Content Updates & Scheduling on Social Networks

I'm often asked how I maintain my social media updates throughout the day (while still doing a full-time job!). Well, I cheat. I pre-read a lot of sales and marketing content and schedule it to be published at a later time/date. I usually do around 6 -8 updates per day on Twitter and LinkedIn, and 4 on Saturday and Sunday. It only takes an hour or so per week (plus reading) but gives you a robust social media presence. Here are the 4 key steps:

1. Find the right content.

The most important step is finding the right content to share. It takes a lot of time to read through it all but it gives you the dual benefit of getting you up-to-speed on what's happening in the industry but also identifying what content to share. As a kick start, here are 50 blogs that are worth reading: http://bit.ly/1hiV5nC

I also regularly read www.marketing-interactive.com, www.campaignasia.com, www.marketingmag.com.au, www.adweek.com, www.adage.com and www.econsultancy.com. Twitter is also incredibly useful in finding relevant and useful content.

2. Aggregate content in one place.

The best content comes from those you follow or respect. To help identify this, I’ve subscribed to Newsle (www.newsle.com) and Nuzzel (www.nuzzel.com), which are free tools for news about my friends/network.  I also use Feedly (www.feedly.com) to aggregate news/blogs together in once place.

3. Schedule your content.

I really love and use a tool called Buffer (www.bufferapp.com). There’s a free version that allows you to schedule up to 10 updates at a time. There's a paid version (which I use) that allows for unlimited updates. Buffer is simple to use, and has a Chrome extension, meaning if you download it for the Chrome browser, when you’re reading a website or article you simply click on the Buffer icon in the top left corner to schedule it into Buffer. Other tools you might consider are Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com) and here are 6 more: http://empowerlounge.com/6-great-social-media-scheduling-tools/

4. Publish them to your social networks.

I’ve connected my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to Buffer, but you can also connect your Facebook account if you like. If you’re advanced, you can scheduled different content for different social networks (for different audiences).

I hope this helps - and happy content publishing!