*This is a sponsored post in that I received a discount on my Cinchshare membership and am part of their ambassador program. I will tell you that I approached Cinchshare after having tried their service for a couple of months and being thrilled with the amount of time and work it has saved me.
I know a lot of you come visit me to laugh at my antics, check out a DIY project or perhaps even learn a new craft – but today I want to share something for those of you that are, or are considering, blogging.
To the outside world blogging may seem like the ultimate gig – doing what you like each day, making your own hours, no boss to answer to, unlimited vacation time and while all of those are true – it really isn’t quite as “cushy” as it seems.
There’s the other side of outlaying thousands of dollars on website design and hosting, graphic design costs for logos, the expenses of photo-editing services, internet service, email service as well as the costs involved in purchasing all the items you need to keep a DIY blog going: camera, tripod, computer, wood, tools, supplies, marketing campaigns and on and on and on.
Take Facebook as an example. There’s so much to consider to make your page visually appealing when running an online business. Something that seems simple, like the facebook cover photo size, needs to perfectly represent your brand. On Facebok your cover photo is often what makes that all important first impression – that’s why I’m glad my friend told me about sites like Louder Online that offer digital marketing tips for social media.
Of course, there’s more than just being creative and photographing your work as well. You have to actively approach brands to sell yourself, you have to answer comments, questions and innumerable emails on just about every social media platform. You have to spend at least as much time editing photos, writing content, managing SEO and promoting your posts as you do with the “fun” stuff. It can be pretty challenging and some people chose to hire someone like commslab.com.au to help do the social media marketing for you. Blogging can take time so don’t expect results quickly.
I can honestly say that this is not the gig for you if you don’t absolutely LOVE what you are sharing. Love it enough to spend far more money than you make. Love it enough to work well beyond an 8 hour workday and a 5 day week. Love it enough to make less than welfare for months, sometimes even years.
I love this blog.
That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate a break here and there and if there’s a way to streamline my processes to make this a “work smarter, not harder” job, I’m all in.
That was my ‘brief intro’ to How to Streamline your social media.
Every post I write needs to be shared to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. These are the social media sites that introduce new readers to my blog and help me to grow my little business.
But, if you’ve used any of those services you know how time consuming it can be. Posting the same information 4 different places takes time as well as (and which almost always happens) getting sucked into the social media feeds and scrolling endlessly.
Enter Cinchshare;
Cinchshare is an inexpensive service that allows you to write your social media post once and then share it everywhere.
Better still, it allows you to fill your feed ahead of time with current content, older content and even content from other bloggers to keep your feeds current, interesting and attracting new readers.
Let me show you how it works:
This is the opening screen you’ll see when you first log in to Cinchshare:
There are a few sections that you’ll be working with – the first being the “Post Message” section; this is where you’ll write the intro to your blog post. Because we’re using Cinchshare to streamline our social media workload, we’re going to keep our intro to 140 characters or less, including the link to your blog and any hashtags you want to appear on Instagram.
It forces you to keep it brief, which is perfect when all you get is a reader’s glance as they are scrolling.
The second section you’ll be working with is the “Post Photo” area. Here you’ll ‘upload photo’ from your blog post (I’ll show you how the ‘photo url’ box works later – but for our purposes right now, use the upload photo option.
Next up is scheduling when your post will be shared on social media. Immediately? Tomorrow? Next month? During prime visibility hours?
Finally, and this is the BEST part, Cinchshare allows the same post to be fed to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with one click.
If you’ve gone over the 140 character limit, you’ll receive a message letting you know it isn’t eligible for Twitter.
Let me show you a blog post that I’m posting to go live later this week:
Once I click “Schedule Post” it will show up in my queue of articles soon to go live.
That’s it!
That took about 2 minutes (only because I sometimes struggle to keep my babbling to 140 characters), and my article will now feed to all the main social media sites during a premium time slot!
I spent about an hour Sunday night scheduling posts to go for the rest of the week – you can see my schedule on the right-hand side is totally full with posts in every category, from my blog and from a few others to fill my feed with great ideas 3 – 4 times per day!
One hour on Sunday night to post 21 different articles to three different social media feeds at prime readership hours!
I made up a brief video to show you how easy it is to share content from your page or from others’:
There are other social media management tools out there, but none that come in at $9 per month AND include Instagram. I’ve tried HooteSuite and I prefer Cinchshare for ease of use.
There are many more features and batch options which appeal to direct sellers and bloggers alike as well as ways to work with Facebook Live, but I’ll leave that for you to investigate further through Cinchshare’s comprehensive library of video tutorials.
If you are looking to “work smarter, not harder”, then learning how to streamline your social media posts can save you hours every week, and gain you readers with prime-time placement and consistent content updates.
Try before you buy? Of course! Cinchshare offers a free trial so you can check out the service, play with the features and get a gauge on its effectiveness – if you use the code CSfree, you’ll get a 37 day free trial (that’s 5 weeks folks!)
Click over to Cinchshare, try it free for 5 weeks (code: CSfree) and see if it doesn’t streamline your social media and save you hours of work, while boosting your exposure.
Have a great one!
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