Creating and posting to social media about your business can be a time pirate.

Actually, that’s a total understatement. For some it’s a suckubous of time and can take forever.

I’m not going to lie, when I first started my business I too was taking FOREVER to create social media posts for YouTube, LinkedIn Instagram and Facebook.

Then TikTok came around.

I hopped on the TikTok train and was HOOKED.

But that posed yet another problem.

How the f**k am I going to get TikToks done on top of of all the other posts I want to create?

Enter automation.

So in this post, I’m going to go over how I use automation and repurposing content to save myself literally HOURS of time every week.

Step 1 - Map out your content creation process

Grab a pen and paper and map out what in a perfect world, you would see your content repurposing and creation looking like.

What is the most easiest and most efficient way for you to create content? Start there.

For me, it’s TikToks. I have a busy life not only creating content for clients but also a little monster to look after. Creating TikToks takes usually 20 minutes and only basic video editting skills.

For you, it could be writing a blog is the easiest. Or taking a photo. Just start witht he easiest and most efficient way to create content. And I mean create the visual AND caption.

Step 2 - Find automation tools that do all the busy work

My biggest problem was there wasn’t an easy way to take my videos from TikTok and post them on other channels without that crappy watermark. It’s against many community guidelines to post content with a watermark and also….it just looks lazy and tacky.

I also, hate to double up on work….which is exactly what I was doing by downloading videos, creating captions, and then scheduling to other platforms.

Enter a platform called repurpose.io.

Repurpose.io is the Henry Cavill of content creation tools. You can repourpose from TikTok (or whatever your favourite social media paltform is) to all major social media channels without watermarks.

And automatically.

So now as soon as I post on TikTok, it posts on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and gets it ready for me to review and tweak a few things to post it on LinkedIn or Pinterest.

I’ve also got it set to save a copy of each TikTok in Google drive, so I have a back up of everything from my TikTok channel.

Step 3 - repurpose video into other media

Remember when I said my TikToks save to Google Drive automatically?

Enter Zapier, CloudConvert, Descript and ClickUp.

Zapier eliminates SO MUCH busy work. It’s a platform that essentially makes two platforms that wouldn’t communicate to each other…well communicate.

You can set up what they call “zaps” which create a series of events. Think “if this happens then this happens afterward”.

So in the case of repurposing, I have set up actions so that the second a video hits Google Drive -

1. It gets moved to a folder that uses the video name

2. Its sharing settings are amended so that…

3. it can get converted to an audio file using CloudCovert so that…

4. I gets transcribed in Descript so I can use the text as backbone to any post or blog copy (like this one) AND

5. Creates a task in ClickUp so my VA knows to create Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube graphics using Canva templates.

It took time to build a system like this, but it’s possible.

When I calculated it out, depending on the complexity of the content, the amount of time I saved myself for just one TikTok per week was almost 2 hours.

I took one TikTok and managed to create another five or six posts for different platforms by working smarter, not harder.

How much does an automated social media marketing system like this cost?

Time is money, no matter which way you look at it.

For repurpose.io set me back 250 bucks USD that. $337.67 cents AUD.

ClickUp is my big project management system. I paid 324 USD in February 2021, that equates to 438 Aussie dollars.

Zapier eliminate the busy work by automating simple tasks, and was about the same price as Repurpose.io.

On top of that, you've got your Google drive space, so you can buy Google workspace. That’s 150 AUD annually

If you add it all up, you’re looking at about $1200 AUD per year. That’s also not including a social post scheduler like Loomly or Later.

So while that looks like a significant amount of money, you have to think the return on investment.

The return on investment here is time. You get your time given back to you.

For this blog post for example, took me under an hour to write. Because the backbone of the text was already written, video content already created.

I managed to recover the costs of all of these platforms in about a week, purely because I was able to get on to other projects I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.

So how are you going to use automation to help your social media level up?

How to automate your social media marketing is one tiny part of your entire social media strategy. If you’re looking for clarity on your social media strategy, process and scheduling, then my social media playbook.might be just what you’re looking for. It’s over 150 pages of guided workbooks so you can create a killer social media strategy, know what to post for your ideal customer and how to save time creating content. Learn more about the playbook here.