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A social media strategy is critical for successful blog promotion. Automation can help improve your system by bringing timely posts to your audience with little to no oversight. This article covers everything bloggers need to know about social media automation alongside a highly effective social media strategy you can use to boost your audience engagement.
I’ve been blogging for three years and have a great following on social media. About six months ago, I started using this strategy to automate my content publishing and it’s been working like gangbusters.
This article covers everything bloggers need to know about social media automation alongside a highly effective social media strategy you can use to boost your audience engagement.
Before we get started, make sure to sign up for my newsletter and get tons of tips and tricks to boost your blogging business.
If you are wondering how to promote your content, an excellent place to start is social media. Social media is a great way to connect with new and existing readers. It offers visibility that would otherwise be difficult to gain if you only rely on search engine results.
Not only that, social media is great for nurturing your relationship with your audience. You can connect with your followers more casually and expressively, which creates interest and builds trust. Posting on social media is a significant step to increase brand awareness and close sales.
This article will show you how I automate my social media to post multiple times per day without my intervention. These strategies truly work. I have used these methods to achieve 147 thousand impressions on Pinterest my first month and consistent traffic to my website. Want all of that for yourself? Well, keep on reading.
Contents
What is automation?
There are so many different benefits to using social media as a marketing tool. That said, it can be a lot of work. You have to post consistently and frequently enough to create interest and capture your followers’ attention; thus, social media management can quickly become very stressful.
Thankfully, there are automation tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) software that makes posting regularly on social media much more manageable. AI tools can automate social media. You can set up commands sourced from your website, podcast, Youtube channel, social media, and more.
Consistently publishing content to your social media can be exhausting. At the conceptual stage, blogging business owners should focus on quality content creation, not on promotion. However, at some point, marketing is necessary. It is essential to promote your content to gain traction and create a faithful following.
The main reason I decided to automate my social media was due to evergreen content. I was preparing to increase my post frequency from one post a week to two blog posts a week, which means double the content. With more content comes more content promotion, and I found that marketing my content consumed a lot of my time. Using an automated tool makes content promotion simpler and less time-consuming.
The second reason I decided to automate was to prolong the life of my evergreen content. Most people will not spend time searching on your website and then stop and read multiple posts. So, older blog posts tend to get forgotten, even if the content is still relevant.
You can consistently promote your blog posts months and years after publishing them by using automation. Doing so manually is possible but time-consuming and a massive mental effort. Automation allows you to set up automated social media posts to promote your blog content.
A great social media tool enables you to tap into each platform’s features and use it to build a relationship with your followers effectively. In 2021, trends show that short-form video content and carousels perform best on most social media platforms. Having a tool with features that keep up with social media innovations and updates helps make your task of managing content much more effortless. Each platform’s algorithm is different. The best tool takes into account those differences to optimize your experience on the platform.
LATER
Later is a popular social media management app with free and paid plans. It connects with Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
I use Later to schedule carousels, videos, and stagnant posts to my social media feed. Its visual interface makes it easy to prepare posts to all the social media sites mentioned above in one click.
ZAPIER
“Zapier is an event-based automation” (Zapier). Each event varies by the purpose of the command. For example, you can set automation to post on social media every time you have a new or updated post.
The cool thing about Zapier is that it boasts of hundreds of applications! You can build automation with Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Google Docs, YouTube, Google Calendar, Dropbox, WordPress, RSS feeds, Evernote, Slack, and more. Zapier makes it easier to connect with your team and keep you organized.
RECURPOST
Recurpost is an automatic post scheduler and generator. Timing is essential when posting content as you only have a brief window to attract your follower’s attention. Through Recurpost, you can post your content at the best time for audience engagement when active on the platform and expecting to see content from you.
Recurpost has an easy-to-navigate interface. Plus, it has both a free plan and a paid plan, so you can try it out for free until you are ready to commit. Unlike other automatic schedulers, Recurpost allows you to have one inbox for all of your social media so that you can respond in one place without having to go to different sources.
I subscribe to Recurpost’s paid plan ($40) and link up to ten social media accounts. With the most affordable paid plan of $20, you have access to one-thousand stored updates that will repeat indefinitely. Use the stored recurring updates for evergreen content. Best of all, you have unlimited Tweet variations (to abide by Twitter’s regulations) and access to white-label reports.
Recupost has made my social media scheduling so much simpler. I love receiving content to my feed without having to pre-schedule.
There are tons of social media outlets that enable you to promote your content. The challenge is to consistently create content that is native to each platform .
Here are social media outlets that I regularly post on to drive traffic to my website.
Pinterest is a visual search engine that drives the most traffic out of all the social media platforms listed. Pinterest allows you to connect a link to every post that is easily accessible.
In 2020, Pinterest made a significant change to the platform by adding the tags feature. Tags allow business owners to place a tag (identifier) on each physical product that could be purchased in a store. Pinterest e-commerce integration is great if you sell physical products!
In addition to tags, Pinterest pushed out story pins. Right now, story pins are only accessible to business accounts by request. Story pins are scheduled and made on the Pinterest platform. There is no outside scheduler that allows you to make story pins for Pinterest at this time.
You can upload video pins from Later. Pinterest favors its scheduler and will promote your pin much more than if it were produced from a third-party authorized scheduler.
The drawback to story pins include
- Manual publishing
- Limited storage on a phone
- Unlimited storage on desktop
- Do not allow an individual link
- Limit on hashtags
The drawbacks encourage audience members to stay on the Pinterest platform rather than increasing traffic to your website because each story pin does not have individual links.
Earlier, I mentioned that you could schedule a story pin. That’s true, but the system limits you to 5 pages per story pin. Video and carousel (up to 20 pages) story pins are manually uploaded to the platform and cannot be scheduled.
Instagram is one of my favorite platforms to connect with other bloggers and increase my creativity. The visual layout of Instagram lets you get creative and expands the possibilities for a business owner. However, Instagram is always changing, and its platform features are constantly fine-tuning.
Right now, the best way to be discovered on Instagram is through Reels. Reels is short-form video content. The Instagram platform rolled out Reels in mid-2020 as a way to compete with TikTok. In January 2021, Instagram announced that Reels was not performing the way they expected and did not compare in popularity to TikTok (Rainylune, 2020). However, Reels continues to be the best way to be noticed and reach new potential customers.
The main drawback of Reels is that they cannot be scheduled ahead of time. Reels demand that you manually upload your videos when you would like them to be published. Plus, its full vertical screen feature makes it difficult to transfer content from other sources. On top of that, Instagram has announced that it will not be promoting content with watermarks (such as the TikTok watermark, which is also a vertical full-screen content platform).
LinkedIn is a place for professionals. People go to the platform to list their work experience, find new employment opportunities, and network with other professionals in their field. LinkedIn is rumored to be the social media that most bloggers do not use, but it can give you a massive return for your investment if you do use it.
In my case, I have set up a business account for LinkedIn (for free) to promote the blog and connect with fellow bloggers. While I am not reliant on LinkedIn at this point, in the future, I would like to have sponsorships on the podcast and blog. In preparation, I am building a following and a presence on the platform to later leverage when connecting with a brand.
Twitter is a text-based platform with recently integrated images, videos, and short-form content called “fleet.” Twitter's audience is vocal about their opinions and are ready to have new experiences.
I’ve learned a lot from the minor interactions I’ve made in the last month on Twitter. For example, while promoting the podcast, I posted the link and included a short description. I received a comment with a suggestion to post a podcast short to the platform so that people could listen to a bit of the podcast and then choose if they would like to listen to a full episode. I loved the idea and have regularly posted podcast snippets in video form on Twitter.
Here are some results that other content creators have seen from Twitter.
One study showed that tweets with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets.
katescott.co
Tweets that feature images earn 150 percent more retweets are like 89 percent more and lead to 18 percent more clicks.
outboundengine.com
Twitter focuses on readers and text-based content, which is similar to blogging.
Previously, Twitter was known for its 280 character limit on each post, but now, it has also adopted short-form video content like its competitors. Twitter fleets disappear after 24 hours and last up to 30 seconds. Fleets are available for your followers to view. Fleets are not scheduled and need to be inputted manually.
I use Twitter every day by posting updates and launches on the main feed. Plus, I also post two fleets per day to generate interest and boost follower engagement.
Facebook is the best social media for market research. Facebook boasts of a hefty understanding of its users from likes, dislikes, time on site, friends, connections, demographics, purchasing decisions, and more.
84% of millennials still use Facebook.
blog.hootsuite.com
74% of Americans rely on Facebook to influence their purchasing decisions
jimdo.com
Facebook has multiple features to support each user. Facebook groups are a great source of knowledge to find out what is trending, people's fears, needs, and motivations, and connect with others.
While people have different opinions of Facebook, the reality is that Facebook has a great source of knowledge that is heavily rooted in data.
Reddit is a text-based forum where users can share candid points of view with the public. Users can add links, images, videos, and more to each post.
The Reddit community’s benefit is that people on the platform genuinely want to support each other and dare to be vulnerable. Often, I find bloggers in their beginning stages on Reddit who facilitate productive conversation on blogging foundations. I enjoy the Reddit community and point to my content when answering a question. If I know that someone else has a more robust solution, then I link that as well.
I am part of one Subreddits in which each week there is a facilitated discussion from the administrator. For example, in the first month of February 2021, that post asked to reply with a feedback link. Users responded in a very vulnerable manner by posting their blogs and article links while asking for feedback.
If you would like to join a community that supports one another, Reddit is a great place to start.
TIKTOK
Tiktok is a short-form content platform released in 2020. TikTok’s popularity drove millions of US downloads in the first month. Tiktok is a creative space for vertical full videos.
Creating content that is native to the platform is key in TikTok. The ongoing popularity of TikTok has caused some social media marketing specialists to suggest posting three times per day.
I schedule TikTok posts to upload one post a day with Later. Later sends me a notification, and I post it manually. Apart from that, I manually post content to TikTok two times per day, in the morning and the evening.
YOUTUBE
Youtube is known for its long-form content (more than 10 minutes). Most people (including me) use it as a search engine, education, and entertainment source. I have found Youtube to be the platform that I spend the most time on compared to any other social media.
Youtube has recently released shorts, a short-form content feature. It is similar in look and feel to Instagram stories or Twitter’s Fleets.
I currently post to Youtube at least once a week with a podcast video. Videos usually range from 45 minutes to one hour. I decided to use Youtube as a platform for my videos because I believe many people have subscriptions to Youtube and discover new content within the platform.
Social Media for Bloggers
There are many social media platforms available to bloggers. Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter are among the most popular ones. All of these have their own strengths and weaknesses that make them better for specific types of blogging. It's important to know what each platform is good at so you can choose the one that will work best for your blog.
Related Content: MARKET YOUR CONTENT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
Use Recurpost to automate your social media posts. Recurpost offers a library of suggestions to automate your post. You can submit your variation of posts to use the post again and again.
Variations of posts are important because Twitter does not allow you to repost the same post twice. So, consider using variations such as
Title of the post, URL, and hashtag
Switched up to …
Title of post, hashtag, and URL
Recurpost will also pull information from your feeds to make posts organically.
Here is my growth strategy for social media that will drive traffic to your website.
- Use Later to promote new content
Every week, take one day to make and resize content on that week's topic.
Have ten unique pins made: video, carousels, and images.
Use the pins and resize them twice. Once to fit stories (1080 x 1920) and the second time to work on the Instagram feed (1080 x 1080). On the paid Later plan, you can schedule carousels and videos. - Recurpost Library
Setup the Recurpost library with targeted content feeds and post frequency. Here are examples of feeds I use for my social media content.
Blog. My website’s RSS feed feeds my blog library. The RSS allows the algorithm to publish posts based on the content of the website.
Podcast. My Podcast feed comes from my podcast RSS feed. Anytime I upload a new podcast Recurpost will post a variation of the title, description, and URL.
Social media. Instagram’s content feeds the social media feed. I set it up this way because I load organic and original content to Instagram at least once per week (about 20 pieces of new content per week). It allows Recurpost to post on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google My Business (1080 x 1080 size).
Newsletter. The substack RSS feed is a feed into the newsletter library, so you won’t miss an update.
With these four libraries, my Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn receive multiple posts per day. - Use Zapier to link your Instagram to Recurpost
Because Instagram allows for extended captions, Recurpost will use the content to make variations which are then recycled to Twitter, Google My Business, and LinkedIn. Zapier connects Instagram to Pinterest to posting rates.
- Variations
I make caption variations on excel and feed them to Recurpost via Zapier. Here are my content columns.
Post title. I copy and paste my long-tail blog post title.
Snippet. I include a summary of the post at the top of each blog post. I then copy and paste the snippet into excel to use with both the post and show notes title.
Hashtag: I use later to look up popular hashtags and write 1-3 hashtags.
Tip: By simply changing the hashtag, you can change tons of variations.
URL: The URL is the link to the blog post.
Pretty Link: Pretty links are made every week so that we can promote the podcast over audio.
Anchor link: I use the anchor link to guide the podcast episode and apply the episode’s art.
Additional Resources: Add resources that are helpful and related to the content.
Podcast page link: I have a podcast page on my website called “podcast.” I list this link too.
Newsletter: I have the Substack newsletter link as a variation.
Using a customized template, I fill out an excel sheet with the main fields listed above and with pre-made formulas – about 120 variations are instantly produced. Zapier then loads all of the variations to Recurpost, which then uses the variations for recurring library posts. The process of creating 120 variations takes about 5 minutes. - Manual daily posting
This is by far my most fantastic growth hack! So far, I’ve talked about primary feeds. Feeds are great for promotion and content that has a long life span. However, social media platforms are consistently launching new features and supporting early adopters to create content.
These new features tend to be pushed out by the platform a lot more than feed content. Take, for example, Instagram Reels. Six months after testing the new feature, Instagram continues to push the feature much more than feed content.
I receive 10 times more reach on Reels than on feed content. Ten times is impressive!
Below is a screenshot of an in-feed Instagram video post that was 5 hours old.
Instagram feed content from @bloggingbusinessowner showing three views of a post published five hours ago.
- Analyze Reel performance for views
For comparison, here is a picture of a Reel. You’ll notice that the Reel was published three hours ago and has already received 31 views!
Reels screenshot of 31 views from Instagram's @bloggingbusinessowner - Analyze Reels on optimal posting time
Screenshot of Reels with a timestamp of three hours courtesy of @bloggingbusinessowner
Similar to Instagram Reels, other platforms have released short-form content features.
Here are just a few platforms with short-form content:
✅ Twitter Fleets
✅ LinkedIn Stories
✅ Youtube Shorts
✅ Snapchat Spotlight
✅ Pinterest Stories
✅ Instagram Reels
Algorithms vary. However, most platforms will incentivize users to participate in new features with growth. The downside for blogging business owners is that no social media scheduler can tap into all of these features simply because they are so unique (at the time of writing, there are no schedulers that do at least one of these). - Short-form social media platforms
Here’s what I do…
All of these new features have one thing in common – they all are full-screen vertical content. I resize my content to 1080×1920, load the content into a Google Drive folder, and rename it by the posting date. Then, I post to most of these platforms twice a day (in the morning and the evening). Once I have used the content, I rename it with a future date on Google Drive to recycle content (since most of these features have a lifetime of 24 hours).
Social Media Short-Form Content
Each platform varies on the amount of time each video can run for. Snapchat has the shortest videos with 11 seconds max and Story Pins have the most extended length with 60 seconds.
My priority is to load content into Instagram and Pinterest. Since these platforms promote my content beyond my followers, it’s an effective way to increase my reach and growth.
Pinterest allows you to store content for stories on your phone depending on your carrier (e.g., android vs. iPhone) and offers storage space on a desktop. I use my desktop to load Pinterest story pins. Because Pinterest pins can be video, carousels, or a combination of both, I publish one video and one carousel twice a day. That’s a total of four story posts per day! - Track (build habits)
This growth strategy can seem complicated since it has several components. I have developed a tracker to help me know when I need to post and when the scheduled posting would stay organized manually. There are two main benefits of having a tracker.
1. It helps you keep track of future posting dates (so that you don’t schedule a ton of content on one day only). This way, your scheduled posts are spaced out appropriately.
2. By now, manual posting takes me about five minutes. I often do it while waiting for the water kennel to heat up! I keep track of all my posts because I often don’t remember if I’ve done it yet or posted it on all platforms. I use the tracker to manually cross out when I’ve posted to one platform and then proceed to the next one.
Originally posted on June 27, 2021 @ 1:15 am
FOR YOU:
Thank you for this value packed post!
Learnt so much about automation.
Thank you, it’s great to hear it’s been helpful. What social platforms do you prefer?