Imagine Automation That Creates Social Media Messages For You

I have reduced time spent on social media by 78% with automation, and I would like to share with you the example of how simple it can be.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to try and sell you a new automation tool or describe new social media services. Instead, I’m going to explain how to set up an automation process for your social media that will literally create messages for you. Not just automating the schedules, not reposting old content but creating social messages from scratch, scheduling and posting it without any effort from you. Best of all, you’ll only have to set up it up once.

Engaging in social media can be very time-consuming. Especially if you are just starting out, you will quickly see how much valuable time it takes to build a loyal follower base and engage with them on a daily basis.

It is vital to understand why social media matters, regardless of whether you focus on B2B or B2C.

Even if you specialize in B2B, social media is an excellent way to get the word out about your product or services, communicate directly with your customers, increase brand credibility, get feedback and understand market trends, while even finding new customers. Also, you have probably heard that people tend to seek social proof while choosing a new product or service.

As you can see, social media is a vital tool to utilize in today’s competitive world. That is why I would like to share with you a step-by-step guide on how to reduce the time spent on writing and scheduling social media messages and still staying engaged with your followers.

As an example, I will talk about event promotion. Events are an important way to get the word out about what a company has to offer and a way to find new customers for many businesses.

Whether you go to trade shows or conferences or you hold your own events, you want your social media followers to know about it and talk about it.

The type of messages you’re creating to promote your events are usually similar to each other; you specify what the event is about, where and when it’s going to happen and invite your followers to attend.

Also, these messages have a similar frequency, you invite people to join you at the event first, and after some time you remind them of your event.

Tools such as Buffer, Hubspot or MeetEdgar will help a lot with scheduling, managing your posts, measuring engagement, and reusing your best content to bring in more views. Although, you still first have to create these messages manually, and that takes up a lot of valuable time which could be put to better use.

I decided to write down all the steps related to promoting a social media event to see how much time I would need to set it up.

• Our sales team organizes or attends different events in the various regions, several times a month.
• 7 sales teams * 3 events a month = 21 events a month.
• For each event, I will need to create at least 2 posts for our social media channels. One to inform my followers about the upcoming event, and the second one to remind them about the event the day before. In my case, 2 tweets, 2 LinkedIn updates, 2 Facebook posts and 2 Google + messages.
• For each post I have to: get the date of the event, event name, location of the event, name of attendees (contacts from our company), get correct URL (link) to the event page, create a message, choose an image.
• Creating social media messages to promote each event takes only 20 minutes BUT 20 minutes * 21 events = 7 hours a month = 84 hours a year = 10.5 full working days a year.

What if I say you can save these 10.5 precious working days and still reach as many followers?

Social Media Automation

The idea here is simple, getting a bit creative and doing as many of your daily tasks as you can automatically, so you can spend your time on something more valuable to you, for example learning more about social media scheduling and automation.

In this particular case, every time your company signs up to attend an event/tradeshow/conference, etc., your followers will be notified via your social media channels. And the best part is you don’t need to spend any time doing it!

Sounds good?

1. Gather the necessary information

To make the process easier for the sales team and us, we will use Google Forms to collect information about the event and Google Sheets to create a list of all the events we need to promote. This way sales teams will know what to do to request marketing support for their events, and we will automatically have all the information to help them.

2. Create social media posts automatically

There are only a few types of messages you will use to promote an event, so we can call it a repetitive task that can be automated.

By creating message templates, using the information that we already have and power of the Google Sheets, we can create social media messages automatically, as soon as we get information from the sales team. Don’t worry. It’s simple, and I’ll provide all the templates. This setup can save you a lot of time and energy.

3. Schedule social media posts automatically

For this, we use one of the automated scheduling tools where we can plan our messages for any particular day and time. I personally prefer to use Buffer for many reasons. It’s just has everything you need for social media management in one place. Plus Buffer support more media formats than any other online social media tool. For example, I haven’t been able to post animated gifs via any other platform other than Buffer, not even directly through Twitter. Although of course, feel free to use scheduling tool you like.

But how do you get tweets from our Google Sheets to Buffer?

That’s where Zapier comes into play. It’s a tool that integrates different web applications to work together. Zapier will connect all the applications and schedule the tweets for you.

Example of the workflow

Once the Workflow is created, Zapier will run it for you automatically without any additional effort on your part.

And again, why are we doing this? Automation does repetitive tasks for you while you focus on driving traffic from Twitter to your website, mastering on-page SEO optimization or figuring out how to survive long distance work relationships and other exciting business challenges. The absolute best part is that anyone can set up such automation, you don’t need to program or have any technical background, just follow the simple steps.

Getting just a little more creative with automation will guarantee you higher ROI for your time! After all, we know we have only 100 10-minute blocks a day, so why waste any more on something that can be automated?

• Setup time — 1 hour
• Saves me — 7 hours a month
• 10.5 full work days a year

First, we need to create a process between marketing and sales team that would allow us to easily keep track of the event schedule, build a list of upcoming events and get all the information we need for social media.

In my example, I will talk specifically about Twitter messages as they have a character limit and it requires additional steps to set up automation. You can follow the same process to set up this automation for other channels as well.

1. Get the information you need for your posts

To make it easier for the sales team to submit the information, we are going to use Google Forms(docs.google.com/forms).

Step 1: Create a new form, name it ‘Event Information Form’ and fill in your questions to get the information you need for any event promotion.

• Date of the event
• Event name
• Location of the event
• Name of attendees (contacts from our company)
• Get correct URL (link) to the event page

Make sure that you indicate all the field you need as required to answer. Also, choose the “short answer” option and specify the format, to make sure that answers are as brief as possible due to Twitter’s 140 character limit.

Remember: People do not like long forms, make sure you ask only for necessary information.

Step 2: Send the information that has been submitted from the Google Form to the Google Sheet.

• Go to your form and click responses tab, then click the small green button on the right side. Here you can choose where to send your answers.

• Choose ‘create new spreadsheet’ to connect your Google Form to a new Google Sheet.
• Name your document ‘List of Upcoming Events’ or anything similar that will tell you what kind of information this spreadsheet contains.

All the information that has been submitted through the Google Form now will be added to the last row of the worksheet, each question in a different cell.

Step 3: Test your Google Form to confirm that it works correctly.

• Fill in your form and submit it.
• After you submit the form, your information should appear on your spreadsheet.
• Rename this sheet to ‘Event information’.

2. Create social media messages automatically

To formulate tweets automatically, we are going to use the information that we have in our ‘List of Upcoming Events’ spreadsheet and create a few social media message templates from them.

Step 1: Create a new sheet and call it ‘Social Media Event Updates’. Copy the first row from one tab to another to have the same names of the columns.

Using the following formulas, bring all the responses to the new spreadsheet. We need this step as it makes accessing the information far easier.

Column A: =Indirect(“‘Event Information’!A”&row(A2),TRUE)

Column B: =Indirect(“‘Event Information’!B”&row(B2),TRUE)

Column C: =Indirect(“‘Event Information’!C”&row(C2),TRUE)

Column D: =Indirect(“‘Event Information’!D”&row(D2),TRUE)

Column E: =Indirect(“‘Event Information’!E”&row(E2),TRUE)

Column F: =Indirect(“‘Event Information’!F”&row(F2),TRUE)

Column G: =Indirect(“‘Event Information’!G”&row(G2),TRUE)

Don’t worry. All the formulas are in the Template that I created for you. You can easily copy and paste it to your Google Sheets and adjust it to your needs.

Step 2: Create templates for your tweets.

As we discussed before, let’s set up two tweets (you can design more if needed following the same process). One tweet will go out the next business day after the form was submitted and the second one will be posted one day before the event.

If you are B2B, the best practice is to tweet on weekdays, but of course, it may depend on the type of business you do and date/type of the event. For example, if the event is on the weekend, you might want to tweet on the weekend.

To make sure all of your event tweets do not look the same, let’s create several variations of the tweet. More variations you have, more customized your messages will look.

• Three versions of tweets that will be posted the next day after submission at 12 pm:

• Three versions of tweets that will be posted the day before the event at 12 pm:

Step 3: Use the information submitted to formulate your tweets.

In this step, we are going to use the formula that will grab the information from the columns A-G of the ‘Social Media Event Updates’ spreadsheet and use it to fill the blanks in our tweet templates. You can find this formula in the Template that I created for you.

Let’s take the templates for the first tweet and incorporate it into the formulas.

Tweet #1: =if(ISBLANK(B2),””,if(isblank(C2),””,if(isblank(D2),””,if(isblank(F2),””,if(isblank(E2),””,CONCATENATE(“Join “,$E2,” from Chornobyl360 at “,$C2,” on “,text($B2,”m/d”),” to get early access to the documentary demo! “))))))

Tweet #2:

=if(ISBLANK(B2),””,if(isblank(C2),””,if(isblank(D2),””,if(isblank(F2),””,if(isblank(E2),””,CONCATENATE(text($B2,”m/d”),” Join “,E2,” @ “,$D2,” for “,$C2,” & learn what’s new in #VR #documentary #world “))))))

Tweet #3:

=if(ISBLANK(B2),””,if(isblank(C2),””,if(isblank(D2),””,if(isblank(F2),””,if(isblank(E2),””,CONCATENATE(“Chornobyl360 comes to “,D2,”! Get a live demo from “,$E2,” at “,C2,”, “,text($B2,”m/d”),” “))))))

Random Tweet:

=index(H2:J2,RANDBETWEEN(1,3))

‘Random tweet’ will randomly choose one of your three tweets. We are doing this to make sure every event tweet doesn’t look the same.

Now we send ‘Random Tweet’ to the “Final Tweet” cell to be able to add a #hashtag. You can skip this step if you don’t want to add anything else.

Final Tweet 1: =CONCATENATE(K2,F2,” #Innovation”)

Step 4: Set up a validation and the Tweet Length for the first tweet.

The validation column will indicate if the tweet was formed as required.

Validation 1: =if(ISBLANK(B2),”no”,if(isblank(C2),”no”,if(isblank(D2),”no”,if(isblank(F2),”no”,if(isblank(E2),”no”,if(len(K2)<104,”yes”,”no”))))))

• If all the cells are filled, meaning all the information you need was submitted and your final tweet is no longer than 140 characters, you will see ‘yes’ in the ‘Validation 1’ cell.
• If there is some information in the columns A to G missing and the tweet is longer than 140 characters, you will see ‘no’ in the ‘Validation 1’ cell.

‘Twitter Length’ field will indicate that the tweet is no longer than the limit. We need this to quickly identify what needs to be fixed if there’s something wrong.

Tweet 1 length: =if(len(K2)<104,”ok”,”over 140 char”)

• If the tweet is longer than 140 characters, you will see ‘over 140 char’ in the ‘Twitter Length’ cell.
• If the tweet is no longer than 140 characters, you will see ‘ok’ in the ‘Twitter Length’ cell.

This is what you should see if everything is submitted correctly:

• If the ‘Validation 1’ cell says ‘no’ but ‘Twitter Length’ says ok, it means that one or more cells in the row are empty.

The way I designed the tweet templates and the questions in the Google Form should formulate messages under 140 characters. However, it’s always better to make sure the post is the right length.

If the final tweet is longer for some reason, you can set up an email notification that will let you know about it, and you can go to the google sheets and fix it.

Steps on how to setup email notification

Step 5: Set up publishing date for your ‘Final Tweet’.

As we have 2 tweets that will be published on different dates, we need to indicate a ‘Publish Date’ for each tweet.

Our formula takes submission date and calculates what is the next weekday (excluding weekends) to create first publish date.

Publish date #1: =text(if(M2=”yes”,workday(A2,1),”false”),”m/d”)

Step 6: Let’s create the second version of the tweet.

• Grab the templates for the second tweet and incorporate it into the formulas.

Tweet #1: =if(ISBLANK(B2),””,if(isblank(C2),””,if(isblank(D2),””,if(isblank(F2),””,if(isblank(E2),””,CONCATENATE(“It’s TOMORROW! Join us at “,$C2,” to find out what is new in #VR #world”))))))

Tweet #2:

=if(ISBLANK(B2),””,if(isblank(C2),””,if(isblank(D2),””,if(isblank(F2),””,if(isblank(E2),””,CONCATENATE(“Meet us TOMORROW at “,$C2,” to see how what impact #VR makes on #EduTech”))))))

Tweet #3:

=if(ISBLANK(B2),””,if(isblank(C2),””,if(isblank(D2),””,if(isblank(F2),””,if(isblank(E2),””,CONCATENATE(“Are you at “,$C2,” tomorrow? Come meet us there to see #Chornobyl360 in action “))))))

Random Tweet: =index(P2:R2,RANDBETWEEN(1,3))

Final Tweet 2: =CONCATENATE(K2,F2,” #Innovation”)

• Set up a Validation 2 and the Tweet Length 2 for the second tweet.

Validation 2: =if(ISBLANK(J2),”no”,if(isblank(K2),”no”,if(isblank(L2),”no”,if(isblank(M2),”no”,if(isblank(O2),”no”,if(len(S2)<117,”yes”,”no”))))))

Tweet Length 2: =if(len(S2)<117,”ok”,”over 140 char”)

• The formula subtracts one day from the date of the event to create a second publish date.

Publish date #2: =text(B2–1,”m/d”)

3. Schedule social media messages automatically

Let’s look at our process again. To promote an event on social media message automatically, we have to:

We have already completed the first 2 steps. Now we have to schedule your tweets automatically. To schedule social media messages, we will use Buffer and at the end we will connect all of the tools with Zapier.

To connect all of the tools that we used and have them work together, we need to create workflows, called Zaps.

As we already decided that we will have two tweets to promote an event, we need to create 2 different automation workflows. To be more precise, create one workflow, copy it and make some changes to get the second one set up.

• Event Workflow 1 — ‘Next day after form submission’ tweet.
• Event Workflow 2 — ‘The day before the event’ tweet.

Step 1: Choose the Trigger App.

The Trigger is something that happens in an application to start a Zap’s workflow. For example, in our case the trigger will be Google Sheet, it will grab the tweets from your ‘Social media event update’ spreadsheet and send it to Buffer schedule.

• Login into Zapier (Sign up if you don’t have an account) and press orange ‘Make a Zap’ button on the upper right-hand side.

• Now we need to choose an app to trigger action (the source of information). In this case, trigger app is Google Sheets. What’s going to trigger the action is a new spreadsheet row, every time someone submits event information, it is going to appear in the new spreadsheet row that will trigger our Zap’s workflow.
• Let’s choose ‘new spreadsheet row’ as a Google Sheets Trigger and press ‘Save + Continue’.

• Now select ‘Google Sheets Account’. If you are doing it for the first time, you will have to connect Zapier with your Google Account. To do this, log into your Google account (make sure you select the same account you were using to create your ‘List of Upcoming Events’).
• Now select your Google Sheet ‘List of Upcoming Events’, then choose the worksheet ‘Social Media Event Updates’.

• There’s also another field called trigger column, the column that needs to be updated to trigger an automation. It’s optional, but in this case, we should choose one, otherwise if you change anything on the spreadsheet, it will generate a new tweet. Pick a field that is important for you to be included in the tweet but unlikely to be updated, for example, the URL field. Updating the URL field will trigger automation that will create a new tweet. If you need to change the date, place or attendees, it won’t trigger the full automation. Choosing trigger column is optional but in this case can help you to avoid accidently creating multiple tweets.

Once you finish this step, Zapier will test the flow to see if all the information is correct.

Step 2: Now we need to create a filter. The filter makes sure that the automation continues if the criteria are valid. In this case, if the ‘validation’ column in our spreadsheet contains yes. We add this step to ensure that if there’s something wrong with our tweet, it won’t get scheduled. If the tweet is longer than 140, it won’t get published because of the character limit restriction but if there was some information missing, it could easily get published with some blanks in our templates, we don’t want this to happen. This step is optional too, but it’s better to make accidents don’t happen.

Step 3: The next thing we should set up is a delay. We don’t want to post this tweet at a random time of the day. There are known best practices, and you probably know the time when your followers are the most active on Twitter. For us, it’s 12 pm Mon through Fri. Let’s schedule to publish this tweet on the next business day at 12 pm.

• Select ‘Delay’ as the action, choose ‘Delay until’ and continue.

• Choose the ‘Publish date’ cell from the sheet and enter ‘at 12 pm’. Continue to test it and finish the step.

Step 4: Schedule tweets automatically via Buffer

First, set up Buffer account if you don’t have one, then:

• Add new action in your Zap’s workflow and select Buffer App.

• Choose from all the action offered “add to the schedule” and press “Save + Continue.

• Add your Buffer account, then click ‘Connect a new account’ at the bottom and allow access to Zapier (only if you are doing it for the first time).

• Select social media profile you would like to post from, in this case, your Twitter (you have to log in to your Twitter account in the browser you are using) and select your Twitter profile.

• In the Text field, select ‘finaltweet1’ from the spreadsheet

• In the scheduled date and time, select the ‘Release at’ row that states the date of the release.

• If you have a picture to use with this tweet, you can paste a URL here, otherwise, just skip and continue.
• Test the action.

• Name your Zap by clicking the text box above the workflow.

Step 5: Copy your Zap to create the workflow for the second tweet:

• Go to your dashboard. On the right side next to your Zap, click on the arrow and choose ‘Copy’.

• Open the copied Zap, and rename it to ‘Events — Workflow 2’.

• Now we have to change all the variables that are different.
• Go to ‘Filter’ and change ‘validation1’ to ‘validation2’ column.

• Then go to ‘Delay’ and choose ‘publishdate2’ (make sure to remove ‘publishdate1’).

• Similarly, go to Buffer and in the text field select ‘finaltweet2’ instead of ‘finaltweet1’.

• Turn on your Zap.

Done! Now, we can just forget about this task! Well, just sometimes review your Zaps of course but usually, you will get a notification if something goes wrong.

From now on, every time someone submits event information, it will be added to the ‘List of Events’, and two tweets will be generated and scheduled. The first tweet for the next business day at noon, the second one for the day before the event. Now you are going to keep your followers updated about your upcoming events and stay engaged with them without any effort or time spent on it.

You can create the same workflows for other social media channels. Buffer even allows you to add a picture automatically. You can make a few variations of the images for your events and schedule them together with your message.

This process is just one example, and there are so much more you can do.

Some of the other things you can set up quickly for social media:

• Twitter auto response, add new followers to the buffer queue or share your tweets across the platform (LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack, etc.)
• Tweet a celebratory GIF from GIPHY when you get a new Twitter follower
• And 101 other smart ways to use Social Media Automation for sales and marketing

Getting just a little more creative with automation you can set up hundreds of great integrations that will be doing the repetitive tasks for you so you can focus on more advanced challenges that can’t be automated. It helps you to save your time, hours and even days of work, and consequently money. The best part, you will never forget to update your followers.

Have you already set up an automation that helps you save time and money? Share it with others!