How to Automatically Share Content on Social Media The Right Way

If you’re publishing new content on the regular, I’m betting you want people to actually see it, right?

Ok, that’s a silly question. Unless you’re a unicorn – you probably created a website because you wanted to get it in front of the world’s collective eyeballs.

Well, in addition to a bunch of other methods, sharing your content on social media is one of the best ways to do just that.

But here’s the rub:

Most people are so busy actually creating content, that the last thing they want to do is spend even more time sharing that content on social media.

So, to help you out, I’m going to dedicate this post to showing you how to automatically share content on social media. Then, to stop you from becoming the social media equivalent of a robot, I’ll share some tips to automate without annoying your followers.

How to Automate Sharing Your Content on Social Media

Ok, I doubt you need too much convincing that you really should be sharing your content on social media. So I’m not going to bother spouting stats like 31.24% of traffic was driven by social media sites (all the way back in 2014).

Instead, I’m going to jump right into showing you how to automate sharing your content.

Here are some of my favorite solutions.

Buffer + IFTTT

Note – you can do the same thing as I’m about to show you by using the premium Buffer Awesome Plan. But…my way is free. And free is a pretty alluring proposition, in my opinion.

Buffer is a tool for creating a queue of content that you want to share on social media. Once you build your queue, Buffer schedules out social media posts for you and automatically shares them at the times when your visitors are most likely to be engaged.

So…that automates the sharing part. But it doesn’t handle actually building your queue of content. As of now, you still have to do that manually using the Buffer extension.

That’s where IFTTT comes in.

IFTTT is a connector that allows you to “hook” two different things together using simple “if this, then that” conditions.

One of the neat things that you can do is hook your website’s RSS feed up to Buffer using IFTTT. Then, whenever you publish a new post, IFTTT automatically grabs that post and sticks it in Buffer. Then, Buffer automatically shares that post at a time when your readers are most likely to engage.

It’s automation all the way down!

How to Connect Your RSS Feed to Buffer

Hooking up your RSS feed to Buffer couldn’t be simpler. All you need is:

• A free Buffer account
• A free IFTTT account

Assuming you’re logged in to IFTTT, click this link to create a new “applet”.

• Under the If This condition, choose RSS feed and enter your site’s RSS feed.
• Under the Then That condition, choose Buffer
• Review your applet and click Finish to get going

Revive Old Post

Full disclosure, I write for the company behind Revive.Social, which means I’ve done things like write a guide on how to use Revive Old Post. Rather than making me biased, I think that makes me knowledgeable, though!

Revive Old Post is a neat solution that does everything the Buffer method above does but inside your WordPress dashboard. It’s also cool that, in addition to helping you automatically share new posts on social media, you can also have Revive Old Post automatically share old blog posts.

There are all kinds of reasons why it’s helpful to share old content like:

• Resharing content actually gets new eyeballs on it because social networks are decreasing organic reach.
• You’ll pick up new followers who weren’t there when you first shared a post.

What’s Cool About Revive Old Post

Because Revive Old Post is a WordPress plugin instead of a SaaS, it gives you a little more flexibility over how you automatically share your content.

For example, you can set up sharing templates that:

• Pull content from custom fields
• Add your featured image to the social post (only in premium)
• Include hashtags
• Plenty more

Other Options to Automatically Share Your Content On Social Media

While I’ve personally used the first two methods on live sites, they aren’t your only options.

Here are some other popular tools, though, again, I haven’t personally used them:

• HootSuite – lets you set up 2 RSS feed integrations for free.
• RecurPost – lets you categorize your content into “libraries” that you can reshare on a recurring schedule.
• Social Web Suite – a full service social media management suite.

How To Not Be That Annoying Person Who Spams People’s Social Feeds

Because of how easy it is to automate sharing your content on social media, it’s also easy to go overboard and, well, spam your followers like crazy.

No one likes the person who shares 30 posts about their own content every day.

Seriously.

No one. I unfollow those people all the time.

Don’t be that person by following these tips…

Set a Limit on How Many Posts You Share Per Day

All the tools that I listed above let you set a limit on the number of automated posts that go out every day. That feature is there for a reason. Use it.

What should that limit be? It’s hard to say because it always depends on your specific audience, but a good starting point based on all the stats I could find is…

• Twitter – 3-5 times per day
• Facebook – 1-2 times per day
• LinkedIn – 1 time per day during the workweek

Share Other People’s Content, Too

If you only share your own content, it’s going to look like you’re only on social media to drive traffic to your own site.

Now…that may well be true – let’s not lie to ourselves. But even if it is true, you don’t…want it to look like it’s true.

One way to dispel that notion is to share other people’s content. But curating content is surprisingly time consuming…which is why you can automate this part, too.

Two ways to do it are:

• Quuu – Quuu can automatically feed topical posts into your Buffer queue. I use this on my personal Twitter and find the suggestions surprisingly good.
• Revive.Network – a WordPress plugin that helps you share relevant posts from a collection of RSS feeds. Also gives you cool templating options to make things seem unique.

I’ve personally used both these tools and each is a solid solution.

Don’t Just Be a Robot – Share Some Thoughts and Engage

Up until now, I’ve mainly focused on automation.

But here’s the truth:

Your account looks a lot better if it’s not just a feed of content from you and others.

So, try to make at least some time where you can hop on social media and actually interact.

Maybe that’s sharing your own thoughts, or maybe it’s responding to someone else’s tweet.

I’m not always good at this…but I try:

Take a Look at Your Queue Sometimes

Finally, as good as social media automation has become, you still need to keep an eye on things.

I mean, Google’s self-driving cars can drive themselves, but we still make them carry around a human with his or her foot on the brake.

So, periodically check on your queue. Every single tool that I shared gives you an upcoming schedule so you can see exactly what’s going to be shared and when.

Wrapping Things Up

Automatically sharing your blog posts on social media is a great way to generate traffic while saving time…if you do it right.

The actual process of automation is easy – Buffer + IFTTT, Revive Old Post, and others make it simple to automatically share your blog posts.

Just make sure to follow some basic best practices so that you don’t run afoul of your followers and you’ll do great!