A one-week trial plan for any cross posting app

Before the week starts

A trial of the best cross posting app on your shortlist is only fair if every option gets the same job. Settle four things in advance.

• Three posts. One ordinary update, one with a date or price in it, and one video. Use posts you would publish anyway.
• Your networks. The real ones, not a sandbox.
• Your approver. The person who normally says yes. If that is you, set a fixed time each day to review.
• A log. One page with two columns: every step you still did by hand, and every time you opened a network to check something the app should have told you.

Day by day

Seven days is enough to see a full cycle of prepare, approve, publish and reply.

• Day 1: set up. Connect the networks. Note anything that would not connect.
• Day 2: the ordinary post. Prepare it, approve it, publish it everywhere. Check each network once.
• Day 3: answer. Reply to whatever came in. Note where you had to go to do it.
• Day 4: the dated post. Have someone else prepare it if you have a team. Send it back once with a correction, then approve.
• Day 5: the video. Publish it to every network that takes video. Watch each copy on a phone.
• Day 6: something goes wrong. Ask the vendor what happens when one destination fails.
• Day 7: decide. Read the log and mark the scorecard.

Ending the week

By day seven the log is the evidence. A short one means the app took work away. A long one means the work only moved. Fill in the scorecard from it, check the yes-or-no column, and write down one of three outcomes.

• Adopt. The heaviest lines are marked in ink and no must-have failed.
• Keep looking. A must-have failed, or the log was long. Try the next name on the shortlist.
• Stay as you are. No option beat your current routine by enough to justify the move. That is a valid result.

When the vendor offers a demo

Access differs by vendor. Some let you use the product for a period. Others, Linkme among them, begin with a demo. The plan still works: bring the three posts, ask to see days two, four and five carried out live, and put the day six question directly.

Then ask what comes next: whether a pilot on your own accounts is possible and on what terms.

Running the week with Link AI

Of the options you could run this plan on, we recommend starting with Link AI by Linkme. Linkme's page describes the pieces the week exercises: a colleague's draft waiting under 'Needs review', a Publishing Queue whose last status is 'Published to all' for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, and replies drafted in a Social Inbox.

Because Link AI also drafts the posts, add one step to day two: ask it to write the ordinary update from a single sentence. Get your three posts ready, then book a demo to try Link AI.

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