If you’re producing unique, useful content on your business website, you want as many people in your industry seeing the content as possible. How do you do this in an automated way? We’ll show you how to post to 13 channels in 13 minutes (might be a little longer for your first one!).
1st Step: Develop a workflow
In your favourite software for creating reusable checklists (like Process Street, Trello or Checkli), write down the steps from blog post creation through to promotion. We’ll include an example at the end of this post.
2nd Step: Set up your systems
To be able to quickly post links & content to multiple sites, you’ll need:
- WordPress blog (only needed if you want to easily post to Medium)
- Medium account
- Free Medium plugin – so that content posted to your blog is cross-posted to Medium with your blog post tags
- Buffer account – you’ll create an account, connect to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ or Instagram account/s. Once you’ve created an account, you can save their Google Chrome Extension so you can visit your blog post page and then click one button in your Chrome browser to begin posting (on your chosen schedule) to your social media accounts
- Refind account – create an account so you can add a Chrome Extension and quickly save the blog post page for others to find.
- Quora account – a little extra work on this. You’ll be searching for questions that your blog post answers and then posting a short version of post + a link to your blog post content.
- LinkedIn account – post short version of post as LinkedIn article.
- Email marketing list – can be set up to auto-post RSS content weekly or you can manually add content to a weekly/monthly wrap-up post.
- Anchor podcast – record a short podcast that outlines your content. Copy header and description from other content. Introduce podcast as “X show, bought to you by the team at yourdomain .com”.
- Optional extras for epic content – create slide deck for SlideShare, film slides for Youtube video or use a service like Biteable to create video of content summary for posting to Youtube or social media.
3rd Step: Refine your workflow
Depending on your channels, you’ll need to refine your process to get the most ROI for your time investment.
Finally, an example process might be:
- Search Pocket (or your chosen link-saving software) for saved articles
- Collect thoughts in Dropbox Paper document
- Write first draft
- Get feedback from team member
- Revise draft and post to WordPress (which will cross-post to Medium)
- Visit WordPress post URL
- Click Buffer link, select channels to post to, slightly adjust headers, schedule to publish
- Click Refind link to save for others (tag with WordPress tags)
- Visit Quora to find questions that post answers. Post answer with link included
- Open LinkedIn and write short article with short version of post.
- Mailchimp automated RSS campaign to send content (if not posting curated content weekly/monthly)
- Open Anchor app and record short audio recording of your outlining a summary of your content. Copy across header, content and link to post.
Bonus: If you’re thinking about syndicating your content (having your content reproduced on other networks), Quicksprout has suggested several top favourites, which include:
- Outbrain
- Zemanta
- SimpleReach
- Arc
- Taboola
- LinkWithin
- Yarpp
- Igit
- Nster
- ZergNet
These companies are relatively affordable, and each has their own perks and drawbacks. When you are analyzing which sites you want to partner with, consider how much it will cost and their track record.
