I’ve never been pleased with the results of fully automating social media posts, but this (SND Planner) is the best of both worlds.

Doug Rogers, Digital Manager for Lilly Broadcasting

Feeding a 24/7 news machine in a small market (or virtually anywhere) isn’t an easy feat, but Social News Desk recently introduced us to a new tool that’s already making it easier.

As a member of the Test Drive Team, we got an early chance to try SND’s new autopilot and post planner at Lilly Broadcasting’s Erie News Now (WICU/WSEE). After getting a late start with social media and having a somewhat dormant Facebook page since its inception, our station turned the situation around and quickly rose to the top of the market. We knew we couldn’t stop or slow down, so scheduling content around the clock became important.

We tried automating the workflow, but it lacked the authenticity and intelligence needed to create content that resonates with our fans and followers. Finding and manually posting content worked, but it was time consuming. We were excited to learn SND wanted to solve the problem and invited us to help.

It started as an early prototype and wasn’t exactly a post planner like it is now, but it was the beginning of something that’s revolutionizing our workflow.

We experimented with posting some web-ready content from an affiliate news service once an hour in the evening. It worked; we were able to the feed for the content from our website to the new autopilot tool and prioritize the order of the content. On the Twitter side, which is much more heavily automated than Facebook, we were able to prioritize the content feeds – like posting a local story over national content first – and set it to autopost headlines and links every 5-10 minutes.

On the weekends when local content is much more limited, we go into the post manager, sort content by engagement and add tags to the content we want to use again. By creating a keyword feed, we can capitalize on those popular stories, scheduling them manually or via autopilot for reuse once per hour.

The post planner even makes manually scheduling content easier. The grid allows us to see when other content was posted, what’s scheduled next and where autopilot wants to help. It makes it easy to spot the gaps and fill them in with content to keep the social media pages fresh. To schedule a post, we can just click on a slot; there’s no need to enter the time, eliminating one more step. If we need to move any posts, it’s just a drag-and-drop; there’s no need to edit or open the post to change the time.

Like anything new, we helped squash some bugs along the way. Team SND even added features from our feedback, like the drag-and-drop for changing the scheduling of posts and manually scheduling content on the Planner where Autopilot is scheduled to kick in.

We’re now looking forward to seeing how we can use our Google Analytics data to rank when content automatically posts and experimenting with curated lists to prepare content that can be used with Autopilot.

It’s hard to imagine managing social media without SND. Unlike anything I’ve used before, they certainly understand news, and their team keeps us ahead of the curve with innovation. I’ve never been pleased with the results of fully automating social media posts, but this is the best of both worlds; we can leverage the power of automation while manually curating content at the same time.

SND Planner is now live! And we’re making a big deal about it. Watch our Launch Party here!

The post SND Planner: A Digital Manager’s Experience first appeared on Social News Desk.

Read more feedback!

Where to find SND Planner!

Sign up for a live training webinar!

SND Planner is comprehensive, new technology to assist with a hybrid approach to posting on Social Media. We didn’t want to completely automate the process of posting – instead, we have enough automation to make you incredibly efficient while still putting an emphasis on the importance of manual posting and making editorial-decisions on the fly.

Want to learn more? Reach out to info@socialnewsdesk.com.

The post SND Planner: Release the Compliments! first appeared on Social News Desk.

In short, it’s a better way to plan out your content with a full view of the big picture of stories along with cutting-edge conveniences.

One of the features we’re getting rave reviews about makes it extra simple and convenient to plan your social posts.

“The ability to drag and drop to reschedule and rearrange content is awesome, as well as the ability to schedule content in an autopilot slot via the post planner module/widget.”

-Doug Rogers, Lily Broadcasting

A key component when we map out our development is keeping in mind how quickly news changes and how many adjustments our users make in a day. This feature makes that happen. 

SND Planner allows you to slide content into a so-called ‘slot’ and then, move it and adjust as needed. 

Quick video to show you how it works: 

We’re highlighting each of the features that sets SND Planner apart as we get closer to our big SND Launch Party on Wednesday, March 10th. Sign up here to be first on the list to use it! It’s going to be great. 

The post SND Planner: Drag & Drop Feature first appeared on Social News Desk.

Your social media post planning can now look a lot like the oh, so-familiar news rundown. And you can move it around just like you would a show. 

Think ‘whole day’ instead of ‘whole show.’

You can structure it to consistently post at your favorite times – 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, 5pm and so on…

Then, as news breaks or other priorities pop-up, slide that new story into an open time slot.

Want to replace the 11am post with breaking news? Slide your original post down a slot. 

You can even have designated blocks of time that pull stories from RSS or Custom Feeds and post them using SND’s automation technology: SND autopilot. 

SND Planner’s time slots are a great way to see your overall day’s planning and still be able to adjust on the fly as news happens.

Want to join our launch party on Wednesday, March 10th? Not to lure you with prizes…but we’re giving away prizes. Sign up here. 

The post SND Planner: Time Slots first appeared on Social News Desk.

SND Founder Kim Wilson put the power of the brand new SND Planner into the hands of our Test Drive Team this month. She reminded the small group of SND Clients/Enthusiasts that they’re an incredibly important part of our development process.

“When we create something new, we rely on the SND Test Drive Team to run it through paces and we’re always thankful in advance for the honest feedback they give us.” 

Kim Wilson, Founder & President – Social News Desk

‘We don’t want to 100% automate the process of posting — but we know that there’s a percentage based on data efficiency that will make all the difference but manual posting is still important. Welcome to our hybrid approach.’

Aaron King, SND’s Chief Technical Officer walked our Test Drive Team through *how* to use SND Planner. He gets pretty giddy about our new technology. He told the team, ‘this will change the way you think about automation and manual publishing.’

This Changes Everything

1. New Layout: Total change to the way you schedule content. Think of the layout of a Google or Outlook Calendar. Clickable slots that make your life a lot easier.

2.  Drag and Drop: Who doesn’t love to click and slide things around? Easy to move content to visibly put it at the time of day you want it. 

3. Time Slots: Determine time slots of when you want to automate content to go out.  So apropos for TV. It’s like a rundown for social.

4. Curate Custom Feeds: Name the feeds what you want and use them as often as you’d like (Example: Weekend Picks, Top Picks). 

5. RSS Feeds – you can still have as many as you need! 

6. See & Schedule: See it in your feed? Want to schedule it? Click on the icon and lock in the time. 

7. Move Content: Changed your mind about the time? Click and alter it. 

8. Copy A Day: Loved the way Tuesday’s content was arranged? Copy that day’s format and repeat it for Wednesday.  

9. Pull Content into a Feed – see content somewhere and know exactly where else you’d like to use it? Pull it into your special feed.

10. Instagram…it’s coming soon in the Planner. SND Client Success Manager Sarah Loyd promised it on the call. Hold her to it. 

“It just makes scheduling so much easier,” is what Aaron guaranteed the team. 

You have so much control over future content and the order. Endless flexibility to change things on the fly to fit your day. 

The SND Test Drive Team is off to a running start trying out SND Planner and in a matter of weeks, we’ll be able to put a refined, top-notch version in your hands. Plan on it. 

The post SND’s powerful, new “Planner” technology – now testing. first appeared on Social News Desk.

GUEST BLOG: My Take on Messenger

By Mykal Vincent, WAFB Digital Content Producer

The SND messenger experience is essentially a bot that engages a user when they send your brand’s Facebook page a direct message. The bot guides the user through a series of prompts and instructions to subscribe to one or more content topics. Daily, the bot will send the desired digests to subscribers through Facebook messenger.

As a member of SND’s Test Drive Team, I was selected to test and provide feedback for a new feature Social News Desk has been developing; a Facebook messenger experience. I was hooked the moment Savannah and the SND team showed me the demonstration. I’m not much of a gambling man, but I’d be willing to bet there are some certified geniuses working behind the scenes there. I wanted my hands in this tech.

I work for a local news station now, but I have a background in website development and graphic design. As part of SND’s Test Drive Team, I was presented an opportunity to influence the backend, the coding, and the user interface. I felt like my unique knowledge of coding and design, coupled with my daily workflow as a digital content news producer would lend a useful hand.

First impressions

At first glance, it was the shiniest new toy I’d gotten since I was a child. Simply knowing that I was looking at something only limited number of eyes could see, and that I was going to be able to use a new feature that wasn’t available to the public gave me heart eyes and a sense of responsibility. I puffed my chest out, pulled open my email, and wrote a letter to my boss.

“I’m going to be working on something BIG,” I penned.

I wanted the news department and the sales department in on this. Ever since I set foot in our newsroom, I noticed that we were drastically behind the ball as far as social media content creation and distribution. Our strategies were (and still are) dated compared to industry-leading content creators and influencers.

This feature was our chance to get in on the ground floor of an emerging platform – direct messaging.

Immediately, I sat down my department heads and our digital sales team to let them know about the new feature.

I’d seen it been done before. I have used a similar service, Cleo, to check my bank account and monitor my budget. I wanted to let my entire station know how big of a deal it was to be developing this feature for our station. Our competitors weren’t there. This would be a homerun win for us. Free push alerts just for linking SND with our RSS feeds.

I’m surprised SND wasn’t charging us an arm AND a leg for the amount of traffic we will undoubtedly be funneling to our website through this feature.

But direct messaging meant one thing for this digital content nerd; notifications.

The Coveted Lock Screen

According to Apple, I spend an average of 4.5 hours a day staring at my cell phone screen. I pick my phone up over 100 times a day and see 60+ notifications come across my lock screen.

One major part of my job is making sure that my station’s content is several of those notifications throughout a day. Traditionally, we do that by sending push alerts through our news app. These can be breaking news, weather, and traffic alerts, to name a few. We strive to be on that lock screen early and often.

The SND messenger feature was going to give us an automated opportunity to be even more present on our viewers’ lock screens and in their DMs.

Keyword: AUTOMATED.

Effort vs. Reward

I stress to my superiors and my coworkers the importance of balancing the amount of effort we’re putting into pieces of content versus the reward we get out of it. How hard are we working on a story or a graphic and what are we going to get in return? Are we putting enough effort into sponsored content and into developing potentially sponsorable content? How much time are our producers spending on projects and why?

This automated Facebook bot was going to give us huge upside for little to no effort. Using RSS feeds to automatically distribute our content to users without even having to write a Facebook post or a tweet was a win-win in my book. Sign me up for more content on more lock screens for no additional effort outside of setting it up.

Sign. Me. Up.

Launch Day

I set up some topics, plugged in some default responses, flipped the switch from red to green and watched our bot, aptly named Rosie, take over our direct messages.

It wasn’t pretty at first. We deliberated before we made it live. The digests sent out of order, at random, and sometimes not at all. Bumps which were somewhat expected because – after all – we were part of the beta test.

Despite that, an unexpected upside to this Facebook messenger bot was noticeable as soon as we turned it on. The bot helped filter out some of the most common questions our social media producers have to field on a daily basis. Now, telling a user to send in their news tips to our newsroom email address happened instantaneously the moment they contacted us. The social media team could focus on replying to the more complicated requests. It was immediately improving our productivity.

But there was work to be done, still, and the Test Drive Team was undaunted.

Feedback & Feedback & Feedback

To be completely fair, I couldn’t see what other test drivers were suggesting to the team. I could only see correspondence between myself and the developers at SND, so I’m not exactly sure how frequently other test drivers were making their hotlines bling.

For the first month or so, looking back at my emails, I rarely went more than 2-3 days without ringing up Social News Desk with something else for them to put on their radar.

Even when I felt like I was bogging the team down with suggestions; anything from the color of a border on iOS in dark mode, to pointing out bugs I noticed while exhausting the features, the team responded quickly. The bugs were identified and remedied. I’m telling you; geniuses.

It’s Aliiiiiive!

I remember the first day all of our digests sent out in order and on time. I celebrated! High fives all around. A few weeks into it and I was elated seeing the digests come across my lock screen every day at the pre-determined times. Thanks to this feature, our brand could wrap around a trio of stories, or a weather event and be present on that coveted lock screen.

One of our goals throughout the day is to have our lead stories on air mirror our top stories on our website and the stories we post to social media. If you watched our Noon, 5:00 or 6:00 show, you should be able to find the story you just watched on a digital platform. This new feature was helping us expand that vision to our viewers’ Facebook inboxes.

Success on all fronts.

In Conclusion

Since our launch in early November, we’ve had nearly 250 people subscribe to over 300 content topics. That’s an extra 250 people receiving our web stories in a personal message at least once a day, every day. This feature will give us a new demographic to look at, a new user base to target, and plenty of opportunity to strategize what gets sent to those inboxes.

Overall, I’m thrilled with new feature, and pleased to be a part of the team developing it. I’m especially excited for the potential of a breaking news element that will allow us to fast track the latest breaking stories directly to our subscribers.

The best part about it all? Bypassing the news feed algorithm! No longer will our reach and potential engagement be dependent on Facebook’s mysterious criteria. You want to read our stories? Subscribe and you shall. You think it’d be that easy for the 300,000+ people who like our Facebook page, but I digress. Thanks to the geniuses at SND, news feed algorithms are a thing of the past!

Once again, hats off to the team – er, our team? – at Social News Desk for developing such a useful tool. I don’t envision us ever turning this feature off moving forward. I can’t wait to see what those geniuses are cooking up next and I hope I get the opportunity to test that feature, too.

This preceding post is a guest blog written by Mykal Vincent, WAFB Digital Content Producer. And no, we didn’t ask him to call us geniuses. But we’ll take it. Thanks Mykal!

The post WAFB-TV Among First Local Newsrooms with Messenger Subscription Strategy first appeared on Social News Desk.

It’s simple really … I just solved a problem.

All too often, startup founders begin with a solution in mind. But for me – it wasn’t about finding a market for my solution. It was about finding a solution for my market. And I’ve never lost sight of how important it is to know who you’re building software for and to really listen to what they’re saying they need.

For this reason, Social News Desk has always been committed to early-stage releases and an extreme-level of transparency around our roadmap. I truly want to know what our users like and dislike. And I want to know it as soon as possible.

At first, this process was somewhat ad hoc. But over the years, we’ve formalized the system and inducted a group of super-users into our “Test Drive Team.” The members of this group receive features first and are committed to putting those features through the paces. Our best ideas are validated by this group … and our worst ideas are squashed before they see the light of day! You’re welcome!

Interested in learning more about how you can participate in the SND Test Drive Team? Reach out to us at support@socialnewsdesk.com.

The post What is the Test Drive Team? first appeared on Social News Desk.

Aaron King, SND VP of Product Engineering, walked the team through updates to the mobile app. Our iOS users have been beta testing the app for a couple of weeks now, but users will be able to start performing more advanced searches on a mobile device and can also see any Twitter stream on the app. To make posting easier, mobile users will also be able to save accounts to groups and to their favorites list. Posting and viewing content is also a snap, with large thumbnails visible on Facebook timelines to look more like Facebook native.

The desktop version of SND Dashboard has gone through some major updates as well. Users can now view competitors’ streams side-by-side with their own content to stay on top of what’s happening without having to leave the dashboard. The Widget Library also features a graph to compare audience share with other competitors in the market, and we’ll be releasing a new widget very soon that will display Facebook and Twitter post volume to help benchmark how often direct competitors are posting.

A huge request from some of our Test Drive Team members is now a reality – TABS! Users can organize their dashboard into tabs to reflect their personal workflow preferences, and can even move tabs around just by dragging and dropping them to a new spot.

Our developers are also working on updates to much-loved features from the current Dashboard, including easier management of Twitter Lists. We’re also making changes to Quick Posts, our tool that makes it easy for newsroom staff to create a template for use again and again. Quick Posts can now be shared with the entire newsroom, or kept to one staff member who needs it for their own use.

On the horizon for the next few weeks is to continue work on our brand new Widget Library which include actionable data on your social content’s performance as well as your competitors!

We’re entering the home stretch, and can’t wait to start transitioning newsrooms to the new SND Dashboard. If you haven’t had a tour yet, please get in touch with your SND Client Strategist for a personal sneak peek!

The post SND Test Drive Team: Shaping Up first appeared on Social News Desk.

The post Test Drive Team Update: Taking Notes first appeared on Social News Desk.

Our Test Drive Team members shared a ton of great feedback with our developers, including suggestions about new features, ideas to improve the user interface, and expressed some love for features currently in SND Dashboard that they’re looking forward to using in the new platform such as Quick Post.

One topic of discussion which was big among the team this week was evaluation of the labels for some of the streams and features. For example, the SND Dashboard currently has a column called “Posts by Others” … which Facebook is now calling “Visitor Posts.” Some TDT members suggested the SND Dashboard labels should more closely mimic labels used on Facebook and Twitter’s native platforms, to make using Dashboard feel seamless and simple.

Next week should bring a lot of exciting updates as the SND Development Team wraps up another two week sprint. And we expect the Test Drive Team to get its first look at the brand new SND Mobile App! Stay tuned for updates and screenshots!

The post Test Drive Team Update: Bug Fixes and New Ideas first appeared on Social News Desk.