Automate your social media campaigns in 5 simple steps
Automate your social media campaigns in 5 simple steps:
Despite what some may tell you, automating your social media is VERY helpful. When I first started working on Wow Zone’s social media campaigns, I would formulate social posts on the day they were going out.
This worked for a while, until my workload increased and then it was time to change my approach. I took influence from the marketing team, who have pre-planned content going out for the whole month. On top of this, they also throw in a mix of relevant “in the moment” posts which they usually do separately when necessary.
Take it from me, save yourself time and, for the most part, switch to automation!
NOTE: If you’re looking for something quick and easy, this is not the blog for you. The following 5 steps take a lot of time and effort, but you can reap the benefits later when your campaigns are alive and kicking.
Here’s how to automate your social media campaigns in 5 simple steps:
1) Figure out what types of content you’re going to post
The type of content you post is crucial. To gain traction in the social media realm, understanding your audience is mandatory. If you’re posting tonnes of written content to an audience that prefers multi-media, you’re going to fall flat.
The best way to find out what your audience wants is to test. It’s as simple as that.
For the first few 2-3 months put out:
- Videos
- Articles (taken from other websites)
- Your own articles/blog content
- Text based updates
- Images
- Shared posts
2) Curate the content
Once you’ve cemented the types of content you’re going to be putting out, the next step is actually going out and collating.
Quick Tip: If you’re still struggling for ideas, look at what your competitors are doing. It’s very easy to draw inspiration from others.
PS – If I get 5 comments on this blog, i’ll make a step by step guide on performing a social media competitor analysis next week!
3) Write the copy
Content definitely matters, but captions can make or break a social media update. It’s time to come up with text that will accommodate your images, videos, blog shares, articles etc.
Don’t afraid to be slightly controversial (when necessary) and talk about relevant events occasionally. This will help captivate the larger audiences.
4) Find the optimal times to post
Tools like Facebook Insights can give you valuable information on when the vast majority of your audience is online, the demographic, age etc. Knowing what time to post when you’re scheduling is vital and you’re more likely to get better engagement at certain times of the day.
Learn about Facebook insights for videos here
5) Find the right tool and schedule away
Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social and many more apps/programmes allow you to schedule social media updates. Once you’ve completed all the above steps, it’s just a matter of uploading videos/images (when relevant), copying and pasting links to any articles and adding the already generated text!
Buffer has an in-built tool that allows you to create clean looking images within the website, which is always a plus for those lacking photoshop skills!
There are advantages of using each, so try them all and see which one best suits you.
Lastly, I’d like to add – if you’d like me to do a comparison of Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout and all the other social scheduling programmes, request it in the comments.
If you’d like me to go over anything specific I’m more than willing to have a chat in the comments!
Thank you for reading how to automate your social media campaigns in 5 simple steps and don’t forget to have an awesome week!
