Author name: Chris Makara

A free, easy-to-use reference guide to the optimal dimensions for social media image sizes, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter.

It’s time for get serious about social media automation for real estate. Why? Because social media marketing is crucial to any modern real estate business.

There are those who argue that the total social media followers on social media channels is nothing but a vanity figure. And in some ways, they’re right. If you’re sweeping Twitter and following every account possible, seeking only a follow-back in return, then yes, your follower count is an empty figure, made up of bots, phonies and those get-rich-quick scammers. Plus, what’s the value of a following that includes little to no target customers?

Keeping your social media profiles full of great content won’t happen by accident. Nope, you’ll need a social media content calendar to make it happen. Why? Well, having a plan for social media updates ensures that you won’t be left scrambling to find something to share when it’s crunch-time. Let me ask you something… Do you wear a watch? Use an outlook calendar? Carry a day planner with you? Hang a calendar in your work or home office? Most likely, you answered yes to at least one of the above. And the reason why is obvious. You can leave earlier for work on Tuesday, when you know your offsite meeting that morning takes longer to get to than the office. You can pick up dinner on Wednesday knowing soccer practice is at 6 pm that evening. You can put out all the dishware your mother-in-law gave you when you know she’s coming to visit next week… You get the picture. Having a plan in place helps you be more effective at whatever it is you do. And not just that – it allows you to be more flexible and strategic when things you didn’t expect pop up out of nowhere. Like using the time you’d normally spend making dinner to clean up after the 14 soccer players that you didn’t know would be coming over that evening. Like life, effective social media management requires forethought, with unexpected issues and opportunities popping up all the time. Therefore, having a plan in place leaves you better equipped to handle any curveballs thrown your way. [color-box color=” customcolorpicker=”] And in this guide, I’ll cover everything you ever wanted to know about social media content calendars. You’ll learn: What is a social media content calendar Why you should use a social media content calendar How to create a social media content calendar When it makes sense to use social media automation instead of creating a social content calendar[/color-box] Let’s get started. What is a social media content calendar? If you’ve been managing your brand’s social media accounts long enough, you probably have a pretty good grasp on the kinds of posts you share on a regular basis. But sitting there every day, drilling out copy and posting in real-time is cutting into the time you really should be spending on engaging with followers or coming up with your next great ad campaign. Not to mention churning new social updates out every day can be super tedious and boring. But what if you devoted a single chunk of time to planning, drafting and scheduling ALL of the content you’re going to share that week, month or maybe even quarter? By doing so, you’d be creating a social media content calendar: a dated outline used as the framework for the posts you’re planning to share over a set period of time. Then you can flesh it out on a daily basis with real-time updates: engaging with followers, sharing timely external content and monopolizing on spur-of-the-moment trends and updates. Sound intimidating? Sure. But it doesn’t have to be. No need to over complicate it – building out a social content planning calendar should help you save time, not waste it. Make it your own. Pick a format that you feel most comfortable using (we’ll talk more about that later). Cover a manageable span of time. Believe me, the benefits are worth the effort. Why use a social media content calendar? We’ve already mentioned the “duh factor” of why it pays to use a social media content calendar: you’re setting aside a few hours to build out social media updates for a longer period of time than just the here and now. Thus, saving you time overall and freeing you up to become more strategic on a daily basis. Strategery for the win. Now let’s dig a litter deeper into the additional benefits you can expect to gain by using one. 1. Be prepared for the unexpected. Stuff happens. Whether you get the flu or your office loses power, the unpredictable is always going to pop up when you least expect it. If you don’t have plans for what to share that day and posts scheduled in advance, your social media accounts go dark when you do. 2. Post at the optimal time on your social channels. What time is your audience most active on social media? Hopefully you know the answer to this, but if you don’t, you can find information like this about your audience via built-in analytics tools (like Facebook Insights) or other free or paid tools. Say you know your audience is most active in the evening, from 4-7 pm. Are you always free then to be posting in real-time? Are you sure your morning meetings won’t run over and cause you to have to scramble to find content worth scheduling for that afternoon? When you use a social content calendar, you can design it to emphasize your most engaging content and/or greatest frequency of posts during the period of time that your audience is most active (here’s how to find the best time to tweet). With this content planned and scheduled in advance, you never have to worry about potentially missing your optimal posting window. And you can plan to be actively engaging with your audience then as well. 3. Manage multiple social media accounts effectively. Who ONLY has a Facebook page and nothing else? Twitter? Pinterest? Let’s hope no one’s raising their hand. The majority of brands have at least two, maybe even five or six different social media accounts to manage and monitor on a daily basis. So you know trying to draft copy for updates that will be equally effective across all accounts takes some elbow grease. And coordination. Hopping around all day from one channel to another, posting and engaging, posting and engaging isn’t only going to burn you out pretty quickly and increase the risk of mistakes (wrong sized image, inaccurate details, spelling errors, etc.), it’s just

It can be a chore to create social media status updates from your content. I get it. Who wants to copy and paste text into your social media scheduling tool whenever you run out of updates? I’d much rather spend my time doing other things, wouldn’t you? So let’s take back some of your time by eliminating the need to waste hours each week creating status updates. Sound good? Cool. And today, I’ll show you how you can not only easily generate social media updates from your blog posts, but how you’ll be able to use them again and again. This post will cover: Why you need a library of social media updates for each blog post The reason you should share your blog posts again and again How to come up with multiple status updates for a blog post Why you are about to LOVE Google Sheets – even if you hate spreadsheets Ways to find your evergreen blog content Build your own social media content creator using Google Sheets The sneaky way to 10X your social media updates How to recycle your evergreen social media updates again and again In the end, you’ll be able to paste in any blog URL and generate multiple social media updates in less than 2 seconds. Check it out: Excited? Let’s take a look and see how it’s done. Why you need to generate a variety of social media updates Look, it’s no secret that the majority of social media updates are usually just the title of the blog post. And that’s OK if you aren’t into recycling your social media updates. But you’re a smart marketer and you know the importance of stretching out your content as much as you can. So it makes sense to create a bank of evergreen social media updates that you can use over again and again. This way, when you reuse your status updates you have more of a variety of what gets posted. In fact, using the hack outlined in this post I’ll show you how to create social media content with ease which will all be for a single blog post. Bonus points to sharing the variations to your different social media accounts. Here’s a small example: Define Your Own Social Sharing Rule https://t.co/HryfAHOERc pic.twitter.com/MmAC81j91O — Chris Makara ???? (@ChrisMakara) August 23, 2017 Using the 5-3-2 Rule for Social Sharing https://t.co/mlZcy0NGlB pic.twitter.com/LmEYjqUOJL — bulk.ly (@Bulkly) August 23, 2017 The reason you should share your blog posts on social media again and again Depending on the social media channel you are posting on, there’s a good chance that the majority of your audience won’t see what you just shared. In fact, according to Moz the average life of a tweet is 18 minutes. Some other studies have listed it lower than that. The bottom line is that on social media (especially on Twitter), your status updates drift off pretty quick. This means that for the most part, your audience is not going to see your tweet. Whether it is too much going on their feed, or the fact they were not online when you posted – your status updates tend to disappear in the blink of an eye. So it makes sense to share your links again. In fact here’s what Guy Kawasaki has to say about sharing the same thing again on social media: [perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”But on social media, if you’re not pissing people off, you’re probably not using it hard enough.”[/perfectpullquote] He goes on to say: [perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]And he has a response to people who complain about repeats: “If you saw my tweet twice, you don’t have a life.” Explaining that he’s simply reaching people who missed the tweet earlier usually mollifies people.[/perfectpullquote] But don’t just take Guy’s word for it. Even Hootsuite has posted the same thing multiple times. Of course depending on your frequency and audience size, you’ll need to find a nice balance of how often to share the same thing. Ideally, you’ll want to know the best time to tweet or ideal times for the channel you are posting to. But, the best way to reduce the likelihood of upsetting your followers is not only a balance of frequency, but using a social media queue that recycles multiple variations for your status updates. How to come up with multiple status updates for a blog post There are a number of ways you can create a variety of social media updates for your profiles. Among them are: Using the blog post titles you didn’t use – chances are that you created multiple titles before you published. These work great as status updates! Pulling stats from your post – If your blog post cites any stats or numbers, these are perfect to use as a social media post. Creating a “pull quote” from your blog post. Paraphrasing key points found within the post These are good ideas…but I’m more interested in automating as much of this process as I can. So, I’m going to reveal the easiest way to create social media content at scale. And to do this, we’re going to use Google Sheets. [optin-monster-shortcode id=”okk7iuuzzirwsbnwbook”] Why you are about to LOVE Google Sheets – even if you hate spreadsheets Look, I know spreadsheets aren’t for everyone. But don’t let Google Sheets scare you if you aren’t a spreadsheet ninja – because I’ll even give you a ready to go spreadsheet with all the formulas set up. And if you want to skip the options I gave above on manually creating multiple status updates, I’ll show you how to use Google Sheets to automatically create the social media content for you. You’re about to find a new love for Google Sheets. So here’s how to do it step-by-step. Create Your Google Sheet Go to Google Sheets and create a new “Blank” spreadsheet. Then inside your spreadsheet, you’ll create the following columns: Group Status Update URL Image URL The next thing

Seems like every business is on social media these days. Which is the whole reason you’ve established a social media presence as well, right? If you answered that with a quick ‘yes’ and nothing more, you’re not giving your social strategy enough thought. Granted, you definitely need to have what your competitors have in order to keep up in your industry. But business success isn’t about keeping up. It’s about finding better, faster, smarter ways to do what others do – so you can carve a niche for yourself and create a unique competitive advantage. You need your social media presence to be working for you. That could mean a multitude of different things to different companies and people. Do you want to further your brand awareness? Create a stronger dialogue with your customer? Promote helpful content and webinars to establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry? Social media can help you do all of that. But you have to build a strong enough social presence first. In this post, I’ll show you how leveraging social media automation can save you time to increase your visibility even if you have no social media presence. You’ll build an increased social media presence by understanding: Why it’s important to understand your “why” when it comes to social media The ripple effect of responding (or not) on social media and how it can help or hurt your brand The need to refresh your status updates by considering these 5 things Why having a blog is important for your social media presence And more Ready to find out how to increase social media presence? Social media automation = more time to achieve your social media goals When I tell people they need to spend more time building out their company’s social media channels, they look at me like I’m nuts. They say, “I’m always posting stuff”, “Yeah, I hired an intern for that”, “I started a Facebook page a while ago”, but mostly: “I barely have time to post updates, let alone do anything beyond that.” I get it. I used to make the same excuses. But that was before I created Bulkly. Imagine uploading all of your social updates at once and then setting them on autopilot vs. creating list after list of daily updates, then scheduling each one by hand. Bulkly is a social media automation tool that does just that, eliminating those daily social media to-dos that are taking up so much of your time. Already a Bulkly user? You rock! Interested? Learn more here. And social media automation isn’t just limited to scheduling posts. Depending on the social network it might make sense to automate some following and unfollowing of users  or even automate reporting. There’s really no limit to the things you can automate if it makes sense. In fact, many Zapier experts have developed complex workflows to streamline various aspects of social media management. Best of all, it’s not complicated. And it costs a whole lot less time and money than hiring another employee to do the exact same things. How to increase your presence on social media By using Bulkly or another social media management tool to automate your daily social to-dos, you can stop making excuses and start spending the time needed to work on things that can help you build a better social media presence. Ready to learn what those things are? Let’s get started. 1. Revisit your social media strategy. I can see the eye rolls already. But I’m serious. When was the last time you sat down and really gave thought to your “big picture” social strategy? Be honest. Probably a few months ago at least, right? Then maybe it’s time to review it to make sure that you’re doing the right things for the right reasons. My favorite way to conduct a thorough and productive strategy review? Work backwards by first finding my ‘why’. What’s the ‘why’ behind your social media strategy? Why are you trying to establish a social presence? And why do you want to improve your social media presence? Your ‘why’ is your end goal, your purpose, the main driver behind everything you do on social, from writing update copy to engaging with followers. Some businesses are trying to further brand awareness. Others are looking to learn more about their customers for market research. Still others are solely focused on driving traffic to their website. Only you know your answer. Got it? Great. Once you’ve pinpointed your ‘why’ (hopefully you knew it right away), it’s time to walk through your campaigns, posting schedules, content shared, etc. to make sure they’re all working toward furthering that purpose. For example, let’s say your ‘why’ is to improve brand awareness. As you’re looking through your recent campaigns, you’re seeing that their execution has missed the mark a little. Most of the efforts supporting these campaigns have been heavily focused on driving traffic to your website. While more website traffic can definitely help further your brand image and persona, traffic should be secondary to your main goal, your ‘why’ = establishing brand awareness. Or maybe not. Maybe there’s a reason your efforts have strayed from your originally planned direction. Maybe it’s time to revisit your ‘why’ itself. Maybe it needs to change based on changes to your business. Or maybe your team just needs you to point them back in the right direction. Either way, taking the time to work backward from your goals to your day-to-day execution gives you a better perspective on your overall social strategy so you can make necessary changes and avoid missing the mark before it’s too late. 2. Increase your level of engagement. People really underestimate the power of conversation. The things you say and how you say them help develop others’ impressions of who you are as a person. If you’re friendly, funny and helpful, people are probably going to associate your personality with those traits. Likewise, if you’re grumpy, rude or dismissive,

There comes a time in all online entrepreneurs’ lives where we question the inordinate amounts of time we spend managing our social channels. Sourcing, posting, engaging…and doing it all over again the next day. Most of the time, we love what we do. But sometimes, we get tired. Online tools like Bulkly can help alleviate the constant pressure of having to keep up with daily sourcing and scheduling, but there are times when the idea of outsourcing your social media marketing sounds like the way to go. Especially when a new project is consuming our time and energy. Have you ever considered outsourcing your social media management? If you have, you know that there are many points and factors you’ll need to have on your radar in order to make the right decision. Costs, logistics, consistency, time, control…

Most people don’t believe in monsters. But in the online world, they do exist – and if you’re an active user of basically any social media channel, chances are you’ve encountered a few already. Trolls. More specifically, social media trolls. They belong under a bridge. But online, they come out in the form of disgruntled people who post disparaging or damaging comments to your social media channels with the intent to provoke you into a fight or upset you or others on your site. Or defile your brand. But you don’t need to be afraid. Once you know how to deal with an online troll, they become nothing but jealous, unhappy individuals who will be forced to move on to another outlet where they can get the kind of negative reaction they’re looking for. So if you’re dealing with social media trolls, here’s 6 sure-fire tips to fend off attacks.