3 Basic Social Media Hacks For Bloggers

Since starting my new business (Borrow My // Blender), I’ve been trying to find ways to streamline my social media usage. I spend enough time online tweeting, instagram-ing, writing… just for this blog here. How would I make this work for an additional business blog without doubling the time I spend on it?!

Last week, I spent one half day (no exaggeration) working out a formula in excel and thought, I need to save someone else from this. So I’m sharing a few of my basic social media hacks with you…

1. Get Organised 

Until about two weeks ago, I kept all my blog ideas in notes on my iPhone. Then, through chatting with my fellow London Bloggers, I found Trello. I think it’s changed my life. The simplest way to describe it is as a project management tool. I’ve taken my blog and turned it into a project. I can easily distinguish between ideas, drafts, scheduled posts and those published.

If you want to know more, you have to read this post from Elle & co. about getting organised with Trello.

You’re Welcome. 

…and Thanks to Charlotte of Lunges & Lycra for shoving me in the trello direction. 

BONUS:  Use Analytics To Schedule When To Post 

If you register your social media accounts as business accounts, you get access to all the analytics about when your followers are online, who they are and probably what they are into. Twitter is great for this, Pinterest and Facebook. You can also use services such as Buffer or Hootsuite who automatically schedule your posts for the times that will have most impact.

2. Re-sharing Old Posts – A Treat For Us Die Hard Blogger Bloggers 

If you’re on Blogger (like me), you’ll know how simple it is to use. This does however come with some constraints; one of them being when it comes to sharing old posts. But, behold Blogger bloggers! I found a good solution. I just need to try to explain it to you coherently.

Using an excel spreadsheet, you can type in a formula which imports your blog posts, and links then allowing you to schedule and share them all over again on social media. Please don’t ask me any technical questions about this. Ever. Just follow the instructions and cross your fingers.

Step 1. Locate the URL of your RSS feed (google it if you need to) and place that URL in cell A1

Step 2. In cell A2 type this formula: =IMPORTFEED(A1, “items title”, false, 30)

n.b: I had to physically type it to make it work – until I worked this out, I spent half a day on this one point 

This formula imports the titles of your last 30 blog posts (you can just change the number in the formula if you want less / more). Then when you press enter, the cells will populate with your post titles.

Step 3. In cell B2 type this formula: =IMPORTFEED(A1, “items url”, false, 30)

This formula imports the urls of those post titles. And now this, is the source of your sharing for old posts. 

BONUS: Content Sharing Tracker 

I then use a spreadsheet to compose tweets and track what I share. Think of different ways to paraphrase what you want to say; here’s an example of one I wrote and scheduled for my recent post about my Olympus PEN E-PL7:

“When I first got the PEN, I used auto mode and thought my images were stunning” https://t.co/qTrPtQVEPd #LoveMyPen pic.twitter.com/pI0pzMOA3A

— Elle @keepitsimpElle (@X_eLle_S) February 12, 2016

 3. Make Instagram Work For You 

Okay. So we love Instagram. And even now they are owned by Facebook, it’s difficult to share images of others without using an external app. I recently downloaded Repost so I could share when customers tried a recipe I created on the Borrow My // Blender Instagram.

Then I found this epic blog post on Popsugar Tech about How To Save Instagram Images. I use it mostly to save my own images when I want to repost them on other social channels.  Hello Gramfeed.

Click here for all the latest info on how to start a kickass blog

Do you have any timesaving, social media hacks that work wonders for you?! 

Elle 🙂