This is how quickly you can actually share posts on multiple social networks.
Sharing content on social media is one of the most important tasks to generate attention and drive more traffic to your website and to your offers. Posting on multiple social platforms and channels consumes a lot of time and work. So, how can you save time on social media?
Social media automation tools promise huge time-savings and more time for the things that are really important to you. You can save time and tedious chores. In this article I will put a social media automation tool to the test and see how much time it can really save. Is it possible to do your social media management in 5 minutes?
The experiment
To compare manual sharing and sharing with a social media tool, I will promote one blog post on my social media channels and compare the times. Let’s see how long it takes to share the post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.
When using social media automation, it is tempting to share the same message to all social networks but social media posts get more outreach and engagement if you customize your posts to each social network and each community. That’s why in this experiment I will be using personal comments, asking questions and adding hashtags. People are more likely to like, share or comment on social media posts with personal comments.
For a quick overview of the results and a look at how I share my posts, check out this video on “Social Media Management in 5 MINUTES”.
The tedious work of sharing social media posts manually on each network
For my self-experiment, I started with the manual work of sharing my blog post separately on each social media account. I wanted to see how much time I actually need for marketing a blog post on each social platform. I started the stopwatch after publishing my blog post and then I started with the promotional work.
I opened Canva first, to crop the images to the perfect size for each social network. To find out the best image sizes for each network check out the following infographic. Click here to see the current best image sizes for each network.
First, I tackled Twitter, quickly and easily to be done, isn’t it? Just 280 characters to go. The text actually came to me quite easily, putting in hashtags without much hassle. But then the tricky part started: 49 characters left but still no link and no image included. So I opened a new tab, entered the blog URL, opened the post, copied the link and pasted in my Tweet. I wanted to post an image post, so I still had to add the image.
A quick look at the timer: 12:01 minutes gone for Twitter and cropping my images.
On to the next network!
Let’s turn to Facebook next. For Facebook, there is no character limit. So I added a short introduction to my post, added the image and the link and hit send.
The score: After Facebook the stopwatch shows 16:43 minutes.
No, I will not bore you now with how I worked all networks, but rather highlight what I did. After finishing Facebook, to save time, I copied and changed my comment a bit for the business contacts on LinkedIn.
Now I realize that pasting links and images is most time-consuming. Additionally, I have to open each network in a single tab and switch between tabs to copy and paste texts for re-using them. Blogpost, social networks, image folder, infographics– you can very quickly lose the overview.
Pinterest and Instagram were next in line. In these two social networks you need a key visual to grab the attention. So, to save time, you should make sure to prepare graphics that work on both networks. With Pinterest there is also the choice of the right wall to pin it to.
After sharing my post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram I stopped the time again and had a final time of 25:20 minutes.
At a first glance I thought 25:20 minutes for 5 networks was not bad, but if I want to promote 2-4 posts a day, I am busy for more than 2 hours with just promoting blog posts.
However, I did not even add the additional time I usually need for re-publishing my post also on Medium, Torial, Bloglovin, and Reddit. And, I also did not share my posts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing pages and groups as I usually do.
Let’s see how much time we can save using social media automation.
Social Media Automation: Sharing blog posts with Blog2Social
Blog2Social is a social media automation software specially designed for WordPress websites. It is fully integrated into the WordPress dashboard, so you can manage and share all your website content, but also content from other sources on your social media accounts directly from your WP dashboard.
The starting point here is the same: The timer starts after the blog post is published and the promotional work can begin. I go to the WordPress back-end and click on the green Blog2Social button. Of course users who don’t have a WordPress website can use the independent Blog2Social WebApp. This is a great option for scheduling and managing your social media posts if you don’t have a WordPress website.
Blog2Social automatically adapts the image sizes to the requirements of each network, so I don’t have to go to Canva and crop my images. Comments fitting the requirements of each network’s space limits are also automatically added from my text.
Since I don’t want to make it too easy for this experiment, I will become more creative and customize my comments for each of my communities. Blog2Social allows me to customize each social media post in one place and one easy workflow, so that I can still save time, a lot of time, compared to manually sharing my posts.
If you want to learn more on how best to share your post on each network, check out the following free complete social media sharing guide.
I don’t have to insert the link to my post as Blog2Social inserts it automatically. Also, my keywords are automatically turned into hashtags for networks such as Pinterest and Instagram.
The tool also counts the available characters for me. On top of each editing field I can see how many characters I have available in total and how many I have used up already.
Since all editing fields for all connected networks, profiles, pages, and groups are displayed on one editing page, I save time for switching between the individual tabs.
Blog2Social also allows me to schedule my posts to be shared at a specific time on each network. I can do this by using a pre-configured best time scheduler or I can edit each time separately for each network. I usually use the best time scheduler and then edit some of the suggested times, if I think it necessary. With this I can save time on scheduling every post individually.
The only thing I still had to do was press the green button “Share.”
Et voilá – all posts have been published or scheduled. By clicking “view social media post” you can take a look at your post to check, if everything is ok.
What can I say? Everything looks great! A glance at the stopwatch tells me: 5 minutes and 5 seconds. Even without a calculator, I know that it was much less than in the first round. Blog2Social just saved me 20 minutes and a lot of sharing pain.
The benefits of scheduling social media posts
Blog2Social enables you to share your blog posts on all social media at once or to schedule your social media posts for each or of channels. By sharing your posts at different times the posts are likely to get more outreach and attention. Every network has a specific time when communities are most active and at which posts achieve higher interaction rates. By sharing your post at the best time for each social network your post is more likely to get attention and engagement from your community. By sharing your post at different times across social networks will also extend the lifespan of your post.
Learn more tips and tricks for time-saving social media scheduling here.
Wrap up: Save Time on Social Media Management and Cross-Promotion with Blog2Social
25:20 minutes manual sharing vs. 5:05 minutes automatic sharing.
You can easily see: Sharing with Blog2Social only took me a fifth of the time that manual sharing costs me. Instead of almost half an hour, I just did my scheduling in less than 5 minutes. Plus, with Blog2Social, all my posts will be published at the best times for each network and I don’t have to worry about the correct image sizes.
And think about this: If you wanted to post to another Facebook page, group or to another Twitter account, and even more social networks like XING, Reddit, Tumblr or Google My Business manually, it could take you over an hour everyday. With Blog2Social you can do your complete scheduling for a week, a month or even a year in a matter of minutes.
Blog2Social can also reshare your older posts on social media automatically. The Blog2Social Autoposter can automatically create and share posts for every new piece of content you publish. This way, you can save even more time!
With all this new free time you have on your hands, you can create more amazing content, interact with your communities, promote your business in any way you’d like or simply take a break.
Voices from Blog2Social Users: “Saves SO much Time!!!”
I am not the only one who finds Blog2Social is a great time-saver. Dena on WordPress is giddy because she doesn’t have to spend hours on social media scheduling anymore.
What’s your experience with Social Media Automation? Please let me know in the comments!
