1. Post to your Queue: You can set up a custom schedule queue for each social channel. This is important because you would probably pin more frequently than you’ll post to Facebook or Twitter.
2. Post at specified intervals: This too is cool. If your queue is loaded up for days or weeks, you can bypass the queue and post immediately. Moreover, if you’re posting multiple images at one time, you can space out their posting to social channels by 3 minutes or longer. Sometimes I pin every 3 minutes or ever 15 minutes or every hour and in some cases I’ll space them out every 24 hours. Over time you end up with a massive queue of pins dropping into your boards all day long every day.
3. Recycling Posts (Viraltag calls this Evergreen Content)
Like MeetEdgar, you can assign whichever posts/pins you want as evergreen. This means these posts will post wherever you dictate whenever your scheduled queue is empty. This means once you have a nice inventory built up, you can take a week or two off social media posting without a hiccup in your social media posts.
The only downside to Viraltag is you cannot categorize posts which means you don’t have the same level of granular control as you do with MeetEdgar. When you assign a post/pin as evergreen in Viraltag, it enters the queue in the order it was created.
This lack of categorization only really matters to Facebook where post types matter.
Besides, I don’t recycle Pinterest pins. In other words, unless I make a mistake, I don’t pin the same pins to Pinterest more than once. Sometimes I forget whether it’s been pinned, which isn’t a big deal, but I don’t purposely recycle pins to pin over and over.
Viraltag Screenshots
Below is a series of screenshots showing you can power pin from any URL with Viraltag. This is super awesome. You can use this exact process on Pinterest for repinning and of course for mass-pinning from your own website. Read more about successful niche website Pinterest marketing here.
1. Click the Viraltag Chrome Extension icon
When on a URL from which you wish to pin/post images, click the “Viraltag” Chrome extension. You can do this on Pinterest, your website or any other website that doesn’t block sharing/pinning.
2. “Select All” or Manually Select Images You Wish to Post/Pin
3. Format your posts/pins
4. Interval Scheduling
If you wish to pin/post outside of your preset schedule (i.e. queue), you can click “Schedule” and then pin/post at a set interval such as every 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 24 hours… whatever you want.
This is a very powerful feature for Pinterest. If you’re on a web page with 20 similar images, you may want to space them out to one per day or one every other day. On the other hand, if you have 10 totally different images, you can blast them all to your various boards every 3 minutes.
5. Your Scheduling Queue
In addition to interval scheduling, you can set up a queue for each social channel. When you click “Add all to Queue” your posts/pins will be added to your queue and post/pin to social channels on your queue’s timeline.
As you can see I have quite a few spots in Pinterest. I post less often in Facebook.
6. Recycling Posts (Evergreen Content)
Go into “Recent Posts” and you can select which posts can be re-posted as Evergreen content. What’s nice about this screen is it gives you engagement data so you can select the posts that performed best.
7. Built-In Image Cropping
You can also crop/optimize image sizes for all social media channels Viraltag serves. Read more here and also check out the following two screenshots.
Viraltag FAQ
Which social media channels does Viraltag work with?
- Pinterest (it’s a must-have for anyone using Pinterest on a regular basis)
- Instagram (one of the best software services for posting to Instagram)
- Tumblr
Can you post Facebook link posts?
Yes you can. In screenshot #3 above, for each post/pin, enter in a URL in the field next to “Source URL”. This will create a Facebook link post. If you delete that field, the post will be an image post on Facebook. That said, I do all FB link posts on MeetEdgar so I can control when those types of posts hit my FB page.
Can you manually create posts/pins inside of Viraltag?
Yes, you can. It’s straightforward. I focused on the Chrome Extension process above because that’s how I use Viraltag and frankly I think it’s the mass pinning and scheduling that makes Viraltag so valuable.
MeetEdgar vs. Viraltag – Which Would I Choose?
My first choice is Viraltag.
Why Viraltag?
Because it actually does the most out of what I need social media software to do, especially for Pinterest, which is my favorite social media channel.
In fact, it ALMOST does what MeetEdgar does but lacks in one capacity. With MeetEdgar you can actually set schedule social media posts by category so you can totally control which types of posts are published when. Because I need this granular posting ability, I pay for the MeetEdgar service.
While Viraltag has a queue system and an evergreen system, it does not have the ability to categorize posts and therefore when a post is added to the queue, it’s post in the order it’s added. Therefore, bulk queuing doesn’t work very well because if you post different types of posts throughout the day, you must post to Viraltag in the order you want the posts to be published.
While the distinction between Viraltag and MeetEdgar is slight, it’s important if you do post different types of posts to Facebook throughout the day and if you do, MeetEdgar is necessary.
Related: 8 Pinterest Marketing Tips for Niche Websites (for loads of traffic) and for a lower cost Pinterest marketing software, check out my Tailwind review and lastly my Tailwind vs. Viraltag Comparison Chart
Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.
I will give ViralTag a look. I have been using Edgar for some time now. One thing I really enjoy is that the team can do the whole scheduling for me – I basically don’t need to do anything! This is still in beta-testing, and nothing short of amazing.
Great post as i’m also starting to automate all my social. I’d love for you to also do a comparison on Hootsuite vs Buffer App, I’d be curious to see how those two compare.
Hey Chris,
I’ve used Hootsuite, Tailwind, Buffer and Sendible. After all that, I much prefer the MeetEdgar and Viraltag combo for my needs. I found Hootsuite far too complicated and in some cases limiting with respect to post types. It seemed to me a bit of a cobbled together software especially where Pinterest is concerned.
Sendible is actually quite good and offers loads of features but it’s more robust than I need. Besides as far as I know it doesn’t have the recycling posts feature which is really key for me. Also, in my view, the way Viraltag can bulk pin from any URL is amazing.
Buffer I think is good for Twitter power users. I like Buffer’s simplicity but since I do a lot with Pinterest, Buffer didn’t really meet my needs.
Great post.. makes me want to explore Viral Tag.
Now, about Edgar and video posts to Facebook.
What I do is post the video to facebook first,
Then I get the link to that video,
and put it in Edgar.
Works fine, maybe better than fine,
because Facebook seems to perhaps give more
reach and exposure to already proven engaging videos…
Once again, thanks for the great blog post
==>Jim
Hey Jim,
Thanks for the tip. That’s great. I’ve been wondering how to get videos to work with MeetEdgar. Thanks a lot.
Tailwind is my favorite for Pinterest. It does everything ViralTag does, without the recycling, and with half the price. But one of the best parts with Tailwind is the Tribe feature, it basically a group of people who exchange pins. I was thinking of using ViralTag, but since I don’t recycle posts on Pinterest that often, I decided to go with Tailwind.
Thanks Brent for the feedback.
I noticed that Tribe aspect about Tailwind but my spam radar came up. However, maybe the Tribe feature is effective.
Meet Edgar is quite expensive at $50/month …. It is not effective there is no point to post the same content on facebook because every time you post identical post the reach is lower than before..
After seeing how much you’re posting to Pinterest, have you ever written about your Pinterest strategy? I’m trying to figure out Pinterest, but I have one specific question. Do you post the same image multiple times in a week, month, etc? Or are all your post slots for NEW images?
Great question Wesley,
I avoid pinning the same image to Pinterest twice. It does happen, but I don’t set out to do it. I do, however, repost to Facebook the same posts.
You know, you can use FollowLiker to automate Pinterest following and unfollowing. It’s a one-time purchase and it functions smoothly using low PC resources.
I used to use Jon Leger’s Social Multiplier- and quickly created a big Pinterest account, but when I tried to do a rich pin validation the account was terminated as spam, which it was. Powerful, if a bit buggy and high-resource, tool.
With ViralTag and conservative FollowLiker follow settings- it’s a more authentic-looking approach.
Thought you might be interested in that- was going through the Niche Tycoon course and thought it might be a good addition to your Pinterest arsenal (I’m not affiliated with FollowLiker).
Head up Jon, Viraltag now has categorization and Recycle post feature. more info here https://viraltag.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/217219606-Post-Categories. you might want to update the post.
Awesome blog you have here, I own your niche tycoon course too, great value. Thanks for all you do
Thanks Flaky.
That’s great to know. I’ll have to check it out… maybe I’ll be able to use just one service.
I also used MeetEdgar for 6 months and for normal scheduling used Buffer side by side. One of my friends told me about the OneUp App(www.oneupapp.io) which does both in single interface + it supports post recycle for Pinterest as well. This is my new fav 🙂
Hi Jon, I just found this post which is particularly interesting to me and thank you for your reviews. I hope you could give your opinion on this: While I know pinterest can drive traffic to my website using these automated tools, I wonder how Facebook will do.
Let’s say I start posting and scheduling my images on Facebook also, what would be the traffic growth compared to Pinteres’s? I assume the load of traffic coming from Facebook won’t be near as much as Pinterest’s traffic (since Facebook is different and is not about only images) but I might be wrong.
Hey Marcos,
Pinterest traffic these days far exceeds Facebook for me no matter how hard I try on FB. I don’t post to FB much anymore because it’s futile, whereas Pinterest generates excellent results.
Jon, what do you say about the jarvee program? Have you tried it?
Hey Alexander, never heard of it so can’t comment.