Automating parts of your business can be a very effective means of enhancing visibility, as well as making your role in the business much easier. Any new piece of content that you publish won’t be noticed on its own; without shares, comments, and an interested audience, your content may just sit there accumulating dust.
The best way to achieve all this is by manually reaching out and sharing with social media and authority sites. This lets you interact with your target audience, as well as control just how your content appears on other websites. However, manually controlling social posts can become tedious and time consuming, and automating posts can be an effective alternative. For times like these, there exist powerful tools that can effectively automate your content distribution. Let’s take a look!
- If this, then that: The learning curve with this app is ridiculous. It’s not easy to learn by any means, but once you master it, you’ll be very glad you did. Ifttt started as an android application meant to help users automate their smartphone functions and save battery and data. Because of its powerful capabilities it evolved into an automation tool that can regulate blog posts, social media content, or even website pages. The app makers understand just how difficult the app is to use, so they’ve included a list of ‘recipes’ to simplify the process. The recipes are examples of how automation can be set up, and you can easily implement your own formulas as well.
- Jetpack: This plugin works with the WordPress platform only, but it has a wide array of capabilities in this sense. It can provide statistics on how many users have visited your website, and how many emails have been subscribed. It can create customs URL’s for your webpages, or automatically craft email posts for distribution. Most importantly, it has a function called “Publicize”, which will connect your WordPress page to multiple social networks, and can regulate the publishing of new posts on these networks. It even gives you the ability to schedule blog posts for specific times.
- HootSuite: This platform gives you the ability to connect Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and WordPress. However, it initially came into existence as a Twitter client, and still maintains powerful capabilities for managing and regulating Twitter. If Twitter is one of the main sources that you use for your content distribution, this platform is an excellent way to keep it populated. It’s suggested content features can analyze the topics that you show an interest in, then creating headlines (accompanied by relevant links) that can be scheduled for automatic posting. It also provides statistics and analytics regarding audience size, base, and topics of interest.
- Socialoomph: Also meant for use mainly with Twitter, this application has the unique ability to save and reuse drafts for later posting. This makes the automation process significantly easier for you, since all you have to do is pre-create several tweets, which you can then reuse at any time. If you opt in for the paid feature, you gain the ability to automate Facebook, LinkedIn, and several other accounts. Socialoomph will then automate blog posts, email updates, and subscriptions for all these social networks.
- Buffer: Very similar to HootSuite, this app lets you control Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google Plus accounts. It can provide content suggestions which will (usually) be relevant to your businesses topic, saving you time doing extensive research. Much like with Buffer, you’re better off getting the paid version, as it provides much greater and more useful functionality than the free version.
- SocialPilot: Unlike all the applications and platforms mentioned so far, SocialPilot gives you the ability to control not only your social media profiles, but also your pages on these networks. SocialPilot allows you to create posts, consider suggested content relevant to your niche, and to connect individual account feeds with your larger social accounts. Significantly cheaper than other platforms, SocialPilot’s paid version allows you to connect an unlimited number of profiles, provide a great interface and functionality as well.
- Zapier: Some might call this competition to Ifttt, but I prefer to think of it as an enhancement. It lets you work with certain apps that Ifttt does not. Also, if you have multiple accounts on the same social network, you can use both zapier and ifttt for maximum effectiveness.
Other than the tools mentioned here, there’s tons and tons of automated tools for content distribution available on the web. Some come in the form of desktop apps, some as mobile apps. The ones mentioned here give you the most functionality with the free version, and generally have the most powerful interfaces available for content distribution. If you’re willing to pay for some of these services, you immediately get even more features. The statistics and analytics that paid versions provide can be exceptionally useful to your needs.
Ultimately, even with a powerful content distribution tool, you should have a clear grasp of how to use social networks, when to post on them, and what content to post. Put the social back in social networks, and use these tools as an enhancement for your own abilities, not a replacement!
Author: Ari Rush is President of Rush Ventures, a Toronto SEO and digital marketing agency. Prior to Rush Ventures, Ari led a marketing technology company, which helped more than 1,500 clients generate online traffic. Earlier in his career, Ari founded an online telecommunications firm, which he sold to a private equity group based out of Arizona. Ari has lectured at places such as Ryerson University and BizLaunch, one of the largest small business training companies in North America.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RushVentures
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