Posted by If you’re a social media manager, you already understand the pressure of having to populate your social media calendar with content. No slot can be left open. Your audience is counting on you for timely and quality content.
But what happens when the gears in your head stop turning? 🤔
Or some unforeseen circumstances occur and there’s suddenly a big gaping hole in your schedule.
You need a backup plan and you need it quick.
That’s where Crowdfire’s Content Curation feature comes in.
Trust me, it’s a lifesaver!
But what is this feature and why should it be my backup plan?
The Content Curation feature on Crowdfire basically offers you ready-to-post content in the form of articles, images, updates, and more. You can select your own topics and the app will list out all current news, updates, and information for you. Then you can share something from the options that are available. You can choose the content that will resonate with the theme of your social media presence.
Having this feature will help you ensure that there are no missed opportunities to engage with your audience. Or entertain them.
There are 4 different ways you can get content for your pages/accounts using Crowdfire’s Content Curation feature.
1. Article recommendation feature
When you add topics here relevant to the theme of your account/pages, Crowdfire will fetch articles from trusted and verified sources. Once you find an article that you think you want to share with your audience on your social media platforms, you just have to click on ‘Share’.
Then you’ll be redirected to the Crowdfire editor. The Editor is where you’ll be able to add all the social accounts you want to share the article to and make any changes to your caption. Once you’ve made all your changes, you can choose between 3 posting options.
This feature now allows you to publish the article to your social accounts immediately. Post at Custom time allows you to set a date and time for your post to go out. Post at Best time is a super-smart feature that publishes your post at the best time. Crowdfire analyses the content that you have posted previously to identify when your posts get the most engagement. They also factor in the time that your audience is most active online. This ensures that your post gets maximum engagement.
You can also block articles from sites that aren’t giving you content that is relevant to you.
2. Image recommendation feature
Image recommendations come from 2 places. Like the articles, you can select relevant topics to get images for your social accounts. These images come from the world’s best image providers. Once done, you’ll be able to choose the images that you want to share. You will get the same posting options as the articles and you will also see an option to block images from a particular site.
The second way is based on the hashtags you use in your Instagram posts. Crowdfire keeps a list of the hashtags you’ve previously used on Instagram. Then when you try publishing, it uses them to suggest more image content for you to share. They also have a bunch of Crowdfire Content Creators that share quality content. If any of their hashtags overlap with yours, their content will also be shown to you with the same posting options.
3. My Posts feature
Previously called ‘Smart Posts’, this feature is absolutely brilliant if you have a YouTube channel, Etsy, Shopify, WordPress, Medium, or any blog with an RSS feed. Once you connect any of these to your Crowdfire account, that’s when the feature kicks in. Whenever you post a new update on any of these platforms, Crowdfire will automatically pull that new update and make a beautiful post for you.
You can then use the Publish feature to share this on your social accounts to announce the new update. Posting updates from channels like these onto your social platforms helps direct traffic to the channels.
For example, let’s say you have a YouTube channel and you’re trying to get more traffic and engagement there. If you’ve connected your channel to Crowdfire, and have recently published a video, Crowdfire will fetch that data and make a beautiful post for your social accounts.
Once you share this post to your social accounts, more people will see it and will be directed to your YouTube channel.
Another example is if you have an Etsy. Every time you add a new product or item, Crowdfire will make a post about the new product and will remind you to share it on your social platforms. This way you’ll get more traffic to your Etsy store.
Here you can see how each article from a blog is showing up as a ready-to-publish post.
4. RSS feature
RSS is a web feed where you can get updates from sites and blogs in computer-readable format. When you subscribe to an RSS feed, you get access to the updates posted there.
If you follow other blogs or websites that put out good content and have an RSS feed enabled, you can add them to your RSS list of sources and you’ll get updates from there too. You will be able to share these updates to your social accounts through this feature. Every time you refresh the RSS tab, you’ll get new content from the sources you’ve added.
Like the other Content Curation options, when you share articles from the RSS tab, you’ll get the same posting options of Post Now, Post at Custom time, and Post at Best time.
For example, if your social platform focuses on giving important news updates to your audience, you can add a news channel like USA Today or the Times of India. That way, with every new update they have on their website, your RSS tab gets those ready-to-publish updates. All you have to do is click on ‘Share’ and your audience will get these new updates by viewing them on your feed from different social platforms.
One of the best things about this feature is that whatever you share using Post Now or Post at Custom time, does not affect your existing queue. The scheduled posts will go out as and when they’re supposed to. So the feature, with these 2 sharing options, can also be used even if you don’t have a big gaping hole in your schedule.
The option to post with Best Time, however, adds the post at the end of the existing queue. This is because all posts scheduled using the Best time feature will go out based on the frequency set by you.
That said, having this feature and actually making use of it will change the way you plan your schedule. It’ll probably help you plan for more days or weeks in advance. This could even level out your work-life balance and ensure that you don’t fall under the stereotypical Social Media Manager. Go ahead, use the app, and show other SMM’s how it’s done! 💪
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. Try it or free.