Save time and make money with RSS Feed Automation

Time is your biggest asset, closely followed by money. So what if I told you I had a 4 minute strategy which could provide both for free?

You’d think I’m crazy right? Wrong. The strategy I’m about to teach you will show you exactly how to set up a free Social Media Marketing Automation Tool which will help you achieve 2 incredibly valuable things;

1. Automatically post highly trusted, relative and popular content on your Social Media.

Posting popular relative content on Social Media which provides value is the foundation to building credibility, customer relationships & gaining leads.

2. Free up your time. Lots of your time.

Once this tool is set up you will not need to worry about finding great content to post on your Social Media – the tool does it all for you.

How does it work?

To provide a clear explanation of what this tutorial will teach you to achieve, check out the following reverse engineered example from the 3 images below (Note: This example uses Twitter but other Social Media platforms can be used).

1. The first image is a Tweet which has automatically been sent out from my Twitter account (note how it is providing value to my audience as it is teaching them something relative to my business expertise).

2. The second image shows the credible source where the content has come from ( Social Media Examiner ).

3. The third image shows the automated RSS to Tweet ‘Recipe’ I have set up in the free IFTTT tool to make this awesome Social Media automation activity work. (Don’t worry if this sounds like a foreign language to you – I am going to show you exactly how to set this up now, step by step).

The Tutorial

This tutorial will teach you 3 important things;

1. How to directly automate Social Media Posts from an RSS feed using IFTTT (free online automation tool).

2. How to schedule these automated Social Media Posts with Buffer (free Social Media Automation Tool).

3. What a ‘highly trusted, relative and popular’ RSS Feed Source looks like with industry examples for you to use.

If you’re a visual learner, I’ve created a handy video tutorial below which will walk you step by step through the whole process. If you prefer reading, I’ve written step by step instructions below the video.

Step 1: Find a trusted website with great content

You need to find a website which is highly credible and trusted within your industry that posts great content which will provide value to your audience ( e.g. industry insights, industry news, relative tutorials & tips).

TIP: Use Buzzsumo to search for the most popular content being shared in your industry (not used Buzzsumo before? Check out my step by step video blog tutorial: How to find and share Awesome Content on Social Media).

Once you’ve found some relative blogs/websites which share popular content, look at the last 10 articles/blogs they have posted on their website. Would you be happy to share all 10 pieces of content on your Social Media and will they provide value to your audience? If the answer is not yes to both of these questions, look for another website.

Step 2: Note down the website’s RSS Feed

This is usually the websites page which shares the content followed by /feed e.g. ours is kpsdigitalmarketing/blog/feed

Step 3: Sign up to IFTTT & create Recipe

Go to IFTTT.com create an account, then click on ‘My Recipes’ at the top of the page and then ‘Create a Recipe’.

Step 4: Click on ‘this’ & search for ‘RSS’

Click on the word ‘This’ then search for and click on ‘RSS’ in the search bar.

Step 5: Create RSS trigger

Click ‘New feed item’, paste in the RSS feed and click ‘Create Trigger’.

Step 6: Create Action Field

Click on the word ‘that’ and type in ‘Twitter’ and click on the Twitter icon. If you would like the post to go to Facebook, Buffer or any other available app, choose that instead.

Step 7: Click on ‘Post a Tweet’

Step 8: Format Social media post content

Decide what you want the automated Tweet/post to include by clicking the blue icon in the top right corner or the text box. I like to include the Title {{EntryTitle}} and the URL {{EntryUrl}} as well as a relative hashtag #SocialMedia when using Twitter. When happy with the content click ‘Create Action’.

Step 9: Give the recipe a title and click ‘Create Recipe’.

Step 10: Check it works

Finally, to ensure the recipe has worked, monitor your Twitter (or the Social Media Platform you used) over the next week to ensure the automated posts are being sent.

Have you tried setting up an automated RSS Social Media post with IFTTT? What are your thoughts on the strategy outlined in the video tutorial? Do you have anything to add? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.