Hey Lina! We were just looking at Hootsuite today on a call.....do you like it?? Any downsides?

Thanks Rachael! Was just reviewing Hootsuite based off recommendations here. I currently use Buffer, but the problem is if we want to create REALLY HIGH QUALITY posts on each network, going into the actual network is always best (it helps you re-size images properly, use hashtags properly, and link properly).

 

While Buffer is great for sharing links etc, sometimes I still find it best for longer form content to physically login to each network and post.

 

If I can get around that with Hootsuite it'd be awesome :)

I don’t think it matters WHAT calendar you use, although I have been using Angie Gensler’s. The work flow is the most important part of using a social calendar!

Bahahahah, great pooping analogy 😂

For the love of Growth as a writer .... Medium dot com is where you need to give the most "social media" attention to. Wish you all the best this new year....

Hey Nev!

 

(It's been a while since I've jumped in the comments!)

 

I'm totally interested in your experiment and I'm excited to see what you learn so that I can see how someone with a much larger audience than me is handling it. I'm in the beginning stages of building a new brand with a heavy video content strategy and I'm looking for every social media audience building hack I can find :)

 

When you do your follow up article, I'd love to know the mix of content you're posting, and which content types you found most effective. As a writer, I'd really love to see how you engage people on Instagram.  I'm always challenging myself to make writing more visual and interesting on that platform.

 

Thanks, as always, for sharing great ideas!

 

~Denise Renee

I'm considering focusing on one or two platforms, those most suited for the goal/type business . For instance, maybe youtube and medium would be worth an extra effort, while twitter and instagram, while having good numbers on paper, possibly aren't as effective, bottom-line-wise, because they are "quicker" platforms, with less attention spam. Also, stuff on medium and youtube have a greater life span that those of twitter and instagram. Of course, experimentation is essential, and I'm very curious to see your results :) Great post.

Hey Rohan, that's IS a possibility for sure. After this experiment is complete I might make an assessment as to which to focus on.

 

So far from our few trial posts, it seems the process for now will be:

Step 1.) Make an Instagram post.

Step 2.) Format that post and post it in Buffer (where LinkedIn, FB, Twitter) get updated.

 

The cool thing about these automation tools is that once you connect your account, any update you make goes to ALL of them.

 

So instead of just totally letting the non-highest performing accounts rot, at least there's a chance to revitalize them later!

 

For example I let my Instagram account rot for nearly THREE YEARS...I then posted a single post, and it was the highest social media day I've had in years.

 

So for non-performing accounts, for now I will just automate their uploading, and then later if they start performing give em more love.

Hey Janellea, thanks for the input! Having a calendar is great, as it takes out all the guess work from what you're posting.

 

For now we're kinda freeballing it, but we do have a list of "types of posts" we can do to spur ideas.

 

For this experiment I will be all over the place....some personal posts, some business-y posts. No real order :)

Thanks Rob!

 

I just added this "iceberg" analogy to show that from viewing my current social media stats, there's a huge ocean of exposure you get from social media that isn't reflected in the stats:

 

So if I got 52,949 trackable clicks to my website through social media, I estimate the number exposures I got is between 10x and 100x that.

 

That sounds pretty powerful if used correctly!

Hey Laurie, I use alllllll sorts of tools to prevent me from social!

 

I have Chrome extensions that:

- Stops the Facebook Newsfeed from showing.

- Doesn't show recommended videos on the YouTube sidebar.

- I have a "site blocker" which I push, and it blocks all distracting websites for 90 minutes.

 

Even though, I still get sucked into them sometimes :)

Hey Adrian I have seen it, however I like to highly customize each post (I've noticed FAR MORE engagement when doing each one).

 

I currently auto-post with something similar called Buffer!

Thanks Mark! I previously have already auto-posted old content over and over, and it works.

 

However what works EVEN MORE is taking a good blog post, formatting in a new way for a specific social network and posting that.

 

While it takes far more time, it definitely gets more engagement. We'll see if it's worth it!

Oh I DEFINITELY already use that, I would otherwise get sucked into Facebook every time I open it!

I am on Medium (https://medium.com/@nevillemedhora) but don't post there super often since I have my own platform I post on most.

 

But yes it does get readership and send links!

Hey DR yeah longtime!

 

I actually think from past experience the type of content that works the most is a MIX of personal-ish and business-ish.

 

As for posting on all platforms, we've decided it's easiest to best FIRST make an Instagram post, then re-jigger the post for other social platforms after that.

 

So far from our few trial posts, it seems the process for now will be:

Step 1.) Make an Instagram post.

Step 2.) Format that post and post it in Buffer (where LinkedIn, FB, Twitter, Pinterest) get updated.

 

That seems to be how we'll proceed for now, but will continually update....already the traffic from today and yesterday have been my highest social media traffic days, just by following this.

#1.) Yup.....I still get sucked in 😳

 

#2.) Very true. I've un-followed nearly all accounts that are non-friends.

 

#3.) Yes true. I spend SOME time answering as many comments as I can initially, but afterwards my engagement tends to drop off in order to keep sanity.

Very true Guilheme. My whole post here goes over why I think it's far more important to FIRST create big pieces of content (Blog + YouTube), then use social media to break up concepts from those pieces and promote them.

 

Because then you can take a single piece of content and turn it into MANY pieces of content across different social platforms:

No problem, we're all good! That was a rare time when having a Twitter account helped improve my community, other than that I'm quite averse to any political discussion.

The one thing I like best about Hootsuite is the ability to post to all the platforms quickly. I have read that videos should be uploaded directly to Facebook, but I didn't know there was a difference for hashtags. Does it make a difference with hashtags when posting directly?

I know the feeling! Creating content for these platforms is so easy and quick that it becomes much more tempting to post on them, rather than write a few thousand words article. Please let us know how the experiment went in a few months!

That seems to be the sentiment so far Lucas! I didn't post on Instagram for 10 days and the stats went down by 60X. That is NUTS.

 

I'd rather keep focusing on the "Base Content" layer of my site:

Really interesting experiment!  Cheers for sharing Neville!

 

The other thing I'm wondering since it's likely your biggest of all the big goals - did you see any difference in the overall no. of sales, or shift in sales by channel (as best as you can tell) vs. before you reactivated.

 

On reading about how you do social and your mention your conversions by channel, it occurred to me I would be really interested to know how you set-up your GA dashboard (and any other tracking) to measure the sales conversion side of things aswell. I'm looking to do it myself and it seems like alot of folk overcomplicate all of that, and I'd imagine you'd have thought about it in the same effort vs. effectiveness type of way given it's always probably some degree of fuzzy at the end of the day.

 

Thanks again for sharing, all the best!

 

Andy

 

Ps. (BTW. I should pass on - I really enjoyed your book and your blog, and find some of the posts really memorable too 'everyone should do consulting' and the 'content strategy' one for a start. Similar to your own view on social, I very rarely click or do anything that would tell you much about this enjoyment otherwise!)

MeetEdgar comes highly recommended as a robust scheduling tool. I don't use it myself as I still have the impression that my posts on Facebook do a little better if I use the very unpleasant Facebook scheduler.

 

Later is practical for Instagram feed posts.

I bet you can do very well on Twitter!