Being active in social media isn’t difficult, but even if you’re not procrastinating it can be extremely time consuming. The discussions take place on different channels and platforms, which are your communication space between you and your audience. That brings us to the fact that you have to be present in: major social media platforms, communities, message boards, content curation sites and even in the comment sections below your favourite articles.
It takes a lot of time to read and react upon what’s going on with the Internet and maintain a certain level of productivity to do your work. Fortunately, there is a solution which lets you do a part of this stuff the smart way and save some of your daily time.
My Biggest Blogger Outreach Mistake
How many times you’ve tried to contact influencers from your industry? I tried many. Positionly, the tools I use and a company I’m working with, might be a good example. When starting a new product or service, a good word from the person with established authority can determine the effectiveness of your efforts. I’ve sent tons of emails with tons of different email templates. The effects were very poor. Why?
I was doing the blogger outreach the worst way I could – the lazy way.
Today, I’m not surprised. The people who I tried to connect with aren’t the ones to blame. Probably they were as busy as me, probably they had a vast amount of other more important things to do and probably my email wasn’t the first they received that day. The only good thing might be that they remembered me and my silly email. Maybe even they are reading this article right now ?
The Powerful Principle of Reciprocity
The reciprocity rule is a very powerful mechanism. It works great in real life and it can also be successfully used in the digital world. SEO is about helping people and the same rule applies to social media too.
You have to do something for others for first.
Among the many reasons, why my outreach campaign wasn’t successful was the fact that more or less, I wasn’t important for those people.
It’s like asking for sex on the first date. Some people might consider it a bit rude. – Tad Chef
Actually, I wasn’t even on the “first date”. I was a complete stranger asking for a favour just like that. They didn’t know me, they weren’t even familiar with me and they didn’t feel the need to help me.
How can you use the principle of reciprocity? Do something for them. No expectations.
At this point you might ask yourself a question – how it’s suppose to help me automating my stuff?
Automating your Social Media Activity
As bloggers, they probably put their time and heart into writing another blog post. The best way for you to appreciate their work is to actually read it, leave a comment and eventually share it.
Sharing influencers’ content is a fantastic way of getting their work more popular and getting yourself noticed. Here’s how to do it!
If This Than That
IFTTT.com is a great tool which can help automate many of your activities. What is best about it – it’s still free to use. Sign up and create your account.
Setting Up the Trigger
Once inside click on “Create a New Recipe” You’ll see that you have many options to choose from. Leave playing around with them for later, and pick “Feed” and “New feed item”.
Most of the blogs out there have a news feed. Copy and paste that address in the new field and create a trigger. What this will do is that every time a new article on your favourite blog will appear, it will activate the action of your choice.
Picking Action
There are a few options available for you right now. You can decide, if a new feed item will be published on your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or other services like Reddit. Unfortunately you can pick only one, but the good news is that you can customize as many recipes as you wish.
If you choose Twitter, you will immediately share the new article. My suggestion would be to use Buffer instead. It will help you publish the item among the other ones you’re sharing, at the time your audience is the most engaged by your activity. If you’re using the paid plan you’ll be able to track your sharing statistics as well.
You will see “Entry Title” and “Entry Url” fields. Remember to add a reference to author’s social media profile and hashtag! Naked title and url address won’t earn you the spotlight you’re looking for.
Every time your favorite blogger will post something new, your tweet will look like this:
Of course you can choose different triggers and actions, than using Buffer or posting directly to any of available social services. You can use applications like Pocket and Feedly as your triggers and social shares as your actions. This way you will be able not only to share the content automatically, but also you will be up-to-date with the latest post from your favorite sources.
Summary
I created the complete list of bloggers, who I respect the most and share their content hands-free.
Of course that doesn’t mean that it’s all about getting noticed. Quite the opposite. Most of the times if you share something on the Internet you do it because it’s really good and you want others to see it too.
I’m more than curious about your ways of automating stuff. If you have any proven time-saving hacks or interesting recipes, feel free to share them below!
