Bizsuccess

Friday, December 23, 2011

By: Susan Gunelius

Small business content marketing and social media marketing are powerful tools to grow your brand and business. However, both content marketing and social media marketing take time. That’s something many small business owners don’t have. Fortunately, many social media marketing and content marketing activities can be automated to save some time.

It’s important to understand that the vast majority of the content you publish to your social media profiles should not be automated. That’s because the power of social media marketing comes from the two-way conversation it offers and the opportunity to build relationships with a broad and engaged audience. However, not everyone likes to consume content in the same ways. For example, some people like to watch videos rather than read lengthy blog posts while others prefer the speed of Twitter updates.

Following are a number of tools you can use to automatically feed your content from one social media profile to another as listed in Content Marketing for Dummies (Wiley, 2011).

1. Twitterfeed

I use Twitterfeed and it’s a free and easy-to-use tool that enables you to feed your blog posts directly to your Twitter profile. You can also use it to feed your Twitter updates to your Facebook profile. All you need is your blog RSS feed URL and your Twitter profile URL to set it up.

2. RSS Graffiti

RSS Graffiti is a popular Facebook app that makes it easy to feed your blog posts directly to your Facebook profile, Facebook page, Facebook groups, Facebook events, and more. It works with both RSS and Atom feeds.

3. NetworkedBlogs

NetworkedBlogs is another tool that enables you to automatically publish your blog posts to your Facebook profile. If you don’t like RSS Graffiti, give NetworkedBlogs a try. It works with both RSS and Atom feeds, too.

4. Facebook Pages Twitter App

You can feed your Facebook Page updates for your small business to your Twitter profile with the handy Facebook Pages Twitter app.

5. Flickr to Facebook Tool

Flickr is a great social media site for sharing and discussing images. Using the Flickr to Facebook tool, you can configure your Flickr and Facebook account settings so your Flickr image uploads publish on your Facebook page automatically.

6. Facebook SlideShare App

I use the Facebook SlideShare app and it takes just seconds to set up. Once it’s configured, your SlideShare presentation will automatically display on your Facebook Page.

7. LinkedIn Twitter App

You can feed your Twitter updates directly to your LinkedIn profile or feed your LinkedIn updates directly to your Twitter profile with the LinkedIn Twitter app.

8. LinkedIn Blog Link App

There are a couple of LinkedIn apps that enable you to automatically publish your blog posts to your LinkedIn profile. The LinkedIn Blog Link app is a popular choice.

9. LinkedIn SlideShare App

LinkedIn has a reputation for being best for business-to-business marketing, so it makes sense that the LinkedIn SlideShare app is popular. What better way to show what your business can do to other companies than with presentations from your SlideShare account? You can easily publish your SlideShare publications on your LinkedIn profile with this app.

10. LinkedIn Behance App

The LinkedIn Behance app is a must-have for designers, photographers, and more. It allows you to share your images, samples of your work, and so on as an online portfolio within your LinkedIn profile.