If you are anything like me, your morning might look like this.
6AM the alarm is buzzing. Stephanie rolls over in bed and places her arms far above her head, extending into a deep stretch. One turn to the left in a fake-stretching move and bam, cell phone is in hand. A click to my email application to give it enough time to load while I head on over to my Twitter app. Check the replies and do a little hashtag search. Respond if needed. From there it’s off to Facebook, mentally taking notes of anything I might need to address. Any news? Anything that needs immediate response?
Okay, I’m done. Off to the shower. Ahh, social media – it’s my morning cup of joe.
Luckily, my morning routine is a quick one. But only because I have a system. Hey, I’d probably lay in bed for a good two hours checking the social web, getting caught in a web of Youtube videos and their suggested counterpart, fantasizing about my life as a crafty person on Pinterest, and dreaming about what I would do differently on vacation in Barbados than my Facebook friend did. I’d actually love that type of morning.
I get it. Social Media is time consuming. There is no doubt about it. In fact, I think it is this reason that many people avoid social media or do as little as possible.
I’ve written about my time saving tricks in a previous post. But in this article, I want to share with you a service that I am using that saves a ton of time! It’s called BundlePost.
What Is BundlePost?
BundlePost is 50% RSS feed, 50% Tweet/post creator and 100% awesome! I use it to gather content to share on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I love BundlePost, because what typically took me hours now only takes me around 30 minutes. Okay, I know I’m starting to sound a lot like an informercial. But I truly believe in this service and I think it’s definitely worth checking out.
Here’s How It Works
First things first. The set up. You will need to set up RSS feeds and keywords to monitor in your feeds channel. As I manage a lot of different brands, I use the paid service so that I can add an unlimited amount of feeds. You can add Google Alerts or your favorite blog’s RSS address. I use both. You know how I feel about social media keywords, so the more you add, the better and more targeted content you can filter. BundlePost will add this content to your dashboard as it updates and you’ll have the option to use it for posts in the next steps.
From here, you’ll want to create your Tweet schedule, or “bulk schedule,” as they call it. This is the amount of Tweets you want to send per day. Each of my clients vary, so my schedules range anywhere from 5 Tweets to 30 Tweets per day.
Lastly, you’ll create your hashtag feed. This is a great feature. You can define the keywords that are found in your article headlines and from there BundlePost will automatically change those words to hashtag forms. For example “Social Media” will become #socialmedia when you export your content. Pretty genius!
Now that you’re good on the set up, you can export the content on a regular basis and upload it in Hootsuite as a bulk upload. Just like that, you have Tweets ready to go on the schedule you defined with hashtags. Talk about time saving!
Of course, there are additional features local to BundlePost that are awesome as well. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier with this service.
On Scheduled Content
There’s a huge debate in the social media world about scheduling content in advance. I support it when it comes to your supplementary content and when you don’t schedule too far in advance. Obviously you want your content to be timely, especially if it’s newsy. You should always be updating and engaging in real time as well. But by scheduling posts and content, you’re giving yourself time to engage, instead of using it to gather content, which can take hours! So with that being said, I find scheduling a week in advance is a good thing and helps me build relationships and focus on real time engagement, which is the most important.
Do you have a service you recommend for saving time? I’d love to hear about it. And keep me updated on your own experiences with BundlePost.
