Here we are, already at the third part of this series of indefinite length (and questionable value), but I am not waning in excitement because this post is boasting a little tidbit that I was super pumped to learn about! Are you excited? Should I stop wasting time? Are you annoyed yet? Ok, sorry, let’s move on.
Are you ready? Huh? Ok. I’ll stop.
One of my biggest issues with Facebook Groups was that I couldn’t auto-post to it, couldn’t schedule posts. Frustratingly, I would have to manually share/post anything important from our RSS into our group. Not cool, Zuckerberg.
But then, the clouds parted and an old friend brought me a new solution…
HooteSuite: My New Best Friend
I was tinkering around in HooteSuite, which I use to schedule posts for my church’s social media accounts, namely Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Now, my church administers two Facebook Pages, one for our campus and one for our church network. The church network page, in many ways, has been mothballed, so I thought I’d drop it from HooteSuite. In doing so, I wondered about adding a new social media platform. That’s when, in the add window, I saw something absolutely amazing: I could now add a Facebook Group!
What does that mean?
It means I can schedule posts across all of our major communication outlets, including our Facebook Group, where we’ll get the most engagement from our members. It also means, since HooteSuite can publish RSS feeds, that I can have all of our blog posts sent right to the group, while Jetpack sends the rest to the Page, Twitter, and Google+.
This really is a fantastic bit of info, folks. Facebook Groups are my favorite way of engaging my church people, and now I can schedule that post just like I would a post being sent out to the wider social media “public.” And of course, I say “public” because very few things, if any, on social media are private.
I hope this tiny tip helps you. I feel like this is going to seriously revolutionize the way I approach social media. See, I work part time, and I can’t access social media from my work’s wifi, nor can I pull my phone out to make a post. Thus, I’m limited to engaging my people on Facebook from whenever I wake up till about 7:30am and then I’m off until around 4pm.
That may not seem like a big deal, but I recently found that the “sweet spot” for our group during the week is an 8:00am post.
With Hootesuite, I can now do just that.
Matt Brier says
Out of curiosity, is there a particular reason you wouldn’t use the RSS posting feature to send to Google+, Twitter, and Page? I’m using SNAP for Facebook, Jetpack for Google+ and WP to Twitter for Twitter. SNAP and WP to Twitter work great, but the Jetpack plugin posting to Google+ is hit or miss(about 67% for me right now). The Hootsuite option looks to be a good one, but I was curious if there were some drawbacks that you may have run into.
Phil Schneider says
Great question, Matt! We use Jetpack to push our posts to G+, Twitter, and our FB page. The strategy behind HootSuite is that we can use it to schedule social media posts, independent of blog posts.
So, for example, our pastor spoke on the authority and reliability of the Bible this week, so yesterday, I scheduled social media posts in HooteSuite that included links to other blogs and YouTube videos that our pastor used to help construct his message. By using HootSuite, I could plan out my social media posts ahead of time. Jetpack, as far as I know, only shares new blog posts.
Does that make sense?
Matt Brier says
That part makes complete sense.
I was curious specifically about the RSS feed from the blog though. In my case, and this is from a personal blog perspective, I used the WP site for core content on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +. So when I have a new blog post up, I want a link to it on each platform to reach as much of an audience as I can. So why not use the RSS option in Hootsuite to feed new blog posts to each platform as well?
Phil Schneider says
I’m sorry, Matt. I didn’t understand what you’re asking. I probably should have read a bit more carefully.
To be honest, I’m not very sure why I’m not using HS to share all of my RSS. I think that HS originally only allowed me to add one feed to one platform, so that’s what I did. I currently have HS sharing my blog posts straight to my Facebook Group, which Jetpack can’t do. Could I have set up HS to do all the RSS feed sharing for me? Yes, it looks like I can now. And maybe I will.
Matt Brier says
No worries. I didn’t know if there was a technical reason or if it was just a personal preference. I’ve been playing around with it this morning and so far I like how it works. The only limitation I see is, unless you are mindful in scheduling blog posts, it won’t link out to social media immediately. The least amount of time it will check for new entries is once an hour. Not a deal breaker for me, but I could see where it might be for some.
I was looking for a way to offload some work from WordPress and this might be the answer.