Automating social media posting saves time and effort. Why bother to visit multiple services and post the same thing over and over again? Dlvr.it can do it all for you automatically on a schedule.
What is Dlvr.it?
Dlvr.it is a social media automation service that lets you create updates that are shared across multiple services. It is one of many services and at first sight it might look like a me-too service, but each one has unique features.
Dlvr.it (that is a URL which redirects to dlvrit.com), supports the following social networks:
- LinkedIn company
- Tumblr
- StockTwits
Not all social media automation services support Tumblr, so that is a bonus. Even fewer, and none of the others looked at here, support StockTwits.
StockTwits is a social network for investors and traders in the stockmarket. It is full of financial chatter and information. Its membership is tiny compared to the other social networks, so it is surprising that there is support for it.
As with rival services, you can add one or more social networks to your account, create posts and add them to a queue, then them are automatically shared on the social networks according to the schedule you set.
The service supports RSS feeds and it can automatically create posts and share them from the feeds. That takes automation a step further.
How much does Dlvr.it cost?
Good news! Free accounts are available and they allow you to connect up to three social accounts. In addition to this you can add up to five RSS feeds and these can be set to auto-generate posts.
The best value subscription costs $9.99 a month and this enables 10 social accounts to be connected and 50 RSS feeds. An interesting feature of Dlvr.it is that you can buy extra blocks of 10 social accounts and 50 RSS feeds for $8.30 a month.
Let’s take a quick tour around Dlvr.it and see how to schedule updates for automated social sharing.
1 Get a free Dlvr.it account
Go to the Dlvr.it website (dlvrit.com) and there are buttons to sign up for a free account on the home page.
You can log in with Twitter or Facebook, but it is best to click the Sign Up button and enter your email address.
If you sign up with Twitter or Facebook it will probably count as one of your three social accounts for the free service.
If you use an email address you should get an email with a button to click to confirm your account. If you don’t, you can go to your account in Dlvr.it and click a button to send one.
2 View your social accounts
Click the Socials button at the top to view your social media connections. There aren’t any yet, so click the Add Social button to add one.
3 Pick a social media network
Click a button to add a social network. The two LinkedIn buttons are your personal account and a company account. Some social networks may not be available with a free account. Twitter and Facebook are definitely OK though.
4 Authorise access
You are asked to authorise access to your account on the social network. It is different for each one and Twitter is the simplest. This is Facebook and there are two or three screens to click through.
5 Select a Facebook account
With Facebook there can be more than one type of connection. You can connect to your profile, a page you have created for your website, blog or business, and any groups you have created. Click the one you want. You can return later and add the others.
6 View your social accounts
Click the Socials button at the top and you should now have one or more social network connections. Add 3 for free, 10 with a subscription or free trial.
7 View social account options
Click a social account in the list to see a list of recent posts and access other functions. For example, it can be deactivated, deleted, reconnected if it ever loses access for some reason.
Click the Schedule link to create a posting schedule for this account.
8 Edit the schedule
Dlvr.it automatically creates a posting schedule with days and times. It has added four scheduled times for each day of the week by default, but they can easily be changed.
- Click the button here to remove a scheduled time from the list.
- Click the time to change it if it is not suitable.
- Click the switches under each day to enable/disable posting on that day. You might not want to post at the weekend for instance.
- Click Add time slot to add another scheduled posting time.
In order for scheduling to work, you must click your profile picture in the top right corner of the page and select Account Settings. There is an option about half way down to set your time zone. You must set this so the scheduled posts go out at the time you are expecting.
9 Create a new post
There is a New Post button in that last screenshot of the scheduler, but more often you will click New Post in the sidebar under the logo on the main screen.
10 The new post editor
A window pops up to enable you to create a new post and add it to the posting queue.
- Enter the text and any URLs for the update you want to share.
- This top box is a Twitter post and so there is a character counter in the bottom right corner. Remember that Twitter allows just 140 characters.
- If you are posting to Facebook you can add some text to go with the post. If you leave it empty, the URL is pasted, which displays the preview card below.
- This thumbnail image and text is added automatically when a URL is pasted into the Facebook or Twitter boxes. Your website should be set up to create these automatically and plugins like Yoast and All-in-One SEO can help.
- Select the social networks you want to share this update with.
- Click Add to Queue to schedule the post. It will go out live at the next scheduled time.
- Click the arrow at the right side of the button for other options, such as to share it right now without using the scheduler.
11 View and manage queued posts
Click the Queue button at the top to see the posts waiting to be posted.
Select the social media account on the left to see the queue for each one.
Let the mouse hover over a post to access buttons that enable it to be moved up the queue, scheduled, edited or deleted.
You now know the basics of Dlvr.it. There is much more of course, and updates to this course will look at the more advanced features.
Action Points
- Sign up for a free Dlvr.it account
- Add your social media networks
- Edit the posting schedule for each social account
- Create posts for sharing on social networks
- Build up the posting queue
Online Course: Automate social media sharing and updates
2 Automate social media with Buffer
3 Automate social media with Hootsuite
4 Automate social media with Recurpost
5 Automate Pinterest using BoardBooster
6 Automate social media with SocialPilot
7 Automate social media with Social Oomph
8 Automate social media with Dlvr.it
9 Shares with Chrome and Safari extensions
