One of the most time-consuming tasks is the act of finding great content to share online.
What should you share on Twitter this week?
What should you publish on your blog this month?
What type of picture should you upload to Instagram?
All of these questions can take hours to answer and result in your time being sucked down a drain. Here are three of my favorite tools for finding great content to share on social media:
1) Feedly - The RSS Reader For Relevant Content
Feedly is an application that allows you to follow relevant and interesting blogs or news sites. From there, you have the ability to organize your feeds by topic and share the links you find interesting to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.The topics that come through on Feedly are classified by Hashtags, arming you with the ability to uncover great resources and information to distribute on your social accounts easily.
2) Crate - Content Recommendations Tailored To You
Crate is a social media management platform that allows you to share content that is tailored to your interests and wants. You start by filling a "Crate" with keywords, usernames or domains that are relevant to you and the app then finds the best articles using those keywords, shared by said users or found on the key domains and delivers them back to you. You can then share these articles immediately or schedule them to be shared in the future.
3) Nuzzel - Discover What Content Your Friends/Followers Want
Nuzzel is a platform that you connect to using Twitter or Facebook and they scan your friends accounts to identify the best news stories being shared by them. If you follow organizations or people who share similar interests as you, this is a platform that can truly help you in identifying the articles you missed and should be sharing on your own networks.
Content Automation
Now that you've found all this great content, you have to share it.
Studies have shown that the more you share content, the more likely you are to drive followers and engagement on social. Unfortunately, it's unrealistic for most people to actively be spending hours upon hours on social media sharing links and having conversations when there's hundreds of other things that need to be done.
Which is why content automation is one of the best opportunities for increasing your productivity.
Using some of the tools below, you can schedule your content days, weeks, months or years in advance so the content can be distributed while you're tackling other things. Here's some of my favourite tools:
1) Buffer - Sharing on social media made easy
Buffer is one of the most popular social media sharing tools for a reason. It's a simple interface that comes with an easy to use extension that can change the way you share and browse. The Buffer browser extension gives you the ability to share articles you're reading by simply pressing the "Buffer" button found in your browser. Additionally, it allows you to buffer the article with any image that is found in the content.
2) Hootsuite - The ultimate social media manager
Hootsuite is the full suite social media platform that offers you the ability to schedule content but also interact with people across multiple networks. You can allow multiple people to login and access your Hootsuite account using Teams and even notify certain individuals when there's a crisis or tweet that requires their individual attention.
2) Latergramme - Schedule Instagram posts
Instagram is quickly growing to become a social media channel that every B2C brand should be aware of and embracing. Using Latergramme, you can schedule the content you want shared on Instagram to be pushed in the future. Recognizing that Instagram doesn't allow third party apps to publish directly to their stream, you will receive a push notification that will require you to manually share both the image and caption to your followers.
Conclusion
Social media doesn't have to be a time suck.
With the right tools, you have the ability to be more effective and efficient with your time. These tools have made my life easier and I'm confident that they'll do the same for you.
Did I miss anything? I'd love to hear what you're using in the comments below!