Nelio Content features a simple and beautifully-integrated user interface for creating and editing your social media status updates. Using the following dialog:
you’ll be able to share and promote your WordPress blog posts on social media. Let’s look in detail at each of the different parts that make up the dialog and how to use them.
Social Network and Profile Selector
The first block in the dialog is a network and profile selector—just click on the profile(s) you want to use for sharing a certain message.
New Social Messages
When creating a new social message, the dialog will include a multiple profile selector. This selector, which is depicted in the previous screenshot, allows you to select multiple profiles at once. The selector is divided in two sections:
- Network Selector. It helps you filter all the social profiles you have based on the network they belong to. Thus, changing the “active” network shows all the profiles you connected to Nelio Content within that network. Moreover, it also changes the appearance of the preview block (which we discuss later on).
- Profile Selector. Once you’ve activated a certain network, all the profiles within that network become available for you to select them.
Even though the dialog only permits one active network at a time, you can select as many profiles as you want from different networks. For example, Twitter is the “active” network in the previous screenshot (there’s a tiny arrow icon below it). As you can see, there are two Twitter profiles selected—Antonio’s and Nelio’s. However, we can tell we also have more profiles selected from Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Tumblr profiles, because these’s icons are depicted in full color. On the other hand, Google My Business, Pinterest and Reddit profiles are not selected, because their icons are blurred.
Please note, that when selecting a Pinterest social profile, it is also necessary to indicate the board (or boards) on which the created message will be published.
This multiple profile selector is a shortcut for creating multiple messages all at once. That is, if you select multiple profiles and create a single message, Nelio will create as much messages as profiles you selected, being each message connected to a single profile.
Existing Social Messages
If you’re editing an already-existing social message, you’ll see the dialog includes a single profile selector. The following screenshot depicts this selector:
You can easily change the social profile on which the message will be shared. Moreover, it features a profile search functionality—just start to type the name of the profile you’re interested in, and it’ll automatically filter the matching profiles for you.
No Selector is Shown
If you don’t see any of the previous selectors ever, that’s probably because you connected only one profile to Nelio Content. When that occurs, you don’t need to tell Nelio Content the profile it has to use for sharing social messages—the only profile you connected is the profile it’ll use.
Social Message’s Content
Next, the dialog contains a text area for specifying the message itself:
- Default message is
{title} {permalink}. These two placeholders will be replaced by the post’s title and link, once the message is published. - Variables
{title},{permalink}and{excerpt}can be used within any message. Thus, for example, you can share the message depicted in the next screenshot: “We’ve just published a new post in our website: {permalink} Check it out, you’ll love it 😉 #WordPress“. - Char count in the lower right corner tells you the number of remaining characters you can use. Message’s length depends on the network you selected. If, for example, you selected a Twitter profile, the social message can’t be longer than 280 characters.
Related Post (on calendar)
When creating social messages within Nelio’s Editorial Calendar, you’ll see there’s an option for sharing old posts:
Use this option to link the social message to an already-published post. This link is not included when creating social messages within the Edit Post page, for it’s supposed that any message created there will be linked to the post you’re editing at that moment. In the editorial calendar, though, you’re able to specify which post is related to the current message.
If you click on Share old post…, Nelio Content will open a post selector. Just look for the post you’re interested in (you can even Search for a concrete post using the text area) and click on it.
Additional Actions
Right after the message’s text area, in the lower right corner, there’s a list of actions you can use.
Share Image
The first action, depicted by a Picture icon, allows you to attach an image to the social message. If you click on said icon, the following image selector dialog will pop up:
Show or Hide Preview
The second action is depicted by an Eye icon. Use this action to show or hide the preview block:
Preview Block
The next block in our dialog shows a preview of your social message. As we’ve just seen, this block might be hidden. Please keep in mind that social message preview shows an approximation of how the message will look like when actually published. There might be tiny differences between what’s depicted in the preview and the final result (specially if the social network updated its user interface).
Publication Date and Time
The last block contains social message’s publication Date and Time. Use them to select the exact moment in which Nelio Content has to share your message.
Social Messages Related to Unpublished Posts
It’s important you understand how these selectors work when the post hasn’t been published yet. Dates can be set as follows:
- Offset Date. You can instruct Nelio Content to share a social message upon post’s publication. That is, you can, for example, share a social message the same day the post is published, the next day, 5 days later, and so on. If you use this approach, you can reschedule a post and social messages will be automatically rescheduled too.
- Exact Date. Another option is to specify the exact date (day, month, and year) in which the social message should be shared. In this case, the message will be shared on that exact date, regardless of the related post’s state—that is, it doesn’t matter whether the post is published or not.
Time selector, on the other hand, depends on the date value you chose:
- Offset Time. You can also instruct Nelio Content to publish a social message at the exact same time the post is published, or some hours later. This option, though, is only available if the social message is to be shared on the same day the post will be published.
- Time Intervals. Another option is to tell Nelio Content to randomly select an exact hour within an interval. These intervals might be morning, afternoon, and so on.
- Exact Time. Finally, you can also set the exact time at which the social message should be shared.
Social Messages Related to Published Posts (or Without a Related Post)
If the social message is not related to any post or if it’s related to a published post, date and time selectors are different from what we’ve seen in the previous section. Basically, under these circumstances you won’t be able to set social message’s publication time as an offset added to post’s publication time, because the post is already published. Instead, you’ll be able to define the message’s publication date and time as offsets from the current time—that is, you can instruct Nelio Content to share a social message Now, in one, two, three… hours, tomorrow, in two days, and so on.