Social Media 101 – Step 10: Automation for Domination
OK – I got a little busy and let the blog go semi-dormant. This is free information, but it’s a bargain at thrice the price…
Since I’ve covered Facebook pretty thoroughly, I figure it’s time to move along to some automation. The beauty of automation is that you don’t have to work quite as hard as you’ll appear you are. People will think that you’re really on the ball, even when you’re only on the ball for a fraction of the time. Because, let’s face it, none of us is “on” all the time. If you’re like me, you’re doing pretty good to be “on” 30% of the time.
I’m not saying that I’m not awesome – I’m saying that I don’t really have the time, energy or psychic capacity to be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Tumblr and the other 8 zillion social sites as often as I really need to be to keep things rolling and “asses in the seats.”
So – how do I manage to look so great? I automate.
That, my friends, is a four syllable word. Not bad for an aging punk from Leicester…
Anyway – what does that mean to you? If you automate your Social Marketing/Social Media Plan, you can go to one place and do a little work – and have that little bit of work populate all over the place. Folks will think you’re really on the ball – and you spend a fraction of the time. You win!
I know you’re asking “James – how do I do this? I want to be super-awesome like you. I know I’ll never be as good looking*, but I’d like to have some small modicum of your dominance, socially. HOW, James, HOW?!?!?!” Well…
Without further stupid writing, here’s…
Lesson 10: Automation for Domination
The Exercise: Set it up right, give it some thought and use the right tools.
- Set It Up Right. I’m a WordPress FREAK. I’m a WordPress evangelist. I think that having a WordPress site makes you really, really cool – and I’m right. The other thing that having a WordPress (or other CMS site) gives you is the ability to post something to your site or blog and have it easily appear everywhere else. The way it works for me is that I make a blog post and it pops to my Facebook business page and personal page as a link and a thumbnail. It then goes to Twitter as a title and a link, along with the categories appearing as a hashtag. Then it also goes on to LinkedIn as a link. Between the readers I have here, my Facebook friends and followers, my Twitter buddies and all the folks I’m linked with on LinkedIn, I can ostensibly get 7500 views. Not bad for a single post. How do I do that? Plugins. I use several, and I’ll list them in a bit. But, you can see the power of automation and having my “loop” set up properly.
- Give It Some Thought: This should really go without saying. One of the steps in doing anything should be to give it some thought. But – this has some special considerations. You don’t want to create a circular loop of posting – if you post to your blog/site and it feeds Facebook and Twitter, and Twitter pulls your Facebook feed and Facebook pulls your Twitter feed, you can wind up with the post being caught in a cycle of post, repost, repost the post, repost the repost of the repost, reposting the repost of the repost reposting. See – it can get weird. So – map it out. Make sure you’re not putting stuff into a loop that never ends. It gets really weird, and eventually, it collapses into itself and creates a black hole that would make the Cern Hadron Collider proud. Don’t do it. Map it out and avoid collapsing the universe. We’d all appreciate it.
- Use the Right Tools: You don’t have to do this all manually. And there are some GREAT tools that can help you link everything up:
- Hootsuite: This one is pretty great. You can add several of your social sites and have a single dashboard to post to all of them at once. If you upgrade to the paid version, you can “buffer” your posts so that you can sit down and write a week’s (or month, or year) worth of posts at one time and have Hootsuite post them at predetermined times. Sweet!
- Buffer: This one works a lot like Hootsuite, but with the free version of this, you can buffer your posts – but only 10 at a time. Not bad!
- RSSGrafiti – this one is really Facebook only, but it works in a variety of ways. Make a post to your blog, and it posts to your Facebook page or pages. You can pull several feeds, so if you have several RSS feeds on several sites, you can have them all pull into one place. It’s an app that you install into your main Facebook profile, and you can use it to add feeds to any of your Facebook pages – personal or business. Plus, it’s free. Free is awesome.
- Twitter: Twitter has an API that will pull from your blog or RSS feed, without the need for your blog or site to do anything special. Setup is a little more complex than it needs to be, but – heck, it’s free and it doesn’t bog your site down unnecessarily.
- RSS: Almost any site that you use can pull an RSS feed from your site/blog and re-post it for you. Use the power of your RSS feeds. They’re there for a reason…
If you give it a little thought, set it up right and use some of the great tools you have available, you can dominate some Social marketing. Or, if nothing else, you’ll look like you’re working hard – even if you’re just sitting around Earth Fare, drinking coffee and doodling in your sketchbook.
