4 Tools for Automating and Recycling Social Media Posts
If you have social content that you want constantly promoted, try these automated solutions.
By Rachel Perlmutter •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Organic social reach continues to decline, thanks to a growing number of businesses joining the social media fray, and algorithm updates that favors friends over businesses. So, many companies -- realizing that a post may only reach 1 percent of their entire audience -- employ a strategy to repost old yet important content to reach more people. Get the most bang for their buck, so to speak.
But even if you do remember to recycle content to your social media accounts (it's okay, forgetfulness is definitely a thing in entrepreneurship), it takes up a lot of time. You have to schedule these posts to different accounts, keep these posts in a spreadsheet somewhere that you can access later, and then reopen that file to reschedule them once again -- over and over again.
Luckily, there are tools that automate social media posts, so that important, evergreen content pieces get published on a recurring schedule without more work from you or your team. You can post the same article once every month, or a graphic about a recurring discount special once every two months, and you would only need to schedule it once with an automation tool.
Here's a look at a few social media automation solutions to consider:
Meet Edgar
$49 a month, 25 accounts, unlimited content library
Working with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Meet Edgar is a straightforward tool that is worth checking out. You fill up your content library with social content that you want scheduled, separate these posts into different categories (like Promotions, Motivational Images, Helpful Articles, etc.), set up a recurring schedule (like, every Monday at 9 a.m. post content from "Helpful Articles" to Facebook and Twitter), and Meet Edgar will cycle through that category of posts until you hit pause or delete.
There's even an expiration option so that timely posts can be posted frequently and then removed without you needing to remember to delete it. The tool also posts videos natively to accounts, and will be expecting Instagram and Pinterest functionality soon.
Related: Bringing Intelligence, Science and Automation Into the Marketing World
Recurpost
Free; 3 accounts, 100 pieces of content (higher tiers available)
If you aren't sure that automation is right for your company, but still want to test it out, this might be your best option. If you don't have a lot of content you want to automate, Recurpost could be your most cost-efficient tool. The functions are very similar to Meet Edgar, though it doesn't seem to post videos to platforms natively like Meet Edgar does, or come with an RSS feed of other content to fill your content library with. Still, if your only goal is to recycle posts on the regular, try this one out.
Agorapulse
$49 a month; 3 social accounts, unlimited content library (higher tiers available)
Want something a little more comprehensive? Agorapulse is not only a tool to repurpose and recycle content, but it's also a social post publisher and a social CRM and listening tool, with in-depth analytics and reporting for your social accounts. It's more costly, for sure, but it's great for business owners that need more features to capitalize on their social media marketing.
Related: 5 Ways Marketing Automation Helps Startups Succeed
Buffer
Free; 3 accounts, 10 scheduled posts (higher tiers available)
Buffer is traditionally a social scheduling tool -- putting it in direct competition with other tools like Hootsuite or Social Sprout -- however, there are some neat features in this tool that warrant its comparison to other autoscheduler tools. While it doesn't currently boast libraries to store content, it offers smart scheduling, where you let the tool decide when to post certain content. This might help cut down on the time you spend wondering when to schedule your posts.
To be fair, most other social schedulers have an autoschedule option as well, but there's another feature that seems to be quite interesting: rebuffer. You can view past, successful social posts, and then with one click of the mouse, reschedule that same post again for later. You might have to log in more often to ensure these posts keep going out, but if you're looking to A/B test different social copy, this tool could be handy.
Regardless of which automation tool you pick ...
... note that you shouldn't want to spam your audience with the same content over and over again. While only a small percentage might even see the first post anyway, it's possible that a superfan might see the second iteration of that same post later on. Fans do tend to be miffed by repeat posts. Twitter actually has been cracking down on automation tools that lets users repost the same content across multiple or the same accounts, within a very short time frame. While most tools now have updated their policies and features to reflect Twitter's guidelines, it's still important for you to keep in mind as you decide on the frequency of certain posts.
Before you start to build your library of social content to regularly post, you should first do an audit and make sure that the posts you want contain the most effective copy. You might need to ask yourself what times are the best for publishing, and also consider just how many other posts you plan on publishing in between these recurring posts. It's important that your account looks as human and natural as possible.
