Review of Social Media Scheduling Tool Meet Edgar

One of the first things I recommend to all my clients is bulk content creation. You can take advantage of the power of brainstorming and association to come up with more content ideas faster. A scheduling tool is a good way to make sure that content is going out consistently and frees up your day to day time for engagement. BufferApp.com has long been my favorite, but I have recently started using Meet Edgar as well. 

Overview:
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Meet Edgar is a fundamentally different platform in how it approaches content scheduling. In fact, when I first saw it I got pretty excited because it goes hand in hand with the concepts of post types that I cover in my book What to Post. 

Basically the idea is that you create evergreen content and set a schedule based on the type of post rather than specific content pieces. Then Edgar randomly chooses one of those types to post to that social media account. 

For example, you might have blog posts go out at 9am on Monday, promotional posts at 2pm on Wednesday, and funny posts at 4pm on Friday. You decide which account each post in the library is assigned too. 

Pros: 

Reuse Evergreen Content
What I love most about Edgar is that it allows you to get more out of your evergreen content. Many of the blog posts that I write, or that I write for my clients, are beneficial for their audience any time, not just in the few days after creation. It was always a struggle to remember to reload older blog posts and videos back into the schedule on a regular basis. It is also a fantastic tool for adding in my promotional posts and making sure they are balanced throughout the feed. 

Recurring content is a feature that no other scheduler has, and it is pretty fantastic. This will be best for businesses and organizations that have been creating content for a long time, and so have a large pool to draw from to get started. You should go into it with the mindset that the first month or two there will be a big upfront investment of time to build a solid library of material. Otherwise you risk your content feeling old and outdated quickly. 

Use the Power of Post Types
The other thing of course is that it is such a good fit for the model of content creation that I am already using - post types. This is an idea I haven't seen many other places, and am excited that Edgar is getting people to think about their business in a more systemic way.  

Measure Your Results
Another unique feature of Edgar is its Analytics. You can sort by account, date, or even by the piece of content itself. This allows you to figure out what you need to improve to get better results, and how the same piece of content performs across platforms. 

Cons: 

The Learning Curve

As with any new system, there is a learning curve to using Edgar. Overall it was fairly intuitive to me, but I use programs like this every day. The biggest challenge was navigating back and forth between different accounts. While you can turn on and off different views in the schedule for example, whenever you save one new time slot it reloads to the whole calendar again, and you have to start all over to add the next time. I am guessing this will improve over time as more people use Edgar and provide feedback. 

Cost

Edgar is not a cheap platform to use. They do not have a free version like BufferApp and Hootsuite do, and the most basic account starts at about $50 a month. If you are just getting your business off the ground and are not clear on how to use social media to generate income, this can be a fairly significant expense. But if you are spending hours a month rescheduling your evergreen content (or paying an assistant to do it for you), the cost savings is a no brainer. Be sure this is the right tool for you before you jump in, and don't feel like it is something you have to have at the beginning. 

Platform Support

As a newer scheduling tool, it doesn't have support for quite as many platforms as the other major scheduling tools out there. At the time of writing this review it only supports Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Over time I suspect that list will expand as well, and what they currently offer will be enough for a lot of businesses, but be aware of the limitations and have a plan for any other platforms you are using. 

Is It Right for You?

If you are at the very beginning phases of using social media, then Edgar may be a more powerful tool than you need. In order to be able to create evergreen content at all you need a general idea of what types of content to try in the first place. 

As I already mentioned, you want to make sure that you can take the time to build up a good library in the beginning or you are missing out on the most important feature. 

Another important note - make sure you schedule time to review your library from time to time and make sure it is all still relevant and what you want to be posting. Things change. 

For me personally this does not replace my business level BufferApp account - I use both. Edgar is perfect for the evergreen content, and I use BufferApp for the up to the minute news and reactions. Balancing both tools in scheduling means I am able to deliver consistently engaging and unique content for my clients every day. 

Questions? 

Anything I didn't cover in the review that you want to know? Post a comment below!