Blog

Social media is all about connecting with your audience. You need to provide them with engaging social media posts and be engaged with it yourself – asking questions and starting conversations. Social media automation can help hugely with this. It isn’t about bulking up content, automating questions and then not looking at your social media platforms for the rest of the year. It’s about being organized, having a constant flow of content and making the content you have go further. While the content you share should be engaging, you may worry about scheduling the same content multiple times. Will it bore your audience? Will it make them unfollow you? No, resharing content, particularly if it’s evergreen, is a great move. Over the years, organic Facebook reach has declined quite a bit. In 2012, Facebook revealed that on average a newsfeed post is only seen by 12% of followers. But since then research by EdgeRank Check (which has now been acquired by Social Bakers) showed that by March 2014, this had declined to 6.5%. So it’s unlikely any of your followers will even notice if you schedule something more than once, because the fact is that most people won’t see a post the first time you share it. By sharing a piece of content again, you are increasing the chances that a user who missed it the first time will see it. Resharing is better than a bare newsfeed or not being seen by your followers at all. Scheduling and sharing both evergreen content and new content in a strategic way will help build your social media presence without it taking over your life. But it’s only helpful if what you’re posting engages your followers and other social media users. So here are some tips for scheduling the most engaging social media posts possible. How to put a social media scheduling plan in place Know what you want you to gain by using social media Before you start posting, it’s a good idea to have a social media strategy in place so you know exactly what it is that you want to gain from your social media activities. Do you want to have a large number of followers, so at a glance people will see your business as popular and trusted? Or do you want to build a truly engaging social media presence, with a focus on likes, comments, shares and conversations? If you’re all about conversions, share content related to your products and services and think best about how to do this in a way that won’t overwhelm followers. The 80/20 rule seems to be becoming the standard for content marketing. This means only 20% of your content should directly promote your brand, products or services, while the other 80% is content that informs, intrigues and grabs your customer’s attention but isn’t directly related to your products. Use a social media style guide to stay on brand Once you know what it is that you want to get out of your social media platforms, you can put together a social media style guide to use as a reference point. It might seem a bit excessive to have a style guide specifically for social media, but the idea behind it is to keep your posts consistent and to make sure your social presence is in keeping with your brand voice. This is particularly important if more than one person is writing content for your social media platforms. A social media style guide is a practical marketing tool to make sure that everything you say and do on social media makes sense for your brand. In your guidelines, include things like personas, tone, language, the types of images and curated content you should share, your brand values, adjectives to describe your personality, as well as more practical information on where you should post and how often. You can even go as far as offering platform specific guidelines, which URL shortener to use and how to deal with trolls. We like this social media style guide from New York University, because it includes words not to use on its social media, as well as specific directions on punctuation. [perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“In VERY RARE instances (major celebrity appearances, top awards, international recognition, etc.) multiple exclamation points may be used (but think judiciously about whether the situation warrants more than one).”[/perfectpullquote] It may seem over the top, but correct punctuation is particularly important for a university’s brand. You can also check out this social media style guide from MailChimp, which is part of the company’s overall content style guide. It’s very clear, succinct and would make it easy for anyone posting to their social channels to be on brand. Your style guide doesn’t have to be long, but if it includes examples and is comprehensive, it will make everything easier. Take a glance at it before sitting down to schedule some posts – or keep it beside you for any questions that may pop up while you’re posting. If you sit down to organise some scheduling, you’ll quickly get into the flow of things. If you build a consistent voice, your followers will be more likely to engage with your content. It’s likely the reason they followed you in the first place. Create a holiday calendar to inspire quirky posts A holiday calendar might appear at odds with the whole idea of automating social media content in advance. While the bulk of your content should be evergreen so it can be re-posted numerous times, if you fail to look at the calendar, you may be missing out on opportunities. Use a content calendar to keep an eye out for what people will be talking about. If you forget to wish your customers a happy Christmas and continue to post non-stop about the benefits of e-commerce, they might start to notice a lack of human touch. Having a holiday calendar with the year’s main holidays and events, as well as some

Social media automation is something that often splits people into two camps: you’re either for it, or you’re against it. So should you use social media automation for your ecommerce business? Not only should you use it, but there are some rules that you must certainly follow when doing so. Rule 1: Pick the right platforms Social media has been called the love child of the web and, with the number of users expected to reach 2.95 billion by 2020, that child has become a full-fledged adult. [color-box color=” customcolorpicker=”]There are a huge number of platforms within the social media world. The major players are: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+ YouTube Pinterest Instagram Flickr Reddit Snapchat Quora [/color-box] Each of these have their unique quirks and not all will be suitable for your ecommerce business – let alone compatible with social media automation. For instance, Twitter is responsive, precise, and packed with personality: Credit: @VancityReynolds The first thing you have to do is decide which platforms are likely to be the best investment for your company. This isn’t just about choosing the one with the largest number of users. When deciding which social media platforms to use, you should consider: Your objectives for your social media outlets The voice of your company What content do you want to create – text or images? The skillset of your social media manager How much time you have to commit to your social media How many channels you can manage Which platforms your audience use Once you have settled on which platforms you are going to employ, then you have to use them. Remember, there’s no obligation to be as hilarious as Ryan Reynolds; you have to do your own thing. via GIPHY When you automate your social media channels, it is more important than ever to ensure that you are on the right creative management platforms – the platforms that are in tune with automation (for instance, Twitter is great for automation, Snapchat less so). Know what type of content works best your different channels; think about what themes you want to explore (what’s popular with users), and then create content in bulk that you can automate. You can create: Eye catching video content for Facebook Puns and pithy comments for Twitter Vibrant flat lay pictures for Instagram Remember, your social media accounts won’t help your ecommerce business to sell more goods if you haven’t fully grasped and realized the potential of the platform(s) you are using, along with their unique quirks. Once you have these nailed, you can then start to automate your posts… Rule 2: Participation isn’t optional This rule is something you should nail to the front of your monitor, tablet, mobile, and anywhere in the vicinity of someone who has access your company’s social media accounts. Participation doesn’t just matter, it really, really matters. Your social media accounts are running on platforms that can number into the billions — that’s A LOT of people. Participation helps you reach more of the right ones. Without participation you will not only fail to add to your followers, you risk losing your supporters too! Ask yourself this would you follow an account that didn’t offer anything? No, of course not. Here are a few ways that you can participate with your social media outlets: Voicing your opinion – your opinion is a valuable currency and your customers and followers want to have a stockpile of it Offer something new – this can be information on your industry, on your business, or on life generally. The important thing is that it’s unique and not something your followers and customers can readily find elsewhere – don’t drown them in familiarity A range of voices – So long as there is at least one more soul than your own in your business, make sure more than one person posts to your social media accounts. This will keep your accounts fresh, less predictable, and offer your followers variety Show your audience you’re there, care, and are willing to share – your followers want to speak to a real person. By participating in your audience’s discussions, you’ll demonstrate your company is a real person and not an impersonal corporate shoe. There really is no way around it: you have to participate on your social media outlets and engage with your followers. Don’t think you can get away with infrequent, low quality participation – no, no. Automation can help you be more engaged with your audience. Here’s how: Automated lists can help you find interesting people fast, and engage with them in batches Drip-feeding content means that you can work of crafting social posts when you are feeling inspired and creative (A.K.A not on a Monday morning) Social media rules like automated ‘thank yous’ and follow backs can help you scale participation The wider your social network is, the better your understanding will be. Automation helps you do that. Research the keywords being used in your industry and by your audience. Create tracking lists in social apps so that you are always ready to jump in on a relevant conversation. via GIPHY Rule 3: Quality and consistency go hand-in-hand While it is essential that you are participating, you have to make sure you’re giving your audience the good stuff and that the tone you strike remains consistent. This is where knowing your audience and your brand voice comes into play. Here are some brands who really know their voice, what their audience wants, and bring this consistently to their social media content: Lidl German supermarket Lidl know too that they can’t sex up their products in the way that a brand like Rolex can. That’s not a problem, though, because they know what their audience like about them – they offer high quality produce at a lower than expected price. They bring this attitude to their social media accounts, not only by making it the tone of their posts, but by sharing examples of their customers buying

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,

In any form of social media scheduling you have to question whether the output is worth the return. Not too long ago it was easy to gain fast traction on scheduled tweets, updates and statuses. That was before algorithms and pay to play platforms, as well as the channels being far less saturated than they are today.

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.

If you have been treating your social media updates as a “one and done” approach, listen up. There’s a smarter way to get more out of your social media efforts. Especially if you use Buffer.

When you get a new follower on Twitter or perhaps are looking for new users to follow, what’s one of the first things you do when you go to a profile? You read their Twitter bio. Sure, it only takes a few seconds to skim through the allotted 160 characters, but when you are done you’ll have a pretty good idea of what that person is about. Or at least you should. But unfortunately, one of the most overlooked parts when setting up a Twitter account is the Twitter bio section. For most, they haphazardly throw something together and call it a day. In fact, I doubt it’s sitting really high on the list of your social media strategy. But, did you know that your Twitter bio is important for several reasons?