How to become a Content Marketing Jedi with Edgar
This blog post contains affiliate links.
Meet Edgar
(Updated June 2017 – New prices)
I’ve been playing with a new tool called Edgar for the past few months, and I have to admit I’ve been really excited about sharing it with you! It’s such a well thought out tool that aims to solve a big problem for marketers. How do you manage all that content? Well, the good news Edgar certainly helps you do that. Read on to find out how you can become a content marketing Jedi with Edgar!
What is it?
Founded: June 2014
Founder: Laura Roeder
Quick Overview: Edgar is a social tool that allows you to build up a library of your content. You can put each piece of content into different categories within your library. Once you’ve built your content library, you can then create schedules across all your social media accounts and post out content to each one at specific times from specific categories. Content in each category is recycled- meaning when the last piece of content in a category is posted, it goes back to the beginning again. There is also a “use once” category where recycling does not occur- each piece of content is just posted once.
Quick Pros:
- Intuitive user interface – Clean & easy to use
- Saves you and your business a huge amount of time!
- Easy to set up a library of your content and to set up schedules
- Easy to set up a cycle of never ending content
- Friendly support team
- Integrates with Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages & groups), LinkedIn (profiles & pages)
- Basic Analytics
Quick Cons:
- Invite Only (although they send out invites pretty quickly)
- Expensive (starts from $79.00)
- No Google+ or Instagram integration
- No facilities for teams
- CSV import doesn’t import images
- You can only connect up to 10 accounts on the basic plan
- Doesn’t give you access to images after uploading
Pricing:
- $79/mth (connect up to 25 social accounts, 1,000 updates in your library)
- There are higher volume plans, contact Edgar for more information)
Video Walk-through
As well as writing a comprehensive review, I’ve also put together a short video walk-through which goes through the basics of Edgar:
Alternatives
Before I go into more detail on what Edgar does, I thought it would be useful to look at other social tools- ones that almost do what Edgar does, but not quite! The truth is I have been searching for a tool which has the features that Edgar offers, but I never found one. There are other tools that have Edgar-like features such as Buffer, Hootsuite, SproutSocial, MavSocial and SocialOomph.
Buffer
I love Buffer, but it is focussed on the social networks and not the content. You can’t segment your content into different categories and you can’t set up a cycle of never ending content. This is where Edgar wins!
Hootsuite* and SproutSocial*
Hootsuite and SproutSocial have allowed you to schedule your social media posts for a long time, but once the posts have been published- that’s it! By this I mean you would have to remember to re-post the same piece of content again in the future. It took them a while to add a queuing system like Buffer, but due to the popularity of Buffer both SproutSocial and Hootsuite ended up adding this functionality. Hootsuite does this via the Hootlet extension or on the dashboard via AutoSchedule. SproutSocial’s system is called SproutQueue. Unlike Edgar, they are only schedule one-off posts, so once they’ve been posted from the schedule, you’ll have to re-craft the post and reschedule in the future.
MavSocial
MavSocial allows you to manage multiple networks and has the advantage of integrating with Chinese and Japanese networks such as Youku, Weibo and Renren with full international character support. Whilst MavSocial offers a powerful campaign manager and has scheduling and cross posting capability, it doesn’t have a queuing system or a feature where you can cycle through a library of posts.
SocialOomph
Edgar: The Content Marketer’s Dream?
With such a huge amount of content being shared each day, it’s becoming more and more difficult for your message to be heard. According to an article from AdAge the organic reach for Facebook pages is down to around 6%. The analysis (by [email protected]) was made of 106 brand pages.
Let’s just pause and take that in!
For those Facebook pages not paying for Facebook advertising, their content was only reaching 6% of their fans!
That is a truly shocking figure, but it shouldn’t make you depressed- it should bring us all in to the realms of reality!
For too long, far too many businesses have tried to hack the system and push low quality content to their Facebook fans. Facebook have tried to manage this and make sure that it delivers content that its users are actually interested in. So, if the organic reach for the average Facebook page is 6%, could it be that the content being shared on these pages aren’t what the majority of its fans want to see? Controverial perhaps, but hopefully it will mean that more of us will start thinking a bit more deeply about our social media strategy.
Before I go on any further, I urge you to read this article by Jon Loomer entitled It May Be Time for You to Quit Marketing on Facebook.
Part of the problem is that many businesses just don’t plan their content. What if there was a way to build up a library of content, set up a schedule and then let it run? Surely that would be too easy?!
Well, I’m definitely not advocating unintelligent automation of your social media channels- you know, where you just set it and forget it and then don’t engage with your followers and fans! Make sure you Schedule your Social Media Posts Responsibly!
If there is a tool that allows you to schedule responsibly and automate intelligently, whilst building a library of your content with different categories- then Edgar is that tool!
Read on to find out more….
How to Use
First of all, you will need to request an invite. Just visit the Edgar Home Page and click on the big red button in the top right. You might have to wait a few days, so do try and be patient. If you’ve been waiting a while, then do reach out to the team and ask what is happening. They are a friendly bunch and it might just be that they are dealing with a lot of requests.
Whilst annoying, I am guessing the reason for being invite only, is to help grow their platform at a pace that they can cope with. I can understand that- there have been many examples of tools and platforms struggling to cope with numbers of users in their early days and having to deal with complaints.
Logging In:
Once you’ve been invited, you can create an account and log in. I hope you’re excited!
The First page: Your Library
When you first log in, you’ll be presented with your library. At first, your library will be empty, but Edgar will give you quite a few categories to get started. Once you fill your library you can see all your items on this page and you can filter by category and social media account:
Each piece of content can be assigned a particular category. That could be your “amazing photos” category or “evergreen blog posts” or possibly “promotional posts”. Each content is also assigned to a specific social network or a group of social networks. For example one of your “evergreen blog posts” could be scheduled to be posted to your Facebook page and your Twitter account, whilst another post in the same category could be scheduled to be posted to just your LinkedIn company page. The quick filters are a really easy way to see what’s in your library.
Bulk Edit:
Edgar has been around for a while now. To begin with, there were quite a few new features, but there isn’t so much innovation now. That being said, there are some cool features. One of these new features is the “bulk edit” system. By clicking “bulk actions” and then the “edit” link, you will be presented with the bulk edit screen. From here you can update all or some posts- all in one go. For example, you could change the category of selected posts and then choose which social networks these are being posted to. A very welcome and powerful feature!
One of these new features is the “bulk edit” system. By clicking “bulk actions” and then the “edit” link, you will be presented with the bulk edit screen. From here you can update all or some posts- all in one go. For example, you could change the category of selected posts and then choose which social networks these are being posted to. A very welcome and powerful feature!
Bulk upload CSV tool
Another feature is being able to bulk add content from a spreadsheet. To make use of this, create a spreadsheet with two columns. In the first column, enter the text for the content, and in the second column enter the category name. Unfortunately, this method doesn’t allow you to upload images. But it offers a time-saving way of uploading a large number of posts in one go, or exporting content from your blog or content management system. Once you’ve created the spreadsheet, save it as a CSV file and then upload it to Edgar.
Edgar Queue
Once you’ve added your posts and set a schedule, you’ll then be able to view your social media agenda for the forthcoming weeks and months. Here is the queue from my set up:
From here you can:
- Show forthcoming posts by a specific category by using the “filter by category” option.
- Show forthcoming posts scheduled to a specific social media account by using the “Filter by Account” option.
- See how long your queue is. This is the length of time before the last post in a cycle is posted and it goes back to the beginning of the queue. In my case, that’s a 2 week long queue – you’ll probably want it longer than that. It also shows you how many posts are in the queue- in my case there are 55 posts.
- If there is an emergency or another reason where you need to stop your schedule, you can quickly and easily pause your queue so that Edgar won’t post out any updates. Really useful feature!
- Edgar is very clever and knows about time zones. Once you’ve set your time zone all your scheduled times are shown in your time zone.
- Each content item shows you the category and the update itself. You can quickly edit the post from here or shuffle the order.
Schedule
You’ve got your posts, but we’ve not discussed setting a schedule for them. This is the tricky bit and will require some time and good strategic thinking. Thankfully, Edgar has a really helpful article entitled What should my social media posting schedule be? I recommend reading it to give you some inspiration.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to learn from examples, so I’m going to share part of my set up. It’s only basic- but it is a start. With more time and effort I intend to build on this.
Firstly, here is the schedule for my main Twitter account, @iagdotme. You can see I have a post from a different category in each slot:
Since Twitter is very fast moving it’s good to have a higher frequency of updates each day, but other networks are different. It’s often better to post at a lower frequency on LinkedIn and Facebook. Here is my LinkedIn schedule:
It’s really easy to add a new time slot. Just click the “add timeslot” button and then select the time and the category of the post you want to schedule:
Categories
As I mentioned, Edgar gives you quite a few categories to get started. However, you will want to change these and add your own- since all businesses are different. Here are the categories I set up on my system:
Remember, categories are separate from social networks. For example, your “amazing photos” category might contain posts that schedule only to Facebook or perhaps a number of different networks. All categories work the same- once all posts in the category have been posted, Edgar goes back to the beginning and starts cycling through them again.
There is one exception, and that is the “Use Once” category. As you might guess, each post in this category is only used once. You might want to use this category for special offers or other time limited posts.
Accounts
Edgar integrates with a fair number of social channels. So far it integrates with Facebook (profiles, pages, and groups), Twitter and LinkedIn (profiles and pages). I don’t think it would be suitable for Edgar to schedule to LinkedIn groups- it could get far too easy to end up spamming with repeated content.
The main omissions at the moment are Google+ and Instagram. If you want to schedule from your Google+ profile to other networks, then I highly recommend the social tool Friends+Me* of which I have mentioned many times on this blog.
Add New Content
Adding new content is easy in Edgar, and there are a number of ways. I’ve already mentioned the bulk uploader where you can upload from a spreadsheet. You can also add posts one by one, and it is surprisingly quick. Just hit the “Add New Content” button and you’ll get something like the following:
- First of all, select the account or accounts that you want to schedule to. It’s best to create different posts for Twitter since you are restricted to only 140 characters.
- Then select the category of the post.
- If you want to upload an image (as opposed to using a preview image from a link you are sharing) make sure you do this next otherwise the preview image of a link will override this option.
- Type your content. Links will be automatically shortened and a preview image will appear below (if you haven’t already uploaded an image). Please note Edgar only sends images to Facebook at present and doesn’t support Twitter cards.
- If you would like to bypass the scheduler and post at a specific date and time, then click the “send at specific time” checkbox.
When you add a link, Edgar fetches a preview image from that page. This image only gets sent to Facebook at present. You can cycle through other images from the page to choose the best image for the post- just click on the arrows.
Browser Extension
Edgar have created another way to get content into your content library- and that is through a browser extension.
Once installed, go to the page you want to share, and click on the Edgar button in your Chrome toolbar.
You’ll then get a pop-up where you can select the accounts, category and text. The text is pre-filled from the page title and the URL of the page, although you can edit it as you choose.
Areas to improve
It’s amazing to see how mature and fully featured Edgar has become since June 2014. They’ve managed to add some great new features (such as the Chrome extension and bulk upload) whilst keeping the interface uncluttered. However, no tool is perfect, and there are definitely areas to improve and sort out. Here are my thoughts…
No easy way to change plan or cancel
UPDATE: It’s now easy to cancel your plan.
The only way to cancel or change the plan you are on is to email Edgar at the moment. I’m not entirely sure why this is the case- perhaps it’s a technological issue? Whatever the issue is, there needs to be an easy way for people to cancel their account or to upgrade/downgrade. It’s just the right thing to do, and not having it will cause a lot of frustration amongst some users.
Expensive base plan and very expensive other plans
Update (June 2017)
Edgar has increased their base price from $49 to $79. They’ve now got a large number of users and the Edgar team obviously feel it’s time to increase the fees. It’s a risky move because $79/mth is going to be too expensive for many – especially since there haven’t been any significant improvements to the tool in recent times. There are also some strong competitors in the market, which some would argue do a better job at what Edgar does, such as SmarterQueue.
Update (February 2015)
Edgar has updated his prices, and instead of the big leap up from $49.99 to $449 there is a much more manageable $99/mth plan which gives you up to 25 accounts. Well done Edgar. I’ll leave the next few paragraphs in the article for posterity.
Rightly or wrongly, many people will compare Edgar to other similar social tools. It must be frustrating to social tool vendors, but that’s just the way it is. Buffer has a free plan, but their individual plan (called the “Awesome Plan”) is $9.99/mth. Hootsuite also has a free plan and their individual plan (called “Hootsuite Pro”) is $14.99/mth (or effectively $9.99/mth if you pay yearly). Buffer allows you to connect with up to 12 social accounts on their Awesome plan, and Hootsuite up to 50 on their pro plan. Compare this with Edgar’s individual plan that costs $49 where you can only add up to 10 accounts and it’s easy to view Edgar as expensive.
The other issue is that there is a ludicrous jump up from $49.99 to $449 per month for the business plan- and that only gives you 25 accounts! Then there is the agency plan which gives you 100 accounts for $999/mth. I am sure Edgar has his reasons for these prices, but they are going to be off-putting to many.
Limited number of connected accounts
I’ve covered this in part in the last point, but I think they need to offer more social media accounts for each plan – particularly for the individual plan. Although they could address this by reducing the cost of the business plan significantly.
No Google+ integration
Edgar did say back in 2015 that they were working very hard to get access to the Google+ API. I’ve not heard anything since, so it doesn’t look like a priority any more.
No Twitter card support
In my opinion, this is an important feature that is currently lacking. Edgar is all about sharing and managing content. Unfortunately it only shares text including a link when posting to Twitter. That means Edgar doesn’t embed images in Tweets or send information about the article. Twitter has a great feature called Twitter cards. You can embed images, videos and a summary of an article. It makes tweets much more visual and engaging. Other social tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, SproutSocial and MavSocial offer this, so I hope it won’t be long before Edgar does.
Only one bit.ly account
It’s great that Edgar supports bit.ly. This means you can track clicks on all your links from your bit.ly account (particularly useful since Edgar doesn’t yet offer reports or analytics). It also means you can use your custom short domain when sharing links. If you want to know more about short domains and how they can build brand awareness, have a read of an article I wrote entitled 8 Steps to Build Brand Awareness with Short Domains. However, Edgar currently only allows you to integrate with one bit.ly account and so use one custom domain. I manage my blog’s social media accounts (Seriously Social) and my web agency’s (Select Performers). I have a bit.ly account for Seriously Social (to.iag.me) and another one for Select Performers- (select.social). Unfortunately I had to choose one for Edgar. Buffer allows me to have a different bit.ly account for each social network which is fantastic. Having the ability to add multiple bit.ly accounts in Edgar will be particularly important for agencies who will manage multiple clients. They won’t all want to use the same custom short domain!
No ability to store assets individually to re-use with content
Although Edgar does store the assets (currently only photos- not videos or other content types), it doesn’t allow you to access these in a central digital assets library. Once you’ve created the text, added the photo and scheduled it, it gets stored in Edgar’s vault until its published. If you want to share that image again, you’ll have to re-upload it. Edgar could take a leaf from MavSocial’s book and list all previously uploaded digital assets so they are easy to access again. It would be a really useful feature to be able to bulk upload images and videos in one go.
Could do with integration with Canva or other image creation tool
Edgar will save you a lot of time- there is no doubt about that. However you still need to design your images, store them somewhere and then upload. In my last point I covered why Edgar should make it easy to access previously uploaded digital assets, but wouldn’t it be great if you could actually create your images within Edgar? It could be possible, if Edgar integrated with design tool Canva. Canva is a tool that makes it easy for non-designers to create professional and eye-catching images. Canva have an API and other social tools (such as Sendible) have integrated with them. How awesome would Edgar be if they added Canva integration?!
(Edgar now has analytics) Could do with basic analytics (similar to Buffer)
Update – November 27, 2014 – Edgar now has basic analytics. Whilst currently not quite as advanced as Buffer’s, it’s looking good and I’m looking forwards to seeing how this progresses!
I know Edgar is working on providing analytics. It would be great if you could quickly monitor how your campaigns are going- which updates are the most successful and which ones aren’t working. Hopefully they’ll add this soon.
WordPress plugin
The Chrome extension and bulk CSV uploader make it much easier to upload content to Edgar, but I think a WordPress plugin would be a great addition. Imagine being able to upload all your blog posts to a particular category in your Edgar library? Or perhaps you’d just like to upload posts from one category in your WordPress blog? Whilst they’re at it, they could add a feature where a new post gets added automatically to a specific category. Now we’re talking!
No team log in
I’ve only been testing the individual account, so I could be mistaken, but it seems that there is currently no facility for teams to log in with different accounts. This is going to be important for businesses and agencies- particularly as currently the individual’s personal LinkedIn and Facebook accounts are there for the taking. I hope that Edgar will make it easier for teams to manage an account and for an administrator to create sub accounts for team members with different roles. Ideally an administrator should be able to give an individual access to specific social accounts, or groups of social accounts and decide which features of Edgar they have access to. This is complex stuff, and very difficult to implement from a development point of view. Let’s see what happens!
What Others are Saying
Don’t just take my word for it, have a look at what others are saying about Edgar:
- Social Media Scheduling Tool Is My New Secret Sauce….ssssshhhh! (Julia Doherty, Green Umbrella)
- 14 Social Media Marketing Tools Recommended by the Pros (Cindy King, Social Media Examiner)
Conclusion
As I write this article, I haven’t quite decided yet, but I probably won’t be carrying on with Edgar once my trial has ended (June 2017 update – see below). It’s a difficult one because I seriously love Edgar. I don’t often get as excited about a social tool as I have with Edgar. It’s so well thought out and the user interface is a joy to work with. Yes, I hope they add Twitter card support, multiple bit.ly accounts, integrate with Canva and gives us the ability to access and re-use previously uploaded assets. But, for me, the issue is
As of June 2017, I’ve updated this article with the latest prices. Back in December 2015, I ended up restarting with an Edgar account. I got a good Black Friday deal – $245 every 6 months. In my opinion, still too expensive for what it was, but manageable. But I’m going to be cancelling my Edgar account now. There are better tools out there that are much cheaper and Edgar really isn’t innovating anymore. A big shame.
However, I’ll continue to recommend Edgar to our clients and to other businesses. Whilst it is expensive, it really is a massive time saver and could actually save your business a significant amount of money. I’m just hoping that Edgar will have another little look at the prices and be a little more generous and realistic. Here’s hoping!
What do you think? Do you like the idea of Edgar? Let me know in the comments below!
Wow, that is such a detailed review, Ian.
Can we have you check out our tool http://RecurPost.com/ which has been dubbed as a great alternative to MeetEdgar especially for it’s free plan that allows you to manage up to 3 social accounts for free. We’d love to hear what you think of it.
– Sujan
Hi Sujan. I’ve heard about Recurpost from a few people. I’d love to know more. Feel free to contact me through my contact form – https://iag.me/contact
I’ll try and sign up when I get the chance!
Ian
Just signed up and had a quick look. It looks promising. Great you have analytics baked in too!
I know it is probably early days, but I did find a few issues:
1) it was quite sluggish when I was adding new posts. Once I had to wait around 30 seconds for it to add the post.
2) It’s not a secure site. You need an SSL certificate so that passwords are sent securely.
3) It’s not possible to select different social networks on a per content basis which Edgar does.
4) I didn’t see bitly integration
5) I couldn’t quite work out the bulk upload. It looks promising, and it might be possible for bulk image upload. But can you bulk add posts with images? I could only see bulk adding of images without text.
But, it looks great value – particularly since you offer a plan for free!
Hi Ian,
I am Dinesh, the founder of Recur Post.
Thank you for giving Recur Post a try. We have fixed a few issues that you mentioned.
1. We had a lot of users sign up after we got shared by an influencer in a FB group. So the server gracefully reduced its performance. You should check it again now and you will find it much better.
2. We are adding a SSL certificate soon – like this week.
3. We allow you to create multiple libraries (categories) and then schedule from those categories. You could have unlimited categories (and one-time use categories too) so that you can schedule from those categories directly. I am trying to understand how selecting accounts per post is better than this.
4. We have bit.ly as well as goo.gl integration under plugins section now.
5. We have made that page for bulk upload way simple now. Check it out now in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFN30u5iehA. We let you upload image/text/links etc.
Thank you once again for giving it a look.
Thanks so much, Dinesh, for your detailed reply – really helpful! I’ll definitely take a look very soon.
I’ve just signed up to Edgar, even though I have only two social media accounts and want to do only basic stuff.
Why, when it’s so expensive?
Because of the time it saves me (well, once I’ve got it all set up it will) by re-using my content. I HATED having to keep filling my schedule in Hootsuite but now the pressure’s off. If I don’t put in new content, my Twitter feed won’t fall silent. I’d like it to be cheaper but I’m thinking it’ll prove worth the money as the weeks pass.
Thanks, Jennifer. You make a great point. I do feel Edgar is overly expensive for what it does. However, it does do what it does extremely well and it can save us all a huge amount of time. We all perceive price in different ways – but if paying $50 per month allows you to spend much more time on other aspects of your business then you’ll get a big return on investment. Let me know how you get on over the coming weeks, I would love to know!
Ian
Thanks for such a great article! I have very similar feelings to you on Edgar, it is a very exciting tool, but I’m just not 100% convinced enough to buy it yet – I have some questions which I’ve sent to their pre-sales team, I hadn’t actually realised you could only use 1 bitly account until I read your article so that is another question I will send to them 🙂
Thanks, a very well written article. I’m just starting to use Edgar and see it more as an aggregator. I’m wondering if I still need to use Buffer but I think Buffer is still great for news and Edgar for Evergreen and repetitive content. Thoughts?
Hi Lesley, great point. I’d do the same. Buffer is great at new content and scheduling, but it doesn’t currently offer a cycle system or a library of content. I’ve been working on my own solution to that using Buffer, but Edgar is a much more elegant solution. I’d use both!
Ian
Great stuff Ian, much appreciated.
I’ve been subscribed to Hootsuite for around a year, and while expanding, I recently discovered that they do not have the ability to bulk schedule photos without adjusting each and every post to upload a photo, or let it recognize the photo link, upon scheduling a new batch. Surely there is a better solution out there somewhere for this; I’d prefer to not have to fiddle with each and every post after drafting it.
Sendible shows promise, and I’m on a trial run with them, but also noticed they don’t seem to have bulk photo rescheduling either, though, the posts with pictures there do appear more professional than Hootsuite. Hootsuite having left my messages looking strange with two links (one for a photo link, and one for a sales link that vendors could only cross their fingers people clicked), which I’m sure was confusing for customers, and is less than conducive to conversions.
Although, I’m sure it’s likely because I’m not an advanced programmer, that I have a hard time understanding why it is tough for social media management software companies to boil down the basic task of being able to:
Bulk schedule messages with A. A DATE & TIME TO SEND MESSAGE, B. A TEXT FIELD, C. A CLICKABLE LINK IN THE TEXT, D. AN UPLOADED PHOTO (or video) TO BE MADE REPOSTABLE BY BEING ISSUED A LOCATION IDENTIFYING NUMBER, and E. THE ABILITY TO RESCHEDULE THOSE AGAIN IN A .CSV FILE. Example:
02/17/2015 15:00, Check out our new Widget! h++p://Widget.com, server_issued_photo_id_123456789
This way, all one would have to do is look up the photo IDs when drafting new content, and reissue the photo in new messages. Some people (in the social media manager help/suggestion blogs) say there is “no way” to issue photos using .csv files, but this seems a very straightforward solution, doesn’t it?
In my opinion, this would be a huge time saver and exactly what so many merchants out there are looking for. I like the idea of Edgar, but I’m looking for a robust images solution, I want something that doesn’t make me reupload images every time; it sounds like MavSocial has the closest package to what I’m looking for, though I’m not sure, not having applied for their free trial yet.
If you have any suggestions for bulk scheduling and ease of rescheduling photo files, I AM ALL EARS.
Thanks again for the review,
E
Sorry, I seem to have missed your comment until now. Thanks for asking such a great question. There are so many great social media management tools, but there’s never going to be a perfect one. Hootsuite has improved over the years, but I’m not sure their bulk upload feature has.
I know Edgar has a bulk upload feature – http://help.meetedgar.com/article/92-how-do-i-bulk-upload-content-to-edgar but I think it only allows you to upload the text and the category. You’d then have to update each update with the image you want to add.
I’ve developed my own system with Buffer. It’s a PHP script, and a bit complicated for now. However you can upload a CSV file with the text of the update and the image you want to add.
The issue is that the image needs to be hosted somewhere, and you can’t embed the image in the CSV file, but you could add a link to the image. That would be a great way for social tools to handle this. Or they could give you a page to bulk add everything where you could add images in one go.
I know MavSocial is a great social media management tool for handling images. It has an assets manager built in (which hosts your images, videos and audio files). I’ll ask @hodgemch:disqus if he can get back to you on whether they have (or will have) a bulk add feature like what you are talking about.
I’ll have a further think about this- it’s an interesting one! Thanks. Ian
Ian, Ebenlo
We are currently working on a bulk upload of posts facility – the first version that we will release will not have the ability to associate an image with it, this will have to be done manually. Subsequent versions will have that ability – you need to walk before you can run!. We are also going to have the ability to republish posts multiple times.
As Ian mentioned Mavsocial hosts all your visual content so you only need to upload it once and its is then easily published for Facebook, twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr and YouTube
I had a quick look at your Facebook page and noticed that you are posting your videos via youtube – this reduces your engagement significantly http://mavsocial.com/engagement-directly-uploaded-facebook-videos/ so you should consider directly publishing them, MavSocial can do for you as well.
Please sign up for a free account (www.getmavsocial.com) and have a play around – if you have any questions or would like me or one our team to give you a demo, i can be contacted via twitter @chrishodgeman
Thanks for your response, Chris. Looking forwards to the bulk upload feature. Sounds exciting! Ian
Chris – will the ability to republish posts be similar to Edgar’s functionality?
Jayne – we are developing the ability to have ‘pools’ of posts that can then be scheduled out
That sounds kind of similar, Chris, thanks. Having the ability to put posts in to categories would be really useful as well as being able to re-use them and/or cycle through them and back to the beginning.
Hey Ian,
Seriously detailed and helpful here. The amount of time, thought, and research you must spend on an article like is not lost on me. I also really enjoy how you add your opinions and insights as opposed to just relaying the facts. Quick food for thought: as you review these in the future, I’d love to hear who you think the tools would be best for (assuming you have an opinion). For example, Edgar could be great for agencies with big budgets who are most interested in X.. and so on.
Great stuff. I hope you’ll keep it up.
Andy
Sorry, Andy, must have missed your comment. Thanks for your thoughts. You make a good point about who I think the tools would work best for. I think Edgar would work perfectly for small agencies and individuals if it weren’t for the price! However, Edgar has an issue for bigger agencies in that there isn’t currently a feature for multiple team members to access one account. Thanks!
Ian, Really appreciate your reviews on these tools. I am a one man show, who is also biz manager and client consultant. So I’ve been looking for the right tools to manage our social media assets. You are very thorough in your reviews, thank you! I may check out Edgar…
Thanks for stopping by and for your comment. I’m always on the look out for new social tools, but although many of them promise so much, many under deliver. That’s certainly not the case with Edgar, and that’s why I wanted to dedicate a whole article to it! Let me know how you get on! Ian
tl;dr (but) I bookmarked it and going to sniply this one Ian. edgar looks like a sure fire winner for us guys who want to join the SMM jedi ninja guru club ;->
Thanks, Neil, at least you’re honest! But I did try and give you a quick summary at the top and a little video! 😉 It is a long review, so hopefully you can dip into it again. I think you’ll like Edgar- it’s a great tool in your Social Media Jedi toolkit! Ian
I just watched your video tutorial Ian. Lots of moving parts. I see why some of my clients are a little “fuzzy” on how my custom CM system works. As luck would have it, I got a demo by Robert on his SMM app Bundle Post. You’re in tune with most things social, so BP is probably not new news to you but if it is, Robert and his team are doing some interesting things up in Oregon. Nice video BTW!
Thanks, Neil. It’s been a long time since I published a video- about time! The nice thing about Edgar is that although there are lots of moving parts- it’s really easy to set up and the UI is really intuitive.
Custom systems work well when you’ve built them yourself, but communicating that to client is often hard. However, I do think it is worth the effort. A custom system gives you much more flexibility and power. I’d like to integrate Edgar into that system.
I have heard of Bundle Post and looked into it a little- but that was a few months back. I should check it out again. Let me know how you get on!
Hi Ian,
Good to know about its pros and cons in the description.Saving it for complete read. Pretty interesting tool.
Regards,
Rohan Chaubey.
Thanks, Rohan. I’m always looking for ways to help busy readers! But do check out Edgar, it’s a great tool! Ian
Sure… 🙂