Social media is an important source of traffic for many websites including our own. We have extensively covered social media integration in WordPress. Whether you want to add a twitter button, google+ button or facebook Like / fan box, we have got you covered. One of our readers recently asked us if there was a tool that allows you to automatically schedule WordPress posts for social media. The first one that comes to mind is BufferApp because we use it for our projects. In this article, we will show you how to schedule WordPress posts for social media with BufferApp.
What is BufferApp?
BufferApp is a web based status scheduling service that allows you to post across various social networks. In their own words, BufferApp is a smarter way to share things. It allows you to integrate your Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin to one single BufferApp account. You can use one single dashboard to share things on all your networks. It also offers analytics, easy scheduling of posts, and URL shortening. BufferApp also allows you to add team members, which is great for dividing up social media activities.
Video Tutorial
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Setting up WordPress to Buffer
First thing you need to do is sign up for a Buffer account. Go to BufferApp and sign up. You can also sign up using your Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin account. Once you have signed up, you will be taken to your Buffer Dashboard.
Now that we have created a Buffer account, the next thing is to connect WordPress to your Buffer account. To do that, install and activate WP to Buffer plugin on your site. After activating the plugin, go to Settings » Buffer.
In order to connect your WordPress site to your Buffer account, you need to create a Buffer App. The plugin will show you a link to create an app. Below the link it will also show you a callback URL which you need to copy because you will need it in the next step. Click on ‘Registering an Application’ link which will take you to Buffer App’s developer website.
Provide a name and description for your app, for e.g. your website title and description. In the website field provide the URL of your site. In the callback URL field enter the URL shown by WP to Buffer plugin. After filling all the required fields, press the create application button. Buffer will now send you an email with a link to access your token. Clicking on that link will take you back to Buffer’s website where you can see your Client ID and Access token. Copy these and paste them into your WP to Buffer settings page.
That’s all, your WordPress site is now connected to the Buffer App.
Schedule or Publish Posts for Social Media using Buffer
To automatically share posts when they are published, you need to go to WP 2 Buffer settings page and click on Posts tab. You can auto share your posts via Buffer when they are published or updated. Select On Publish and then choose your social media accounts to post to before saving your changes.
If you haven’t turned on scheduling on Buffer, then your WordPress posts will be shared on selected social media websites as soon as you hit the publish button.
To enable scheduling, go to BufferApp dashboard and click on Scheduling tab. You can set a timezone and select different times to share your posts.
We hope that this article helped you schedule WordPress posts for social media using BufferApp. Let us know what you are using to connect WordPress to your social media accounts by leaving a comment below.
Can buffer auto publish articles from blogspot blogs?
Hi Tayo,
We are not sure it can do that. You can try using it with IFTTT that may work.
For Some reason the Buffer plugin, brings my Google Chrome to a standstill whenever I try to load a post or page in the admin, anyone else had this?
Hey guys, thanks for writing this interesting article!
It’s been a while I wanted to automatize publishing my blog articles as the way you made it and was successful.
Just an issue with WP to Buffer plugin… I’d like to get the same result when I copy & paste manually the URL of the article using Facebook Open Graph and Twitter Cards features.
At the moment, the plugin just publish a very basic {title} {url} #{category} plus the image of the article. How could I fix it and get your same result?
Thanks for your attention.
Cheers,
Davide
If I schedule a post within WordPress, will it still be scheduled to go to Buffer when it was scheduled to be posted within WordPress? Thanks.
Yes.
Hi guys, I’m wondering if we can have our Buffer posts or IFTTT or Pocket post updates directly to our WordPress blog page (not home page)? So not WP -> Buffer but reverse and have things auto posted to my blog page on my WP site through Buffer or IFTTT or Pocket.
This would be extremely useful for posting important articles from the web to my website and then my Get Response feed that is already set up.
Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks
Mike
Work also for Facebook page (and not the profile page)?
What’s the use case? If I can schedule posts within WordPress and publish directly to different social media sites, under what circumstance is this a useful service?
Buffer allows you to space your tweets out. If the only thing you do is tweet links for your site, then you don’t need buffer. It is also great for sharing in general aside from WordPress.
Thanks for your tuto, I followed all the steps to successfully set my buffer account.
It’s a pitty that google+ is not supported by buffer, do you know a solutions to deal with it please ?
Thanks for your answer !
Google+ doesn’t have the API to allow for that, so we don’t know of any solutions just yet.
Very nice post, WordPress have already schedule post option, but BufferApp provide more option for publishing post and share on social network automatically.
I like this app
Nice Service for WordPress Users. Do you know something similar for Blogger Users? That would be much helpful.
Thanks and Regards.
Buffer is a third party service and it works for blogger as well. You have to jump through an extra hoop by using IFTTT with combination of Buffer.