Automated Affiliate Marketing?

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I've been looking for ways to automate portions of my business, especially the social media aspect of it. I've been using Buffer (Free Version) to automate posts to social media, but that still takes a bit of time, especially if you want to keep track of what you're posting.

So I came up with some ways to use IFTTT to automate social media posting. If you don't know what IFTTT is, it's an acronym for "If This Then That".

If "THIS" happens Then "DO" That

It's free web-based service that allows you to automate all sorts of things you would have never even thought were possible. It's been around for while, and it's had a lot of time to build out it's library of services and connections.

Check out my new training on Using IFTTT To Automate Social Media

In additional to this type of automation I thought I'd share an additional piece of information that some people struggle with, especially with new websites that don't get a lot of traffic yet.

One of the neatest features WordPress has is the ability to schedule posts in the future. So you can write your posts in advance, schedule them to publish while you're away, and your website marches happily on while you head off on vacation.

Have you ever used the WordPress scheduler to automatically schedule posts while you're away?

If you have, you may have noticed that your schedule posts didn't happen like you thought they would. You open WordPress, and you find that the scheduled post date says "Missed". Well, that's no good.

There are two common reasons for this.

  1. The WordPress scheduler is disabled. To check and/or fix this you must use FTP to connect to your website, then find and open your wp-config.php file and look for the entry "define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);". You'll need to change the "true" to "false", then save the file. If you are not comfortable using FTP you can open a Site Support ticket and have them fix it.
  2. The second reason is due to the way WordPress handles scheduled tasks or Cron jobs. WordPress only checks for scheduled tasks when someone visits your website. So, if no one visits your site right before your scheduled post time, then it misses the schedule and your post does not get published. So you see why this can be a big problem for new websites. But, there is an easy fix for this. There a useful little plugin called "Scheduled Post Trigger". This plugin will check for missed scheduled posts and publish them immediately. So even if the schedule post time is missed, this plugin will publish it when the next person visits your page.

If you still have problems with scheduled posts I would open a Site Support ticket as there are some other more technical issues that could be happening, but this more the exception than the rule.

Hope this information was useful!

Cheers,

Michael

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Recent Comments

6

Thanks Michael
I will definitely check out our training. Jim

Very useful information Michael. I didn't realise it is possible to miss a scheduled post so I will look into that.

Derek

Useful, thanks for this. I've used IFTTT before to automate some of my stuff, but the posts don't usually display right. Sigh. I think I went back to Hootsuite after that. I'll have to check your training to see if it's me!

It is always tempting to automate our posting on social media especially when we are too busy with other things we don't have time for manual social media posting. But on the other side, manual posting has its own strengths especially if you really want to engage with your audience.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm only automating things I already do. You can still engage in feedback as you normally would.

Thanks,

Michael

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the info, I will check out your training.;0)

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