With so much to do and so little time, it’s always nice when you have a team helping you alleviate some of that stress.
But what happens when you don’t have a team? Automation, if used tastefully, can become a useful tool for organizing, stabilizing, and enhancing your marketing strategy through your content and social media presence.
By spending 15-20 minutes each day using the following 3 services, we further our reach on autopilot – specifically on Twitter. This leaves us with more time to do things like walk the kids to school, tweak website designs, or put together our weekly Indie Music Spotlight playlists.
Paper.li
I have been using Paper.li the longest (for multiple accounts). After signing in using Twitter I am able to curate content based on my Tweets, Favorites, and Selected Sources.
You choose how often your “newspapers” are shared but, in my case, each day – at the time I choose – a Tweet goes out with a link to an automagically curated “newspaper” featuring content from my Twitter feed, my favorites, and my selected sources.
On top of that, Paper.li automatically includes @mentions of 2 or 3 authors who’s Tweets were featured in that edition of the paper. Many times these posts are ReTweeted and/or Favorited. Sometimes we receive new follows or are added to lists.
Either way, we are engaging with more people without doing much work. In my book that’s a win!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1XUWRz3lAk
Viral Content Buzz
Viral Content Buzz is a network of content creators sharing each other’s content.
By sharing articles on Twitter, FB, Pinterest, or Stumbleupon, you earn credits which you then spend to promote your own content. Adding 30 or more credits to an article boosts it to the front page.
This is an effective way to get your content shared. If you actively blog (aka content marketing), you will find this service useful for promoting blog posts across social media in turn increasing your presence and engagement.
I’ve seen the most engagement on Twitter through ReTweets and Favorites. I typically do not share to our FB page unless it’s really valuable information so I cannot make a judgement call for the service’s impact on our FB presence.
As far as Tumblr, this is one more source I use to find content to share to our Tumblr account. We have not been focusing on Tumblr engagement so, again, I can not speak on the effectiveness of the service for building your Tumblr presence.
You are able to share through multiple accounts so earning credits can be achieved in a short period of time. However, I highly recommend buffering your posts so you are not flooding your streams with shared posts. This would be a really bad idea on a FB page. More forgivable on Twitter but still not a good idea.
With that said, while you can earn a lot of credits in a short amount of time, you will not actually earn them for Buffered Posts until the update is posted. Keep that in mind when first learning your way around the service.
CoPromote
CoPromote (formerly Headliner.fm) is similar to Viral Content Buzz in the sense you share other people’s content on social media to earn points for sharing your own. The amount you earn is based on the number of followers you have on your connected accounts
However, there are a few differences.
- CoPromote has a slick mobile app that allows you to Boost, Share, and Track your posts with your mobile devices.
- It only works for Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr but the reach is significantly higher but not necessarily the engagement.
- The content you can Boost (Promote) is chosen from your connected social accounts.
After connecting your social accounts you can choose 1 post to Boost. If you happen to have a budget or find this service valuable enough to pay for, they have premium service plans which include things like boost unlimited posts.
Simply based on using the free service, I would not personally invest money in CoPromote’s service. However, the free service is still a quick way to promote your content to a larger social media audience.
The effectiveness of each service is up for debate as well as a hefty dose of trial and error. In the sake of CoPromote, there is a lot of content presented I would never share or that appears to be scammy. Their filters, which allow you to look at posts by category, do not work very well.
Instead of going into depth about the finer details and inner workings of CoPromote, I’ll reference this article by Pamela Hazleton – Should You Use CoPromote to Gain Traction Online?
Summary
Paper.li, Viral Content Buzz, and CoPromote are useful tools for promoting content across social media. By spending a few minutes of your day sharing others’ posts, you are able to get back to making music, finishing your album artwork, or rehearsing for that upcoming festival.
Automation is also a useful strategy especially for the DIY muso but it’s important to use it tastefully. The whole point of social media is to be social so don’t let your streams become overcrowded with posts you are simply sharing to “earn some points”.