I am a BIG believer in automation of social media wherever possible. If you post on one feed, you should post where ever else is relevant. Take this blog for instance… When each post is published, it shows up on my twitter feed and my Tumblr (well, it was actually posting to the wrong tumblr for awhile).

My favorite tools are the ones that are already connecting to each social media platform directly – like instagram which lets you post to several services all at once.  If you have a feed that is separated from your other accounts (I have several like Shelley_Bot, Fabric_Lover, and Vault_Dealer) that you need content posted for but don’t want to manage your feeds daily, I highly recommend automating.

I use a couple of tools to help with this – HootSuite and CrowdFire.

HootSuite is a publishing platform that allows you to schedule content. It’s simple to use and free. Yep, free. You are restricted to 3 streams to publish from in one free account but the monthly fees aren’t much. You can also get reports on the engagement with your content but only 1 is available for the free accounts.

Crowdfire is a listen and respond platform that tracks your followers. Every time you log in with your social feeds, the platform can tell you how many people followed and un-followed you. It’s kind of nice to see the results. I also use the auto-responding feature to Direct Message new twitter followers with a short note about where else to find my writing.