For a very long time I completely neglected social media. Because, quite honestly, I hated the extra work involved in writing an additional text and selecting the right images for on Facebook & Twitter . However, I soon learned the only real way of effectively getting returning visitors was through Social.

If you only blog once a week I would still suggest manually optimizing your posts, but if you run a website with multiple blog posts a day, there are better solutions. This piece will exclusively focus on WordPress websites.

Sometimes customizing your website is preferred over installing extra plugins. In this case I would go for a plugin and save yourself a head-ache.

Do it with Jetpack

There a number of premium plugins that come with a large range of extra features. Like for instance scheduling the blog posts as well as the Facebook or Twitter placement. Coschedule does this wonderfully, but this comes at a price.

Publicize

I would prefer to go with Jetpack’s Publicize module. Not everyone is a fan but I believe the Jetpack plugin is a great addition to any WordPress site, and one that you should already be running for its easy to use other features (like Photon and Stats).  And if you really want to schedule your posts, you can just use the built-in function in WordPress (edit the Publish Immediately button in the sidebar).

Just go to your Jetpack Settings and enable the Publicize module under ‘Engagement’. Then click on the arrow down, and configure its settings and add your Facebook page and Twitter to it. For Facebook you will first have to login as a user, and afterwards you will be able to select a page.

What it does

It adds checkboxes just above your Publish button, and gives you the ability to write custom texts for both of them. If you don’t it will automatically get your first few words, and it will also automatically get the right image (The Featured Image of the First Image) for both Twitter and Facebook. If you don’t want it featured on your social media channels, just uncheck the boxes.

You are ready to go!