Social Media AutomationBy Michael Jones

About Me

12 years of search engine marketing experience, worked with many large organisations in Australia (both in-house and agency side), in a broad range of industries including: shopping, classifieds and service websites.

Specialising in SEO, but have experience in:- SEM - Analytics -

Social- Local - Reputation

Management- Email Marketing

A network of 8 travel websites; managing everything from:- Search Engine Optimisation - Social Media Marketing- Video & Image Creation - Content Editing- Web Programming - Website Building- Affiliate Marketing - AdSense- Web Analytics - Keyword Research

SEO Manager – Suncorp InsuranceHead of Onsite / Technical SEOMajor projects have included:- Technical Audits - Keyword Research- Link Profile Audit & Removal Campaign- SEO Strategy

Social Automation – Existing Platforms

Existing Built-in Social AutomationA lot of social media websites already have built-in sharing / automation tools, but as they are lack control and are quite limited with their customisation, it is worth looking at other tools & platforms in order improve this process.

Example of an automatic share from YouTube

Do you really want a tweet appearing on Facebook?

Social Automation - HootSuite

HootSuite - HootletThe Hootlet is a browser add-on that automatically takes the content you want to share on a web page and opens a popup compose box (No need to leave the web page)

Features of the Hootlet include:- Share updates to numerous social accounts at once- Easily schedule messages to be sent out later- Shortened URLs automatically 

HootSuite - AppsThe HootSuite App Directory is a collection of extensions and applications that HootSuite users can add to their dashboard to create a customised experience.

These Apps allow you to monitor your streams, measure your engagement and share your different types of posts across your social networks.

• Share other assets• Promote Social Profiles• Upcoming Events• Past Articles• Weekly Messages• Public Holidays

HootSuite – Bulk ScheduleThe HootSuite Bulk Scheduling Tool allows you to easy schedule up to 350 messages at once, via a simple CSV file import.

This allows you to automate a regular sharing of your content across your different social accounts. Some ideas of content to share are:

HootSuite – RSS FeedsRSS feeds are a great way to save time and automatically share content from your own websites, as well as your favourite blogs / news websites.

Once you set up an RSS feed in HootSuite, you have the ability to take an RSS feed from any site and update it to your social network accounts automatically. Not only will this save you time and effort, but it will also make your social network accounts active for when you don’t have time to scour the web for the latest news.

Social Automation – Your Own Website

Social Media Widgethttp://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social-media-widget/

Website – Linking to ProfilesWith the amount of time, effort and resources that are put into social media these days, it is surprising that many opportunities within your own website are overlooked.

The first opportunity is to link to your social profiles from different parts of your website. Not only is this great for reputation management (i.e. your social accounts will rank for branded terms), but your users have already explored your website and will be more likely to engage with you on social media.

GetSocial

http://www.riyaz.net/getsocial/

Website – Sharing ButtonsThe second opportunity is to implement social sharing buttons on the different pages of your website (usually pages which would actually want to be shared by users).

Common practice dictates placing small sharing buttons at the top of the page and larger buttons at the bottom, but another great option is to use a sliding social bar which automatically moves down the page as a user scrolls.

RA-FB Like Boxhttp://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ra-fb-like-box/installation/

Website – Thank You PageAnother great opportunity is to implement the various social sharing boxes on your website’s “Thank You” page (the page that is displayed after a user has completed an action).

Since the user has already just engaged and built rapport with your brand, presenting these 1-click follow buttons allows users to follow your brand in the easiest way possible.

CommentLuv Premiumhttp://www.commentluv.com/

Website – CommentingAdditional to tweaking the thank you page of my websites, I also use the CommentLuv Wordpress plugin to attract followers.

Using this plug-in, when a user submits a comment on one of my websites for the first time, they receive an automatic email confirmation of their message, as well as a friendly message asking them to follow me.

Additional to this, they also receive an email when I have answered their question, linking them back to the original page they asked the question.

Social Automation – Other Platforms

Zapierhttps://zapier.com/

ZapierZapier allows you to automate tasks between a large range of online services, with over one hundred other web applications; including popular CRMs, social media platforms, email marketing software, project management tools and more.

✔ Automating repetitious tasks ✔ Syncing data between multiple

web apps ✔ Getting rid of duplicate data entry ✔ Automating notifications ✔ Data Integration

Zapier – RSS to TwitterAlthough Zapier has so many uses, the main task I automate is sharing a range of the latest travel news across my Twitter and Facebook channels; originating from numerous RSS feeds from other websites.

Initial setup is extremely easy…

Zapier – RSS to Twitter

So after these easily to follow steps are followed, Zapier automatically monitors the RSS feeds for any new stories and will automatically create a post based on the story content and your post template.

IFTTThttps://ifttt.com/

IFTTTSimilar to Zapier, IFTTT is another platform that allows you to automate tasks between a large range of online tools.

Although IFTTT doesn’t have some of the flexibility of Zapier, it does fill the gaps of some of the platforms Zapier doesn’t support.

IFTTT – Instagram to Facebook PageCurrently, I use IFTTT to synchronise blog posts across my different web 2.0 blog accounts, but here is a very quick example of how you could possibly share your Instagram photos to a Faceook page.

IFTTT – Instagram to Facebook Page

So after these simple steps have been followed, any image you have uploaded to Instagram are now uploaded as images to your Facebook page.

Pingraphyhttp://www.pingraphy.com/

PingraphyPingraphy is a Pinterest management tool that helps users schedule pins, manage their profile, engage with followers and track different metrics.

As pinning images is quite a manual process (even with using the Pinlet), Pingraphy allows you to bulk upload and schedule pins in advance.

Pingraphy – Scheduling PinsAs with pinning images with the Pinterest Pinlet, using Pingraphy is just as easy to use.Open the page the image sits on

Click the Pingraphy button and select the images you wish to upload

Select your board and create your descriptions

Set your start date and posting interval

Social Automation – A Few Examples

Reddit & PingraphyThe example I have provided here is using a combination of Reddit, the Reddit Enhancement Suite and Pingraphy to automatically share the most popular memes (or any images) from the last month via an automated schedule.

Reddit - http://www.reddit.com/ Reddit Enhancement Suite - http://redditenhancementsuite.com/

Open your favourite subreddit

Click the top tab, select from this month, and then click the view images tab

Reddit & PingraphyOnce all the images expand and you have scrolled down the page (this will add more to the selection screen), click the Pingraphy button.

Browse through the list and select the images you wish to Pin.

Reddit & Pingraphy

Now that you have selected the images you wish to share, go through each and select what board you want to pin them to, create a description and then set the start time and posting interval.

Screaming Frog & HootSuite

Screaming Froghttp://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

A bit more advanced, the next example I have provided is using a combination of Screaming Frog SEO Spider and HootSuite’s Bulk Schedule function to automatically share a number of stories in advance.

Insert the website URL of there you would like to harvest the stories / assets from.

After clicking start, let the spider crawl the website and collect the desired information.

Once complete, click the export button and save the file as a CSV file.

Screaming Frog & HootSuite

Open the HootSuite Bulk Schedule tool and take note of the required format.

Using this information, open the exported CSV file and remove all the unneeded columns from the spreadsheet.

In doing this, you should now only be left with the post information in column B and the story URL in column C.

From here, use column A to dictate your posting schedule. Save the file.

Screaming Frog & HootSuite

Now all you have to do is set your date format and which social accounts you want to share.

The stories should now appear in your schedule view.

HootSuite also auto-shortens your URLs and populates all the link fields for Facebook and Google Plus.

Social Automation – Buying Social

Buying SocialAs tempting as it is to buy cheap followers from places like Fiverr, I highly recommend against such practice.

Not only can it compromise the quality of your accounts and your reputation online, a lot of these ‘followers’ are fake, bots and located in regions outside your target demographic (mostly originate India, Pakistan and the UK)

Buying Social

A high number of fans does not equal social engagement! So what is point of inflating your social follow numbers if you’re not going to get any value from them?

Thank You – Any Questions?

Follow Me

• https://www.facebook.com/HolidayPointAU• https://twitter.com/HolidayPointAU• https://plus.google.com/b/115301116369925284396/• http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michael-jones/14/5ab/272• http://www.flickr.com/photos/holidaypointau/• http://pinterest.com/holidaypointau/• http://www.youtube.com/user/HolidayPoint/

ResourcesSocial Management PlatformsHootSuite - http://hootsuite.com/

Wordpress PluginsSocial Media Widget - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social-media-widget/GetSocial - http://www.riyaz.net/getsocial/RA-FB Like Box - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ra-fb-like-box/installationCommentLuv Premium - http://www.commentluv.com/

Social IntegrationFacebook - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/Google Plus - https://developers.google.com/+/web/badge/Twitter - https://dev.twitter.com/docs/follow-buttonPinterest - http://business.pinterest.com/widget-builder/#do_pin_it_buttonYouTube - http://www.youtube.com/t/creators_downloads

Social Automation PlatformsZapier - https://zapier.com/ IFTTT - https://ifttt.com/ Pingraphy - http://www.pingraphy.com/

Misc:Screaming Frog - http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/Reddit - http://www.reddit.com/ Reddit Enhancement Suite - http://redditenhancementsuite.com/Holiday Point - http://www.holidaypoint.com.au/