Social Media Publishing still at stone age stage

We at Blokboek.com strongly believe in Multi Channel Publishing and especially in Social Media Publishing. It is much easier and faster to find new, motivated, readers via social media than via print. That is why we try out as many forms of social media publishing as possible. We use everything from simple tweets to Flipboard magazines to disseminate our content worldwide.

Unfortunately many of these options are still in the stone age. From technical problems to annoying bugs and from steep learning curves to simply not having a good manual. This all contributes to the bad name of these very promising media outlets. For example Flipboard has its own issues with publishing articles: one day there´s no problem, the next it takes up to four tries with a smartphone before an article is actually published.
Setting up a workflow to publish articles via LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+ requires stamina as it will take many hours. Another problem with a new technology – think DeskTop Publishing – is the evolution service companies and app developers go through. Take-overs, business model adjustments or just simply ceasing services are all part of this.
But we think that the results of this new form of publishing are good and there is definitely a role for Social Media Publishing within the wider scope of Multi Channel Publishing which seems to be the future of our industry.
Blokboek.com gets more readers and newsletter subscribers via LinkedIn and ScoopIt. This is a global trend which strengthens our efforts in doing the same for the English language version.

Ready-made solutions
There are some ready-made solutions for companies that want to re-use their print content for digital publication. At the top end of the market there are solutions from companies such as Agfa offering a press-a-button solution with Eversify mobile publishing. Woodwing integrates its Enterprise print and app publishing solutions with social media publishing to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These are not cheap solutions which also require experience and Adobe Publishing Suite.

At the lower end of the market you can certainly find good solutions. https://xyzscripts.com offers a number of plugins for WordPress CSM which allows quick publishing to any social media channel with the Pro version. Companies such as Google and Facebook are increasingly offering tools for sharing content to their channels. This is of course in their own interest and it pays to read the terms and conditions – especially for advertising and copyright. But the fact that these giants are interested in publishing emphasises that content will remain king and whoever owns the content owns the client.
So do dive in and look into possibilities, even if it is only to decide that Social Media Publishing does not fit your strategy and your preference would be to outsource it to specialists.