Features – Terry Jenkins Online

Having hung on every word of my 'How I Designed My Blogging Setup' article, you must be ravenous for the social media side of this two-part content distribution setup. So without any more delay, here it is: The Background Being a greedy kind of guy, I wanted to make sure I got the most bang for my buck (within reason) for the content I produced for my fledgling business. If you have read the blogging setup article mentioned above, you will see how I am using Content Studio to write my blog articles and distribute them to my own WordPress blog, Medium, and Tumblr. My intention is to write summaries of those articles and post those on Blogger and Wordpress.com also. Finally, I am using MissingLettr to produce a 12-month social media campaign for each blog post and publish the posts to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This gives you a rough idea of the scale of content distribution I want to create for my business. I am working on the premise that this level of content will give much higher levels of exposure to my business than the average setup. Time will tell. My Social Media Content Plans My plans for the content I post on my social media accounts are of a similar scale. I want to get my own content repurposed into different types of media and posted to a wide variety of online platforms in order to maximise impact and draw more eyeballs to my source content. So that begs the questions, what media forms should I use, and what social media platforms? Here are my thoughts . . . Media can be broken down into a variety of forms: Text Video Audio Images These 4 media types can then be delivered to the audience in a wide manner of content types. Here are just a few that come to mind: Blog posts Ebooks Training courses Email Books (Physical and Digital) Online documents (Google Docs, etc) Press releases Video Audio Slides (Powerpoint, etc) Webinars Live social media broadcasts Podcasts Audiobooks CDs DVDs The list goes on . . . Different people prefer a variety ways of consuming their content. Personally, I am not too keen on video unless it is part of a training package. If I want to consume information I much prefer a blog post or online article to a video on YouTube. My logic for this is you can skim through an article and quickly find the relative information much quicker than skimming through a video. But I am an old-git who grew up in an era where video content was nowhere near as prolific in its production as it is these days. As a kid, you had the telly or the cinema. The explosion of media outlets since the late 1970's has been astonishing. So it was obvious I needed to get my content broken into the 4 media types. From there I can decide what format each media type could be delivered. These were my initial thoughts on how I would use the various media types: Text You can read an article in far more places than you can consume video or audio. Not all environments are conducive to sound. Very noisy places or places you need to maintain quiet may be prohibitive to video or audio, but as long as you have adequate light you can read stuff almost anywhere. Blogging was the obvious choice for text rich articles and is likely to be the source of much of my online ramblings, especially at the beginning of my journey. Email would present the opportunity to build a list of like-minded people who I could market to and keep informed of how to access my latest masterpiece. Ebooks could be used not only for freebies, but also for purchase, part of my membership site, and part of my training packages. Text-based training is still popular and I intend to use this in most of my training and my membership site. I need to dig deeper into the benefits of Press releases and physical books, but other people are using them, so they are likely to be beneficial once I know how to use them. These wouldn't be my initial choices though, but something to incorporate in the future. Video Video is the new champion of media content. People are consuming more by video than any other form these days it seems. When you think of video content, YouTube immediately springs to mind, but there is a wealth of other ways available to get your message out using video. Video training is an obvious choice and can be blended with written material to produce a blend of instructional material. There is mileage in producing videos from my blog posts. A new video app with the tools to convert text to image and text to speech appears every couple of weeks. The quality of the translation of the text to image and text to audio gets better over time too. Some of the latest speech synthesis programs are getting very close to sounding like a human voice. One of my tasks this week is to investigate these tools and formulate a video content production plan, incorporated with a distribution plan for that content. Look out for a blog post shortly on my findings and how I set it all up. At this early stage, I am not going to incorporate 'going live' on social media or use webinars. Both these outlets have strong merits for using them and I will investigate them once I have everything else bedded down. Hmmm - TikTok. I have this latest social media craze on my radar. I won't be dancing (such a loss to the world, I know), but there are merits for using TikTok from a marketing perspective. Look out for the TikTok blog post in the not too distant future. DVDs I just can't see happening, but never dismiss any idea. Audio Audio is an easy format to produce these days. Text to speech packages have come on in leaps and bounds and there are all sorts of companies and apps for converting your PDF or blog post into audio or even a Podcast. Podcasts - At this early stage, I have no plans to produce podcasts, but I won't rule it out entirely, especially if I can produce one easily and regularly from the other content I am creating. I have recently acquired a tool called BuildBubbles that converts blog posts to podcasts. I am yet to this (see below). Audio training - I will be using audio in my training courses and membership site though. Because it is easy to produce, plus people like to listen to audio when driving or exercising, it is a must-have format. For CDs, see DVDs above. Images I will be using images in most of the content I produce, whether it be social media posts or articles. Even an expertly crafted, absorbing document like this one can still get a lift from a break in the text with some visual stimuli. At present, I can't see any way I will produce image only content, but I am open to persuasion if the right idea pops in front of me. My Social Media Platforms As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, I am already kicking my blog content out to the following channels: Medium Tumblr Blogger Wordpress.com Facebook Twitter LinkedIn These outlets were chosen because the tools I was using for my blog articles automatically published to these channels. Some of my other content could also be sent to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I also wanted to use my personal Facebook account for some of the content I produce and send most of my postings to a new Facebook Business page. I had also identified using a Facebook group specifically to concentrate on my journey from no income to a full-time income. Here we could discuss the merits and problems encountered using the tools and techniques I employed in my journey and people could ask advice and get answers. The next stage was to look at the better quality tools I had for automating and publishing content and the social platforms they could utilise. This investigation led to the creation of the following social media platforms: Instagram Pinterest Google My Business I also identified video-based channels I wanted to create: YouTube Vimeo DailyMotion TikTok would have to wait as I didn't know enough about how to use this channel as yet. It is on the horizon though. My Social Media Automation Tools It was just a case of matching the social platforms to the tools now and then identifying how I was going to use each of the tools and the social channels applicable to that use. As my blogging setup had already been covered and my video setup was to come shortly, I concentrated on the tools I would use to create, automate, and distribute the remaining content to my social media outlets. The tools I identified are as follows: Quuu Promote Quuu ResultFlow Publer Content Studio Content Fries Build Bubbles This was quite a list to set up, test, and get working correctly. I break down each of these tools and their functions in the coming section . . . 1) Quuu Promote This service allows you to put forward your blog posts to be shared by other people who are looking for relevant content for their own social channels. I have already mentioned this tool in my blogging article, but I wanted it here because it explains how I will use the next tool. 2) Quuu Quuu is the other end of the Quuu Promote process. I have a lifetime account I purchased a few years ago in an offer on AppSumo. I can use Quuu to post other people's content relevant to my audience to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. There is a wide range of niches to choose from, which filters the content Quuu offers you each day. This helps eliminate content that is not relevant to your niche. My chosen niches are in the grey area on the left-hand side: As the content comes from Quuu Promote, it has already been vetted to a reasonable standard, so I am happy to choose articles without reading them first. This can be quite a time saver. It has a sister posting tool called SocialChief, which is free to use for up to 3 channels. You can schedule unlimited posts with this tool. I have set it up to post articles from Quuu 6 times a day to each to each of the 3 channels Quuu supports. With my Quuu package, I get up to 30 recommended articles a day to choose from for posting to the social channels. This is more than adequate to pick enough articles to keep SocialChief well stacked with content. Quuu and SocialChief are a great way to keep relevant content hitting your social channels on a regular basis. Quuu gives you the ability to modify the text and images you post with each article, but as I am pretty busy at the moment I haven't used this facility yet. I have been using Quuu for a few days now and it all works seamlessly. 3) ResultFlow ResultFlow is a new system I am in the process of using. I am 2 weeks into a 4-week training course that instructs how to set up and use ResultFlow to get the best results. The idea behind ResultFlow is to use Facebook ads to attract people within your niche, then run a second set of Facebook ads specifically targeting these people to bring them to your website or your offer. ResultFlow automates most of this process, including creating and running the Facebook ads. As I am busy setting up all other aspects of my business, I am behind many of the other students on the course. I have my system set up, but I haven't run any Facebook ads yet, although the feedback from people who have looks quite encouraging. The ResultFlow approach is not the way most people would run Facebook ads, but the principle appears sound. Once I have finished the training and have some results from running Facebook ads I will produce a review article on ResultFlow. 4) Publer Publer automates posting to the following social media channels: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Instagram Google My Business I am already using Publer as part of my blog content distribution to get eyeballs to my articles but I will also use it to publish my other social media posts to the above channels. One of the benefits of Publer is its ability to preview the posts as they will appear on the social media channel. This allows you to tweak the content specific to that channel before publishing or scheduling it for posting later. With the variance of acceptable image sizes and character limitations across social media platforms, this can ensure posts look acceptable on all channels before posting. 5) Content Studio Like Publer, I am already using Content Studio as the main component in my blog post publishing. In addition to the blog post capabilities, Content Studio can also post to the same set of social media channels that Publer does. The advantage Content Studio has is the ability to curate content using keywords or topics that would interest your target audience. Having identified great content, you can post it or schedule it for posting on some or all of your social channels. This process can be fully automated, but when I have used it in the past I found I liked to manually authorise the content being posted first. This led to a higher standard of released material as I was able to filter out irrelevant or less targeted content. If you already have Content Studio, it would be hard to justify paying for Publer too, but because I have lifetime access to both, I can pick and choose which benefits I employ for which use case. 6) Content Fries Content Fries is a new tool I am yet to evaluate or use. It allows you to automatically turn your video content into other media forms, such as text or audio. Of course, I need to start producing video content first. It sounds ideal for what I need in my business, so I will be posting a review of this tool once I have had a chance to evaluate it and incorporate it into my content distribution process. 7) BuildBubbles This is another tool I have lifetime access to and I am yet to evaluate. BuildBubbles turns your blog post into a podcast and posts it to the podcast channels. Expect a review of this tool in the future also. 8) Other tools I have a raft of what I describe as 'supporting' tools. These tools are used for producing memes, editing images, creating YouTube Thumbnails, optimising image file sizes, editing text, creating videos, etc. I use these tools to create the media I use to build my online content. I also have a number of websites I access that provide some of the content or elements of the content. These are elements such as stock photos, stock videos, royalty-free music, icons, vector graphics, fonts, WordPress plugins and themes, etc. I also have a range of tools online and offline that help store information and media. The ability to have access to and quickly find images, documents, audio tracks, etc is invaluable. Finally, I have a set of apps on my computers and mobile devices that help keep everything running smoothly and facilitate the production of content. These range from word processors to video editors, document repositories to web browsers. I have the ability to produce whiteboard videos, top quality PDFs, and high-quality documents. I have far more tools than I will ever use, mainly because better ones keep appearing. Nevertheless, these smaller tools are what makes the production of my content easier. Without them, I would be lost. My Social Media Content Distribution Solution So my evaluation is complete for most of the tools, social media, and blogging platforms I wish to incorporate into my business. So what does the final solution look like? Well, I have a mind map that depicts much of what I am trying to achieve. It doesn't include everything (no Quuu) and the video section is still awaiting upgrading once I nail that part down. It also looks hellishly complicated as you can see: The thing to remember is with the tools I am using most of the above are a one-time setup. This applies to both the social media channels and the automation tools. I have already implemented the core of this system and have it working. I still have the video automation tool, BuildBubbles, and Content Fries still to evaluate and implement. The Key Take-Aways The set-up of a system like this can take some time, especially if you are new to the tools or inexperienced with the specific social media platform. The benefits of using a system like this are enormous. Having content being fed to a wealth of high authority social platforms is highly beneficial, especially as they are branded to your business. The fact you can do it without much more effort than producing the content is a great reason to implement a solution like this. In the future, as social media channels wax and wane, it will be easy to add, remove, or swap out social or blogging channels as their influence changes and new kids on the block appear. The ability to do the same thing with new tools as they appear can not be underestimated either. There is no doubt that building an automated content distribution system gives you great power and immense flexibility going forward. The ability to push your content out to a wealth of influential channels should propel you well ahead of your competitors. Only time will tell if I am right.

Category: Features

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