Autoblogging

[Frimley111R]

Do any of use these plug ins for automatically posting content? It looks ok but I am not sure how you stop them posting everything related to it rather than just the curated highlights.

 

[NickGrogan]

My news pages are fully automated, and post to social media too, so I may be able to help.

What do you mean by curated highlights?

 

[garyk]

I use drumup.io for posting to twitter and linkedin. Its not completely automated, you give it a list of keywords and it finds related content that you can schedule to post. So I post 3 items a day its just a case of clicking a 'schedule' button for articles you want to share.

I don't do auto-blogging, I think its better to craft your own content for that.

 

[Deleted member 252819]

Be careful. When it comes to content, there are few shortcuts, and autoblogs can really only fill in the gaps between other types of content.

To answer your question; many plug-ins post content in Draft (or Pending Review, depending on your platform), but it takes a long time to wade through all the articles and delete the dross. That's why many people don't bother and post far too much. IMO, this kind of thing could get autoblogging penalised in future.

For autoblogging to be 'ethical', there needs to be a strong curation policy, and a mix of original content to balance out the automatic posts. The autoblogged stuff also needs to have genuine value and not just be a lazy alternative to blogging.

Unless you have time to review everything the plugin pulls in, you will probably find it quicker to bookmark interesting posts and post them manually with comments.

Quality and originality will always win out. It's dull, but it's true.

 

[Frimley111R]

Yes, my thoughts too. I can't quite understand auto blogging unless you are ok just posting anything related to your subject, no matter how good or tenuous. My aim is post manually with almost compete curation and then support with original content.

 

[NickGrogan]

Depends where you source your content from.

 

[Frimley111R]

So you autoblog from sources that never post anything irrelevant/poor/uninteresting?

 

[NickGrogan]

Exactly.

www.energybrokers.co.uk/news/

 

[Frimley111R]

Got it, my aim is to pull together all the great content every day from sites on a particular subject therefore people can just use that to keep up to date rather than have to put up with dull content when there's really not much newsworthy news on the main site(s) they go to. Also it saves time search other sites for info too. The idea is based on my own experiences. I know there's lot of good stuff out there but going through a load of sites, not to mention Facebook and YT is too time consuming. i just want one site with all the best stuff.

I understand the part other websites' content/part your own and this is fine but do you recommend summarising other websites content first before the link or just linking directly?

 

[XanderMarketing]

My view is that you should create high quality, unique, fresh content. If you really want to be a 'thought leader' and get people to engage with your content you have to take the time to generate ideas and create compelling content. There is so much content out there that why is someone going to read something average (or worse)?

The first line of your latest blog Nick is this:

Four in ten (41%) people get hot
under the collar when it comes to the temperature in the home during winter,
according to new research from E.ON

• Do we really need 4 in 10 and 41%?
• 'the' home - should be their home
• Why is there a line break after hot?
• Those are the mistakes, let alone the use of English...

Do you think content like this makes people want to do business with you?

 

[NickGrogan]

the news pages www.energybrokers.co.uk/news/ brings in about 3% of the traffic to the site.

Over the last 14 days, this has included visits from:

BNP Paribas
Independent Television News Limited
Welsh Government
Houses of Parliament
University of Cambridge
M&C Saatchi PLC
Morgan Stanley Group
Kpmg LLP
Deloitte Limited
PwC
BBC Worldwide Ltd
Rolls-Royce

As well as various pins, likes and retweets and backlinks if you're into that sort of thing.

You can get in touch with Eon about their content if you like.

 

[fisicx]

So if it's only 3% of your traffic why are you even bothering to aggregate? If you binned the whole news section would it make any real difference?

 

[NickGrogan]

Checked the stats again - 3% is for the news homepage, total for all pages is just over 13%.

So yes it would make a difference. It also brings in a lot of backlinks, which is useful too.

Given that the aggregation is 100% automatic and so takes no time or effort this seems like a really good return.

 

[Frimley111R]

Slightly different to my needs but interesting nonetheless Nick. I'd agree about the return.

 

[exciteseo]

Do any of use these plug ins for automatically posting content? It looks ok but I am not sure how you stop them posting everything related to it rather than just the curated highlights.

Did you try HootSuite? It is nicely flexible

 

[Ashley_Price]

Another disadvantage of automating too much on social media and the like is that you are never or rarely physically there. So, the software has auto-posted something, someone has responded to it and, unless you have alerts set for your email or phone, you'll never know if you don't visit regularly. What's the point in pretending to have a presence online, if you don't actually have one?

 

[NickGrogan]

Surely that depends on your goals for your social media.

If the aim is to have lots of likes and retweets, etc, then spending hours online is probably the way to go. But does that deliver measurable returns to the business?

In many cases from reading posts here and on other sites, the answer is no. So then why hours every day doing it?