With all the digital media channels out there you can spend a huge amount of time curating and sharing content across multiple social networks and channels. Integrating content across networks and channels via an automation strategy can save time and money spent doing repetitive tasks. But I want to note that this is not an all or none strategy and should not be adopted for all your communication. Instead I approach content automation as a strategy to integrate original content with curated content in order to develop a stream of content.
Some of the basic tactics necessary to deploy this strategy include establishing a digital diet of content. Content aggregators and curation tools are a great way to do this. Creating great content day in, day out is a challenge. There’s no reason why you should not view curation as a way to keep your social media streams active and healthy. Every social media expert will tell you share great content in addition to creating your own.
Think of your content marketing automation as a daisy chain, whereby each event links to another. There are several ways to do this.
Search to Syndicate
Search queries on Google and Twitter allow you to create an RSS feed. These RSS feeds can be displayed on your blog or can feed a social media account like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+. You can also use email to syndicate content via email to add articles to a queue. So here is how I do it.
I use content curation tools on my iPhone and iPad like Zite, Flipboard, Pulse and other sources. Articles that I read and think my friends and followers are interested I share by sending via email to Buffer. Buffer allows you to schedule and share content on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and set up a schedule according to what day and times you want to share for each network. My buffer feeds my personal Twitter, LinkedIn and the Square Jaw Media Facebook page.
Remember the daisy chain I mentioned earlier? Here’s where that comes in. Buffer only hits 3 sites but I want to also share to my Square Jaw Media Twitter as well as save to my bookmarking account on Pocket. Here’s where my trigger tool comes in. If This Then That (ifttt.com) is a trigger based tool that allows you to daisy chain your content automation to several networks. So I have one trigger that is activated when my Facebook page shares a link and post it to Twitter and a second that bookmarks the article on Pocket for archiving.
Here’s where the daisy chain effect comes in. I don’t want my personal and brand page to push out the same link at the same time. So I use IFTTT to push out my Square Jaw Media tweet at a later time by staggering my Facebook fan page Buffer queue. That way there’s some time distance between the two tweets.
At a less complex level Facebook, YouTube and other tools allow you to port links to other networks when you add or bookmark content. For example when you you add a video to YouTube you can have it post a tweet and status update on Facebook. At the same time you can also do this for content that you save as a favorite. This is a great opportunity to share content that is relevant to stakeholders.
Another great syndication tool is NetworkedBlogs. If you are reading this post on Facebook, NetworkedBlogs did that! NetworkedBlogs allows you to syndicated your blog to your Facebook page and profile when you publish.
Repurpose Content
The concept of repurposing content on social media should not be overlooked. One way to accomplish this is to use the Tweet Old Post WordPress plugin to share older posts along with more current content. As long a your content is relevant and timely this works well to drive traffic to your site.
RSS feeds have so many uses in content automation it’s hard to list them so I’ll mention a few. If you host events or blog about them many times you want to include links to other blogs and sites that reference your event. In the past this meant going back to articles and adding links. But you can use In Post RSS Plugin to update a post without having to login to your blog. By adding a link to a bookmarking site like Delicious or Pocket it will add the link to the post dynamically. Remember to use tags to separate and segment content so you don’t spam our post or feed with unrelated links.
Don’t Forget the Sidebar
Sidebars are a great place to display content on our website or blog. Videos, slides, photos, links and other curated content can be shared on every page of your site or segment the content and share only the specific relevant links for specific vertical markets like health care, technology or manufacturing if necessary.
In conclusion, these tactics are not a replacement for interacting and responding with users on social networks. If you try that you will soon find out that your readers will call you out and you will lose some level of trust with your audience. Instead employ a content automation strategy to augment your content marketing efforts.
