One of the little extras we provide with Author Brand Kits when we can is a Feedly account loaded with content that’s ready for you to curate and post on social media. Using Feedly, you can fuel your social media feeds with content relevant to your niche or genre.
Consider your social media managed in 30 minutes a day or less with what we’re about to share!
What is Feedly?
This is the boring tech stuff, so you can skip it if you like.
Feedly is an RSS reader. Now you’re probably wondering, “Well, then, what is RSS?”
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it refers to an online protocol that’s been around for quite some time. Most blogs have RSS built in and they generate an RSS feed as new posts are made.
These feeds are gobbledygook and that’s why you need an RSS reader like Feedly to view them.
Why not just read the blog where the feed is coming from?
You can cover more ground (and blogs) by aggregating the content that interests you in one place where it’s easy to digest quickly. You can read headlines, content, and share from the same screen.
Feedly does a lot more than just read RSS feeds. It aggregates content based on specific topics.
You can view a nice, clean list of all of that content in one place and share the ones you find relevant on social media.
If you know what you’re doing, you can even schedule the posts to go out automatically on your profiles…FREE. (<–Such a great word!)
You’re going to know what you’re doing because we’re about to show you.
How to Use Feedly
If we’ve set up your Feedly for you, then it’s ready for you to peruse and curate!
Log in and click All in the left navigation. You’ll find your login credentials in the spreadsheet of your accounts provided by Author Brand Kits.
We set it to view titles only because that’s what we find most efficient, but you can also view content the following ways:
- Magazine view
- Cards
- Articles
When you hover your cursor over a title, you’ll notice the share buttons appear to the right. You can click these to share that specific piece of content on your chosen platform.
Your choices are:
- Twitter – Free. Creates a fantastic-looking post including images when available. You can add a comment if you like. Then you can Tweet it right then or schedule it for later.
- LinkedIn – Same as with Twitter, only this sends the content out to LinkedIn.
- Buffer – Paid. This sends the content to your Buffer account where you can send it immediately to schedule it to your social media accounts.
- Email – Free. Email content directly to those you feel will find it helpful. You can even email it to yourself to read later or to save. Email it to yourself and then use that email to compose an email to your list.
- Evernote – Free. Save articles to your Evernote.
- Hootsuite – Paid. This is the same as Buffer. You can send the content immediately or schedule it.
Here at ABK, we use the crap out of the Twitter feature.
For Facebook, you can copy/paste the Twitter content or pay for a service like Buffer where Facebook is integrated. If you copy/paste to your Facebook page, you can then schedule the content.
Technically, you can schedule a week’s worth (or a month if you’re really proactive) of content all at once without having to pay for social media scheduling software. If you’ve ever done so, then you understand the value.
Scheduling Posts on Twitter and Facebook Without Software
You can schedule Tweets up to 18 months in advance. I was unable to find any information on how many scheduled Tweets you can create, so I’m thinking that whatever interval you choose should work: one week, one month, etc.
Once you have composed your Tweet, click the calendar icon below it to schedule.
Fill out the desired information as to when you’d like the Tweet to be sent. Click Confirm.
You’ll notice that the Tweet button has now turned to a Schedule button. Click that and your Tweet will be sent at the specified time.
You can schedule posts on Facebook up to 6 months in advance. I also couldn’t find information on any limits for Facebook, so create to your heart’s content.
Log into Facebook and navigate to your brand Page.
In the left navigation under Manage Page, select Publishing Tools.
Click Create New.
NOTE: At this point, I ran into a problem with Facebooks New Post Creation Tool. I was unable to see the buttons for adding images, gifs, and other media to my post. I deleted a couple of notifications and messages at the top and the buttons appeared below my post and I was able to scroll down at that point, so if you run into this problem, you might have to mess around with the interface a bit.
Once you’ve composed your post, click the down arrow next to Publish and select Schedule Post.
Select the date and time and click Schedule.
That’s it. Now you know how to schedule posts without any special software on Facebook and Twitter.
The Benefits of Using Feedly
Having content that is relevant to your niche delivered to you without having to go out and find it on your own saves a ton of time.
Sometimes, it hard to know what you should be sharing on your social media profiles as an author. No one wants to follow social media channels that constantly promote themselves, so it’s important to diversify the content that you share.
Only about a third of your social media content should promote your own books and content. The rest should be helpful and relevant to your followers.
Using Feedly means that you have a huge list of content to share on-demand anytime. By curating the best content, you are providing value to your followers.
Feedly will also help you stay abreast of the latest news happening in your niche. It pays to be informed!
Adding New Content Sources to Feedly
Where possible, the staff at Author Brand Kits has added content sources to your Feedly, but there is always room for more.
Since you are (or should be) more familiar with your niche or genre, you could probably think of a few more keywords and possibly find more content sources to populate your Feedly account.
Here’s how:
Log into Feedly.
Click the + sign in the left navigation.
Type a keyword in the search box and press Enter. You can also type a specific website URL or RSS Feed URL, but we’ll stick to keywords since we get more results that way. Just know that you can add a specific website if you so choose.
Scroll the results and click the Follow button on any sources you deem relevant.
Use the interface to add the site to one of your feeds to add a new feed.
That’s it! Your Feedly should be shaping up nicely and you’ll be ruling social media in your niche in no time if you create a consistent posting schedule with valuable and relevant content.
Feedly and Your Author Brand Kit
As of this writing, we have no relationship with Feedly other than being users. We include Feedly in Author Brand Kits because we see massive value in it.
We promised you a platform. We created that. We take it a step further with this article by helping you use that platform.
If you’ve invested in an Author Brand Kit, you can expect to see more helpful content and resources just like this one.
If you haven’t invested yet, learn more about Author Brand Kits. We’d love to build one for you!
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