I love Facebook. Sure, it can be a giant time suck and a pain sometimes, but I love reconnecting and keeping in touch with old friends and family. I love seeing pictures of other people’s kids and seeing how they are growing. I love following my favorite local businesses and charities and other groups–it’s like my whole world is just in one place. Here are some apps that I use to make my Facebook life easier and less time consuming. I also use them for the safety factor–like last week I was on vacation, but prescheduled a bunch of stuff and no one can tell if I’m home or not! It also allows you to take days off, if you do social media for a job.

1. Post Planner–Post Planner has a free app and several paid versions. I use the paid version with custom branding. You may have seen it on my Facebook page, where it says “via Smart Spending Spot.” That’s my custom branding to the app. I like Post Planner for several reasons. I joined it for the ability to pre-schedule posts. Yes, Facebook now allows this as an option to Facebook, but you can’t do repeat like you can on Post Planner. So, for instance, near the end of every week, I post a reminder for you all to check the Sunday Coupon Preview, to see what’s coming in this week’s paper. Facebook would only allow me to do that one time, with Post Planner I can set it to repeat weekly which helps. Also, some bloggers occasionally get temporarily locked out of Facebook, because the bots think you’re spamming the place even when you’re not. With Post Planner, I can still get on and post, even if Facebook has locked me out. I can also pre-schedule something to post to several pages at once, which is great if you manage multiple Facebook pages like I do. Again, the Facebook option only allows for you to do it one time on one page or profile. With Post Planner you can do groups and everything. You can also add other authors and page admins on to one app.

2. Treat-This is new, today is the first day I’ve used it and I LOVE it! Just go to the Shutterfly Homepage and scroll down to where it says “Treat.” Treat is a division of Shutterfly. You link it to your Facebook page and it will use all that information and photos. Then you can make birthday greetings and birthday cards! How cool is that? You can even sit down and do a bunch at one time, and schedule them to post when it’s the person’s birthday or special occasion.

3. IFTTT-IFTTT stands for “If this, then that.” Again, you can link a bunch of your social media accounts to each other. One option that I have used it that if IFTTT sees that I did a Facebook, status update, it automatically published it to Twitter. You can choose from over a dozen different networks.

4. BirthdayFB-Link this to your Facebook account and it grabs all your friends’ birthdays, at a week at a time. You can then preschedule messages to them. Never miss a birthday, and again, it’s another safety thing because it will make it look like you’re home even when you’re not.

5. Are you Smarterer-Ok, this one is just for fun. But I love little trivia quizzes like this, and Smarterer has a ton of them. There’s regular trivia, Disney, Pinterest and more.

Ok, well, that’s 5, not 4. Consider it a bonus, because now I don’t want to change the graphic I made. Have fun with it, and hopefully you’ll be saving some time on Facebook.