To some, social media management is a daunting task. Not for me! I cut time spent on managing social media by using four simple, easy to use tools: Feedly, Pocket, IFTTT, and Buffer. By the way, each of these tools is FREE but have some neat premium features. Note the order I listed the tools because that’s the order in which I use them.
Feedly is the best content streamer.
Use Feedly to stream blogs of interest, websites, and YouTube videos. Once you’re logged in, locate the search button up top and search for a blog you want to stream. Maybe you don’t have a specific blog but you have a topic in mind. You can find websites and blogs to stream by searching topics as well. You want to save as many blogs or websites you possibly can to your Feedly as this is the content you’ll use in your social media posts. This is called content curating. Don’t worry about reading, skimming will do for now. You’ll read later.
When posting to social media, keep the 80/20 rule in mind. 80% of what you share on your social media should be curated content and 20% should be the content of your own. Why? Because readers are more likely to read shared content until they trust you. Plus readers like variety. Once the trust is there they’ll begin reading your original content. Honestly, I haven’t figured it out completely but judging from experience readers read shared content the majority of the time until they become a raving fan then they’ll give your original content some attention as well.
Pocket is great for saving web content.
Now that you have content, send your best picks to pocket for reading. Go ahead and pocket your articles for the week using the pocket application. Oh, stop now and connect your pocket account to Feedly. I promise after everything is setup, your social media will run on autopilot.
Keep reading you’re finally in the home stretch.
Read your Pocket content and do two things, favorite the content or send it directly to Buffer. I’ll talk more on Buffer next. If you do favorite content, create an If This Then That recipe. The recipe you want to create is if pocket favorite then Buffer. This way you don’t have to share the READ pocket content to Buffer as the recipe will send it for you. I mainly use this step for quotes as they stand alone and don’t need a narrative to accompany them. With everything else I share from pocket to Buffer. This way I can tweak the headings a bit.
Buffer will get everything scheduled to your social media platforms.
Use Buffer to schedule your post because it allows you to schedule and measure the performance of you post. Of course, there are other social media schedulers available such as Hootsuite and Sendible but I prefer Buffer because of its ease of use. Especially, their app companion. Whew, I think this is the longest post I’ve written in a while. We’re almost complete, though. Now that you have everything scheduled, you want to tweak your headlines. I sometimes do this when sharing from Pocket or I’ll do it last. Add a brief narrative and hashtags where appropriate.
You’re done! If you made it through this long post you’re on your way to easy social media management. I would love to hear from you. How is your social media management working out for you? Please let me know if I can assist you or leave questions in the comment section.