Recently I’ve had a number of clients ask me about content across channels — their website, their email list and social media. They know they should have their content everywhere, but where do they begin and what’s the most efficient way to share?
My favorite way to start is with a new blog post on your website. I prefer this because:
- You own the content. It’s yours, forever. You can build upon it, change it, reuse it, remove it — whatever YOU want to do with it.
- You’re not at the mercy of whatever social media platform is popular at the time, any changes in algorithms where your content isn’t being shared as widely as it was previously or just that not everyone is on the same social media platform.
- People can find you in a multitude of ways (think organic search) and again, not just the people who follow you on social (who happen to see your content).
- Google and other search engines look favorably on lots of visitors spending lots of time on your site. So even if you do share your content on social, you’re driving people back to your website to consume it (and hopefully more content while they’re there).
Not sold on blogging or aren’t sure where to start? Check out my posts on how your business can start blogging and 5 fun and easy ways to find a topic for your next post.
Sharing to Social Media
So, if you start with a blog post, let’s get that new content to social media. Determine which platforms you’d like to share to and how often you want to share your blog post (one time or ongoing).
WordPress Plugins
- Jetpack Social allows you to connect various social platforms. When you publish a new blog post, you can also share to these networks.
- Social Snap is primarily a plugin that adds sharing buttons to your site (think at the bottom of blog posts so that other people can click to share your post on their networks). Available on the Pro plan and higher, their Social Auto Poster will automatically share new content from your site to Twitter and LinkedIn and Boost Old Posts automatically shares old content to those same networks.
- Revive Old Posts shares new content to Facebook, Instagram Business, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google My Business. (Yes! Don’t forget to share on Google My Business!) It also allows you to share your website content on rotation, meaning you can get some visibility to those old posts.
- Blog2Social allows you to connect to a number of different platforms depending on the plan. The free version gives you Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn while one of the paid versions will also give you Instagram Business. When a new blog post is published, it will be shared to the networks you specify. Their paid plans also have a scheduler where you can share your content more than one.
Other Options
- Some social media management platforms like Publer have an RSS feed feature that will pull in your latest blog post and automatically share it.
- MissingLettr works the same way, only it can also create an evergreen campaign of 9 social media posts over the course of a year to continually share your content. (Check out my post on how I recreated this functionality with Publer.)
- Tools like Zapier and Integromat connect different apps together so you can build something that pulled the latest blog post and shared it to the social platforms of your choice.
Just a note that sharing to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn shouldn’t be too difficult. Sharing to Instagram (Business) and Pinterest can be harder as there are more hoops to jump through. With YouTube, I typically create and publish a YouTube video, embed the video in my blog post and use one of the items above to kick off sharing to other social platforms.
Sharing to your email list
Likewise, if you start with a blog post, there are several ways to get your new content to your email list.
- Newsletter Glue is a WordPress plugin that will send an email to your list when you publish a blog post. The paid version also allows you to have content in the blog post that’s only shown for newsletter subscribers as well.
- Many email marketing platforms like MailerLite, Mailchimp, ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign allow you to create an RSS campaign. The campaigns can be set to run daily, weekly or monthly and can show one or many of the latest blog posts.
- Tools like Zapier and Integromat connect different apps together so you can build something that pulled the latest blog post and shared it to your email list.
Additional Thoughts
Some might say this isn’t a great plan because you’re just blasting content out to the platforms and not being social (spending time there). If you want to take a more manual approach, I have a few thoughts.
- When you’re writing your blog post (or after you’ve published), set some snippets aside for use on social media. Different platforms work with different amounts of content, so snip appropriately (Twitter = shorter, LinkedIn = longer, etc.). You can also expand on certain sections or concepts (for example, go deeper for your email list).
- Have a dedicated place for these, just like you do for your blog posts (Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox, etc.). You can also source photos/videos to use with the social posts
- Have less platforms and focus ONLY on the platforms where your users are. There’s no need to spend time posting to Twitter (or LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever) if your audience isn’t there.
- Dedicate time each day or week to sharing content on social and also responding, commenting and sharing other content.
However you do it, create and share your content with others! Have another tool or idea that I didn’t mention? Message me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
