Keeping up with the whole social media promotion merry-go-round can take a lot of time. Especially if you want to make real connections. There are some great tools that you can use to make life easier and automate some tasks.
I want to use social media to be a real person and genuinely interact with others. Like most people, I don’t like spam or gratuitous self-promotion and I don’t want to inflict it on others either. However, social media has to be manageable, so I am looking for ways to automate tasks that don’t need my personal touch. Then I can spend that time on critical business building tasks.
Here’s a great automation tool I have just discovered. Tweet Old Posts is a WordPress plugin that will take your old posts and randomly retweet them for you. You just set the frequency and away it goes. It can also add text to the tweet and hashtags if you like. You can also exclude some posts from being retweeted.
So how has it worked for me? I have been using it since the start of February, so just over 2 weeks. So far my Twitter following has jumped by about 30% and I am getting a lot more retweets of my posts. Traffic is up on my blog by a huge amount too. Admittedly both of these are off a lowish base.
Why does it work?
- Twitter moves so fast, that getting my content out there more often gives more people a chance to see it and notice it. I am going to experiment with the frequency of tweeting old posts – both more often and less often and see what that does to the number of people engaging.
- It doesn’t come across like an automated bot.
Cautions:
You would need to have enough content on your site for this to work. If you are light on content so far, you may want to set the frequency of the retweets further apart. I am conscious it might get annoying to followers to have the same old posts coming up again and again. I don’t want them to tune out or get annoyed.
Also, this shouldn’t be the only thing on your Twitter feed. You should also engage with your followers and retweet other content they may find useful – or you think is interesting.
And lastly, a thank you to all the wonderful people I’ve connected with on Twitter who have given me positive feedback about my posts. 🙂 (You know who you are.) You make my day!!
Action:
If you have a WordPress blog, look up the Tweet Old Posts plugin on WordPress and install it today. Test different settings and measure the stats to see how it helps to build users and drive traffic.
Think about: what else can you do to automate social media tasks?
(Update: this plugin is now called Revive Old Post) and can also post to Facebook and LinkedIn. You can get it for free or upgrade to the inexpensive Pro version to post with images and post to multiple accounts.)
Further Reading:
I learnt about this plugin (and some other great tools) from this great post from Kissmetrics: Twitter Marketing Guide
Join the Conversation
Have you used this plugin or another tool that you find helps to automate Twitter tasks in a human friendly way? Let me know.
Have your say in the comments – or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.
I am at the very beginning of a startup adventure which involves, amongst other things, building a blog and increasing my social media presence. Having worked for other people in busy, full time employment all my life this new world does, at times, swing from invigorating and exciting to overwhelming, daunting and a perhaps a little lonely. Finding your blog and following your tweets really does help, with their great information and inspirational support. And, by way of a comment on this post; the type and overall frequency of tweets you send out on automation really works for me they are like a friend giving me a gentle prod to think about and action positive steps toward business success and if I don’t listen one day due to my mind being on other things, they pop up again to give me another prod! Many thanks and keep them coming.
Thanks Cembre for the feedback and your encouragement. 🙂 You made my day!
Thanks for the tip! I’ll definitely check out TweetOldPosts. So far I’ve been using Buffer and Hootsuite when it comes to automation, but I think this plugin will be a good addition to my social media utility belt. 😉
Thanks Francesca. I use Buffer as well. I think it’s a great service. I find the interface on Hootsuite too busy and I don’t really like the way it formats things when it posts – especially on FB. It’s useful to set posts ahead of time though.
Susan,
Your content is really valuable and meaningful. I am sure, it is pouring in tons of Blessings for you.
God Bless you always.
Thanks,
Harjinder Singh
Thanks for the encouragement Harjinder
Just stumbled onto your blog and going to check out that plugin. Thank you. I’d love to grow my followers and those who get exposed to the blog.
Great tip!