You may recall we wrote a blog post back in September about ContentCal, a new social media planning and publishing tool we had started to use.
As a reminder, ContentCal is a time-saving tool that allows scheduling of content across each of the main social media channels. We like the visual aspects of the tool and the easy ‘reuse’ options and now use it in preference to the scheduling facilities of Hootsuite. We continue to use Hootsuite for engagement and Twitter list management.
ContentCal has free and paid options depending on your need.
Already, in the first few months of 2018, the team at ContentCal have been busy adding new features and functionality to their platform to enhance the user experience. So we decided to would be a good idea to review these sparkly new options.
Shortened Links
ContentCal has added bit.ly functionality to enable shortened links to be created in posts. To use this function, enable your bit.ly account in the manage connections part of each calendar. We have found this to be a great time-saving addition to the platform. Simply add your URL link to your post and ContentCal will automatically shorten it to a bit.ly URL link. You can then easily monitor your click rate and engagement via your bit.ly account.
ContentCal Analytics
ContentCal Analytics launched in January and allows you to easily view your analytics on each channel you have connected to your calendar. ContentCal describes it best “With ContentCal Analytics we’re now allowing our users to examine the performance of their outgoing content and learn from key metrics to improve their future posts”.
It is easy to view your top performing posts and it’s easy to duplicate (making appropriate tweaks to get past the new Twitter rules) and reuse them, whilst also providing valuable insight into your posts that aren’t performing well and seeing where you could make improvements.
Instagram Scheduling
Last month we wrote about Instagram opening up their API to developers so that business accounts can now schedule posts via third-party software. This update has included ContentCal.
You can now schedule your Instagram posts to publish via ContentCal’s iOS app. Currently, you can only plan and schedule Instagram posts via the desktop app but ContentCal’s development team are aiming to roll out the ability to publish posts from a desktop out in the very near future. You can read more about this here.
Visual Changes
Another small change has been the addition of a ‘tick’ icon to signify that your post has been successfully sent to be published and can no longer be edited.
What do you think?
Have you used ContentCal since our original blog post? What are your thoughts? Do let us know in the comments below.