How Dustin Stout Rocks Social Media Scheduling with Social Templates

How Dustin Stout Rocks Social Media Scheduling with Social Templates So you created a blog post. Good for you! If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent close to eight hours writing that literary masterpiece. You’ve got the perfect headline crafted, you’ve got great visuals sprinkled throughout the post, and you’ve probably got some great quotable moments throughout it just dying to be tweeted out. There’s only one thing left to do–schedule out all your social media promotion. Even the most brilliant and savvy social media managers dread this task. Why? Because it’s a crap-ton of work. And the more savvy you are, the more work you know it is to schedule the right posts, at the right times, on the right networks. But, dear friends, you no longer need to dread this arduous and tedious task. Our good friends at have liberated us from the tyranny of mass social status scheduling. With this one, glorious feature, you and I can be 1,000% more productive (rough estimate) at scheduling our literary masterpieces to be promoted on the social interwebs. In this post, I’m going to show you a handful of ways my team and I are taking advantage of a feature called Social Templates in the most effective ways possible. Following these tips and strategies will help you and your team save dozens (dare I say, hundreds) of hours and make your social promotion more effective. Heres how to use Social Templates in @like @DustinWStout from @warfarepluginsBefore I go straight into how we build our social templates, there’s a few things I think everyone needs to understand about the thought process behind them. Understand This: Every Network is Different One of the first things I often teach when talking about social media marketing is that you must never have a shotgun mentality. Forget trying to â€Å"spray and pray† one message across all the networks- it simply won’t work. Your content will sink, and your followers will tune you out. Each social network has its own culture and you need to treat it accordingly. A message you share on Twitter will not have the same success on Facebook or Google+. And a post that does well on Pinterest will not do as well on Reddit. The platforms serve different audiences with different content expectations and intents. Social platforms serve different audiences with different content expectations and intents.Suffice to say, you need to understand what types of content expectations the audience on each network has and then craft your messages accordingly. Understand This: Timing is Crucial and Different for Every Network There are two types of ideas I want you to understand here: Network posting volume Network peak hours Network Posting Volume Firstly, let’s take a look at what I mean when I say â€Å"Network Posting Volume†. Basically, each social network has a different tolerance for how much content should be shared in a given day. This is also referred to as posting frequency. each social network has a different tolerance for how much content should be shared in a given day.Some social networks naturally have an expectation of lower posting frequency while others have a higher posting frequency. Twitter, for example, is probably the highest volume social network. You can post 15-20 times a day and still be considered a â€Å"low-volume† tweeter in some circles. So for the sake of simplicity, our team has decided to list out each network and its daily posting frequency (or volume). Now, the given here is, of course, how much can your specific audience tolerate? Always run all these types of generalizations through your own audience filter. But if you don’t know where to start, this is a good place to do so. Now, the important thing to understand here as well, is that in the long-term promotion sense, lower-volume means you need to spend more time between resharing the same things. We’ll keep this in mind when we get to building our social template. Recommended Reading: Using Social Templates to Promote Your Content Faster What Are Peak Hours? In addition to each network’s volume you need to know when your social audience is most active. This will vary depending on your audience, so I’m not going to give one of those â€Å"Perfect Time to Post† tips. Instead, I highly recommend you use tools like Buffer’s Optimal Scheduling tool  or s Best Time Scheduling feature. Or go through s own epic blog post about the subject. Now, having covered these considerations, it’s clear that the task of content promotion is not an easy one. When you publish an epic blog post and you want to maximize its reach with your social networks you need to think about: How to craft a message unique for each social channel What time(s) to post it on each network for optimal reach How many times you need to share it on each network and how frequently to reshare it In the old days (as in a few months ago) this process would add an extra hour or more to the production of every single blog post. Not anymore. Setting Up ’s Social Templates for Maximum Effectiveness When announced Social Templates, it was like the heavens opened. I instantly saw that we were now able to maximize our content promotion with efficiency. I’m going to show you how we’ve broken down our own social templates. And all the efficiency geeks said: On top of being efficient with your promotion, we also want to be as effective as we can, being sure to create templates that will change based on the type of content we are promoting. Step 1: Know Your Content Categories Before you create a template, it’s important to know what categories of content you’re creating. If you follow a strict set of categories for your blog posts, this should be easy. You will want to create a different social template for every Category you post to. For example, here’s what ours look like on the Warfare Plugins blog: New Blog Post: Social Media New Blog Post: Content Marketing New Blog Post: WordPress New Blog Post: Blogging The reason for this is because your social templates will likely include posting to Pinterest Boards, Facebook Groups, or other targeted social channels. Having a template for each category means you don’t have to go in and specify the Board or Group for those specific channels every time- it’s already in place. So, for example, our New Blog Post: Social Media template has only Social Media Pinterest boards and Facebook Groups that get posted to. This takes one more step out of the equation when we go to apply the template to a new blog post. Step 2: Set Your Helpers Helpers were a real game-changer for us as well. Being able to set up our templates with custom-built helpers means we only have to write the message one time and have it applied to all the corresponding social media posts. The helpers we use are consistent across pretty much all of our templates (which also makes possible the duplicating of templates mentioned previously). I’ve come up with an â€Å"anatomy† so to speak of social messages. This was adapted from my own Anatomy of a Perfect Google+ Post. Our text helpers are as follows: {title} the title of the blog post {lead} usually an introductory sentence/paragraph at the beginning of the post that draws the reader in {summary} a brief summary of the post and what someone will get out of reading it {question} a question that is answered by the blog post {quote} a good quote from the article {pin-desc} a description specifically crafted for Pinterest {tweet} a custom tweet for the post {hashtag-1} most relevant hashtag for the article {hashtag-2} second most relelvant hashtag for the article From these 9 text helpers we can now create an infinite amount of social messages. For our templates, this usually means 29 different messages sent out over the first 30 days. There are then also a handful of Image Helpers that are applied to each template: {feature-img} the featured or primary image {pinterest-img} a Pinterest-optimized image (7351102) {pinterest-alt} an alternate Pinterest-optimized image (so we’re not pinning the same exact thing every time {quote-img} an image that features the quote we’ll use in our {quote} text helper {question-img} an image that features the question from the {question} helper {utility-img} if a blog post has a tutorial, infographic or some sort of utlitiarian image included {gif} because every goog blog post should have at least one animated gif Now, you may not always have every single one of the above types of images for every blog post, and that’s okay. You can always just use the same image multiple times for different helpers. These serve more as a guide rather than absolute necessity. Here is a hypothetical example of what a blank social template looks like in . Step 3: Schedule the Messages This is the most time-consuming step, but ultimately will save you the most time. After you do this, you never have to worry about scheduling your promotion ever again. The way we did it is we took one social network at a time and scheduled all of those out over the first 30 days. Then we went back through and did the next network. I won’t spend time telling you what times work best or what volume you should post for each network. s Lance Hendrickson already did a fantastic job at putting together a Social Media Posting Schedule Kit that I, myself, actually used as a starting point. So if you don’t know where to start with your audience, use that. You can always edit the templates later if you want to refine it based on your own results with your audience. How Will You Use Social Templates? With ’s new social templates, our content marketing game has been revolutionized, and yours can too. Not only can you save literally hundreds of hours of scheduling and planning time, but you can be more effective at it. Spend the time you’ll be saving wisely. Use it to engage with your communities and learn how to better serve them. The better you serve them, the more everyone will thrive.

Successes and Failures of Détente in the Cold War

Successes and Failures of Dà ©tente in the Cold War From the late 1960s to the late 1970s, the Cold War  was highlighted by a period known as â€Å"dà ©tente† – a welcome easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. While the period of dà ©tente resulted in productive negotiations and treaties on nuclear arms control and improved diplomatic relations, events at the end of the decade would bring the superpowers back to the brink of war. Use of the term â€Å"detent†- French for â€Å"relaxation†- in reference to an easing of strained geopolitical relations dates back to the 1904 Entente Cordiale, an agreement between Great Britain and France that ended centuries of off-and-on war and left the nations strong allies in World War I and thereafter. In the context of the Cold War, U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford called dà ©tente a â€Å"thawing out† of U.S.-Soviet nuclear diplomacy essential to avoiding a nuclear confrontation. Dà ©tente, Cold War-Style While U.S.-Soviet relations had been strained since the end of World War II, fears of war between the two nuclear superpowers peaked with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Coming so close to Armageddon motivated leaders of both nations to undertake some of the world’s first nuclear arms control pacts, including the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. In reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis, a direct telephone line – the so-called red telephone – was installed between the U.S. White House and the Soviet Kremlin in Moscow allowing leaders of both nations to communicate instantly in order to reduce the risks nuclear war. Despite the peaceful precedents set by this early act of dà ©tente, rapid escalation of the Vietnam War during the mid-1960s increased Soviet-American tensions and made further nuclear arms talks all but impossible. By the late 1960s, however, both the Soviet and U.S. governments realized one big and unavoidable fact about the nuclear arms race: It was hugely expensive. The costs of diverting ever-larger portions of their budgets to military research left both nations facing domestic economic hardships. At the same time, the Sino-Soviet split – the rapid deterioration of relations between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China – made becoming friendlier with the United States look like a better idea to the USSR. In the United States, the soaring costs and political fallout of the Vietnam War caused policymakers to see improved relations with the Soviet Union as a helpful step in avoiding similar wars in the future. With both sides willing to at least explore the idea of arms control, the late 1960s and early 1970s would see the most productive period of dà ©tente. The First  Treaties of Dà ©tente The first evidence of dà ©tente-era cooperation came in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, a pact signed by several of the major nuclear and non-nuclear power nations pledging their cooperation in stemming the spread of nuclear technology. While the NPT did not ultimately prevent the proliferation of nuclear arms, it paved the way for the first round of Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT I) from November 1969 to May 1972. The SALT I talks yielded the Antiballistic Missile Treaty along with an interim agreement capping the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) each side could possess. In 1975, two years of negotiations by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe resulted in the Helsinki Final Act. Signed by 35 nations, the Act addressed a range of global issues with Cold War implications, including new opportunities for trade and cultural exchange, and policies promoting the universal protection of human rights. The Death  and Re-Birth  of Dà ©tente Unfortunately, not all, but most good things must end. By the end of the 1970s, the warm glow of U.S.-Soviet dà ©tente began to fade away. While diplomats of both nations agreed on a second SALT agreement (SALT II), neither government ratified it. Instead, both nations agreed to continue to adhere to the arms reduction provisions of the old SALT I pact pending future negotiations. As dà ©tente broke down, progress on nuclear arms control stalled completely. As their relationship continued to erode, it became clear that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had overestimated the extent to which dà ©tente would contribute to an agreeable and peaceful end of the Cold War. Dà ©tente all but ended when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. President Jimmy Carter angered the Soviets by increasing U.S. defense spending and subsidizing the efforts of anti-Soviet Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghanistan invasion also led the United States to boycott the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow. Later the same year, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States after running on an anti-dà ©tente platform. In his first press conference as president, Reagan called dà ©tente a â€Å"one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its aims.† With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Reagan’s election, the reversal of the dà ©tente policy that began during the Carter Administration took the fast track. Under what became known as the â€Å"Reagan Doctrine,† the United States undertook the largest military buildup since World War II and implemented new policies directly opposed to the Soviet Union. Reagan revived the B-1 Lancer long-range nuclear bomber program that had been cut by the Carter administration and ordered increased production of the highly mobile MX missile system. After the Soviets began to deploy their RSD-10 Pioneer medium range ICBMs, Reagan convinced NATO to deploy nuclear missiles in West Germany. Finally, Reagan abandoned all attempts to implement provisions of the SALT II nuclear arms agreement. Arms control talks would not resume until Mikhail Gorbachev, being the only candidate on the ballot, was elected president of the Soviet Union in 1990. With the United States developing President Reagan’s so-called â€Å"Star Wars† Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) ant-ballistic missile system, Gorbachev realized that the costs of countering U.S. advances in nuclear weapons systems, while still fighting a war in Afghanistan would eventually bankrupt his government. In the face of the mounting costs, Gorbachev agreed to new arms control talks with President Reagan. Their negotiation resulted in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties of 1991 and 1993. Under the two pacts known as START I and START II, both nations not only agreed to stop making new nuclear weapons but also to systematically reduce their existing weapons stockpiles. Since enactment of the START treaties, the number of nuclear weapons controlled by the two Cold War superpowers has been significantly reduced. In the United States, the number of nuclear devices dropped from a high of over 31,100 in 1965 to about 7,200 in 2014. The nuclear stockpile in Russia/the Soviet Union fell from about 37,000 in 1990 to 7,500 in 2014. The START treaties call for continued nuclear arms reductions through the year 2022, when stockpiles are to be cut to 3,620 in the United States and 3,350 in Russia.