TUTORIAL: How to use the social media publishing tool to promote your content
Overview
Once you've started creating content and blog posts for your site, you should promote them on your social media channels to get more traffic.
Use the social media publishing tool when you want to:
- Promote your new blog content or landing page offers on social media sites.
- Increase traffic to your website pages, and reap the SEO benefits of social media.
- Post an update to all of your social media channels at once to save time.
- Organize your social media content schedule, so you can track published and outgoing posts.
- Track the effectiveness of each of your social media posts.
At this time, you can publish content to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to integrate your accounts with HubSpot. Note: Google+ currently does not allow publishing through its API. When/if they do, we will add that feature.
Instructions
1. Go to the Social Media Publishing tool
You can find this tool under Content > Social Media.
2. Post or schedule an update
Click Compose message on the upper-right hand side of the screen.
Article or Link
Enter your message in the Message field, including any URLs you'd like to add. HubSpot will automatically shorten the URLs for you. Here are a couple things to note about the message field:
- If you choose to share this update on Twitter and/or LinkedIn, this message field will have a 140 character limit, and shortened URLs take up 20 characters. The counter below the text field will let you know how many characters you have left in either case.
- If you have Facebook and/or LinkedIn selected in the Select Accounts section, you'll see a preview box for what this post will look like on Facebook and LinkedIn. You can edit the title text and the description copy in this space. Note: If you only have Twitter selected, you will not see this preview, as on Twitter you're limited to the 140 character update.
Image
You can easily add an image to a social post. Select Attach an image.
Select an image from your file manager, paste an image URL or upload a new image. Once you choose your image, select Use image in the bottom left.
You'll see a preview of the image below once it's all uploaded and attached.
Next, select the accounts you'd like this message to post to. You can post to:
- Twitter accounts
- Personal Facebook Profiles and Facebook Pages that you're an administrator of.
- Personal LinkedIn profiles and LinkedIn Groups you're a member of.
Finally, select when you'd like this message to be published. If you'd like to send it immediately, you don't need to change anything here. Otherwise, you can select a later date/time. You can also schedule this as a recurring post by clicking Add Additional Times. HubSpot will also suggest ideal times for you if you select Suggest Times.
You can customize the suggested publishing schedule, using this guide.
Add social posts to campaigns so you can track them even more so. Select a campaign or create a new one.
You can then visit your social media profiles and see your new update.
How to edit a scheduled update
To see all of your scheduled updates, click on the All Messages dropdown menu and select Scheduled.
To edit a scheduled update, click Actions > Edit. To delete an update, click Actions > Cancel.
How to easily promote blog posts
To easily share posts you've written on your HubSpot blog, click Promote Blog Posts in the sidebar.
You'll then be able to select the social media accounts and date/time on which you would like to share this post. Note that this feature only works for posts written on a HubSpot blog, not an external blog.
How to track the success of each update you post
Once your updates are published, you'll be able to track how many times the links in each post were clicked. You can filter by:
- Post status (published, scheduled etc.)
- Social media channels
- Campaigns
