Process for uploading tweets to Postcron

Uploading tweets to Postcron

When we write a new blog post, we need to drive traffic to that post and promote it via various social channels. At the moment, we're focusing on Twitter for this process. The overall process is-

1. Editing the content in the spreadsheet
2. Uploading the CSV file to Postcron
3. Editing tweets in Postcron

You can see a video run through below.

This process exists so you can edit the tweets in Google sheets, download a CSV file and upload it to Postcron. Then, we can make another round of edits if need be to the tweets in Postcron

It's important that we can direct traffic to our blog from Twitter. This is a vital part of our social marketing strategy.

What You Will Need

You'll need access to the below

• Tweet creator Google sheet
• Postcron

If you do not have access to these resources, please contact Mike to request access.

Technical Considerations

When a new blog post is uploaded, you'll receive an email with a new version of this checklist. Click the link in the email to get a new checklist for each new blog post.

Tweet creator Google Sheet

The Google sheet here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gS2ORwE6mfYkDX2sf6iuLC06toaDpaSA8KuX1VjmLx4/edit?usp=sharing) has the tweet content, images and links needed to save as a CSV file.

Postcron

We use Postcron (https://postcron.com/dashboard) to schedule and publish our Twitter content (known as tweets). We've be saving the above Google Sheet as a .CSV file and uploading it to Postcron with the bulk file feature.

Video process

Finally, you can watch a video of the editing process below.

Because of how the tweets are written, the automation doesn't always make the sentences seem human. We need to go through the tweet content in the Google Sheet and edit them so they sound like a human wrote them

Open up the Google sheet and see the new tweets.

We're ONLY editing copy inside column A and rows 2 to 24. It's important that we don't delete any tweets or cells. 

We only edit rows 2 to 24 because rows 25 to 47 are automatically copied from rows 2 to 24. If we edit A2 for example, A25 will show the same content.

So we're only editing the content inside Column A from rows 2 to 24.

You'll need to edit the content inside the cells to make sure the tweets read like a human wrote them.

We can use abbreviations, slang and poor grammar in order to keep them under 140 characters. But it's more like 120 characters as we use characters with the image and link.

Think in terms of HEADLINES. Copy that gets attention is better than copy we're happy with. Don't worry about punctuation too much. Snappy words are the priority.

Now we need to save the Google Sheet as a .CSV (comma separated value)

Select file at the top left.

Hover over "Download as" and left click on "Comma-separated values (.csv, current sheet)"

Choose a suitable location on your computer to save the CSV. 

Note the file name is automatically "Tweet creator". We need to change this name.

Row 21, which you can see if you click and drag the save file explorer box, shows the post title. You can use that to name the file if you like

Now we have our CSV file saved we need to upload it to Postcron.

The Postcron dashboard shows 4 items.

1. The social profiles we have linked (if you have more than one, select my Twitter account)

2. Write and schedule or publish one post at a time

3. Upload multiple posts

4. Future and past posts

Open Postcron here (https://postcron.com/dashboard) and find the "upload multiple posts" button.

Locate the saved CSV file and click Open to upload that to Postcron

Postcron will fetch the content, links and images from the CSV file.

It'll create a series of posts but we need to address errors before we publish.

You'll always need to delete the first post. It's pulling in the column headers from the spreadsheet and we don't want to publish that.

1. Select "Set dates and times Automagically"

The time and date panel will appear.

2. We need to select the timespan as 12:00am to 11:59pm. You can click and drag the orange circles or enter the times manually.

3. We need to select 3 posts per day. All the numbers above the individual days will change to 3 too.

4. Select apply. All the posts will now have a data and a time to publish.

When you set the times and dates, you'll see you now have fewer errors. It might still be high, so as long as there are times and dates set, we probably just need to edit the tweet content.

We're going to select "Show errors" in grey and just show posts that have errors.

Most of time, errors are because the tweet content is too long. We need to further edit down the copy inside the post to shorten it.

We need to select inside the red box and shorten the text copy. It might be a few letters, it might be a few words.

Remember editing the copy is like editing inside the Google Sheets. Think headlines. Don't worry about punctuation.

SERIOUSLY. COMMAS, FULL STOPS AND APOSTRAPHES ARE NOT ALWAYS SUITABLE FOR TWITTER.

For example, below we've changed "digital businesses who want to know what 2017 is going to look like? Thus prediction post shows how awesome 2017 will be"

to

"digital businesses who want to know what 2017 is going to look like? Prediction post shows how awesome 2017 will be"

The small number that was in red, as -3 now shows a grey 2. This says we have 2 characters spare.

Take care editing the posts as when you fix all the errors, it'll automatically show ALL posts and look like your work has disappeared. This is not the case, it has saved your posts automatically and is now showing you all posts.

Now scroll to the bottom and select "Save and schedule".

Select "Save and schedule" again and you'll be taken back to the Dashboard. If it crashes, just select Dashboard at the top and see if your posts have been saved. 

It might show previous posts from other uploads. That's fine.