How to Automate Your Social Media Presence in 3 Easy Steps

One of the main obstacles to having a social media pulse is a lack of time. But how to get out of Facebook Jail?

It’s easy enough to set up your account on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Google Plus, and YouTube. However, making sure that you have fresh content every day can be a challenge.

Now, if you’re just starting up, you’re likely to think you can’t afford to hire a social media strategist or contract out your social media needs. That may be true but the problem is neither can you afford the opportunity loss you’re likely to suffer from not having anything to say to your potential customers or employers.

You know how it is — being silent can be misconstrued as YOU not being there or YOU not really having anything of value to share.

So here you are… wondering what to do.

Do you just wait it out until you have a budget in place while your competitors are kicking up some dust in the social media space?

OR… do you try and figure out how you can start letting people know your business is alive and ready to take on new customers?

Well, let me help you make that decision easier for you.

Contrary to what you may dread, automating content for your social media pages is not all that difficult. If your goal is just to provide some proof of the existence of your social media presence, then curation may just be for you.

How do you go about that?

Follow the steps below to get your pulse signal picked up by the social media world. Let them know you’re there and open for business!

How Can You Automate Social Media Presence

Step #1: Use Feedly to find articles for you!

Scouring the internet to find articles you can share with your audience can take a lot out of your already limited time to do everything else. Using tools like Feedly can cut down on research time immensely!

Here is how to get started with Feedly:

1. Click here and begin setting up an account.

2. Once you’re set-up, you can find the topics that are relevant to you and your audience by using the search box. Feedly will match up your search with a list of websites and blogs that are likely to have the kind of content you’re looking for. You’ll find that there’s no shortage of articles for you to choose from.

3. When you find a site that interests you, just click the Follow button and keep adding new sites through the Add New Source sidebar.

4. After you give the website a category, just click Add.

Step# 2. Use IFTTT to collect Feedly articles.

Now here is where it gets more interesting.

Once you’re done setting up your Feedly account, you can sign up for an IFTTT (If This Then That)account to create various recipes that automatically forward articles that meet your search criteria to a spreadsheet in your Google Drive.

To create a recipe, just follow these simple steps:

On your dashboard, click on Create a Recipe.

Then, click on “this” — this should be easy to identify when you’re on the page.

On the Trigger Channels, scroll down to find Feedly, then click and activate it.

On the Choose a Trigger page, click on the New Article from the Category option.

Use the menu to select the article category you want to send to the spreadsheet, then click on Create Trigger.

Click “that”…

Then, scroll through the options until you find Google Drive, click and activate it.

From the Choose an Action page, click the Add Row to Spreadsheet option.

Then, from the Complete Action Fields page, type in the name of your spreadsheet…

Follow that with a click on Create Action, and complete the process by clicking on Create Recipe.

You’re almost done! One last step…

Step #3: Use a spreadsheet to select and curate content.

Use a spreadsheet to choose which articles you would like to share on your social media pages. You can spice up the content a bit by putting out your own thoughts about the articles you’re sharing as the headline. Should you be pressed for time to do that, you may be tempted to use the original article title as the accompanying status update or tweet for your article link. I would not recommend that though: Create your own to avoid competing with the original article in search results.

Now that you’ve read up on the basic steps to automating your content creation process and scheduling your posts, you’re all set to go live!