Are you one of those people that cringe when the word ‘Social Media’ is mentioned? You know that you need to use Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms to boost the exposure for your business but you find it’s a chore especially finding articles and organizing your content. So how do you manage & source your content?
Recently I completed the Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification it was a great online course especially giving me the insight and overview of what to do and what not to do. I was using the Free version of Hootsuite which allows you to add 3 social media accounts but have since upgraded to the Pro version allowing me up to 15 accounts and it also gives you added insights & reports giving you an indication of what content your clients/customers like to see so you can try to target those areas.
I’ve tried many content calendars one’s that had been created in excel and downloadable versions but nothing seemed to work for me until I decided to just use another google calendar.
This is the view you can expect to see in Hootsuite however there’s no way to establish which platform you posted to unless you click on the ‘blue’ posts to expand and this can sometimes be a bit confusing. Don’t get me wrong it’s a fantastic site but I needed something else to help me manage my posts.
So in conjunction with Hootsuite I’ve set up my content in another google calendar giving me an overview weekly, monthly and daily of my posts. Below is an example of my calendar for the week. As you can see I’ve colour coded each platform within the calendar also any groups that you want to post to on a weekly basis just add as a task or even a recurring task too. I find that it’s a better way of viewing what was posted and what is scheduled, whereas with Hootsuite once your post has been published it then goes to the Past Scheduled tab not giving you a proper overview. The beauty of both the Google calendar and Hootsuite is that if you need to change a time or date when you want something posted you can just drag and drop making things really easy.
Sourcing Content
- Using Twitter can be great to source content. Just follow people that you find interesting or that you think will interest your customers and you can find great articles to share. With Twitter every couple of minutes there is a new post so the content is always fresh.
- Just as you follow people on Twitter Like pages on Facebook where you think you can share articles to your customers. Use Facebooks ‘Saved’ pages feature when you come across an interesting article so you can add it to Hootsuite later on and schedule without having to search your timeline all over again.
- Utilize Google Alerts. Create alerts in Google so when certain keywords are triggered you will receive an email to let you know that a new article has been published with those keywords.
- Create a folder on your bookmarks bar so when you come across an article, video or link you can just save this to the folder so you can review later.
- Use the Hootsuite Suggestions feature in the Pro version. This is a handy feature based on the keywords that you put in the ‘Suggested Topics’ box it will give you articles sourced from the internet allowing you to publish straight into your Hootsuite Calendar. (see below)
- Make sure to download the extension for Hootsuite so when you are just browsing the internet and want to post or schedule something quickly you can just click on the owl in the top right and you will get a dialog box open so you can do just that.
I hoped this has helped and given you some tips and insight on how to manage and source your content stress free.