Thanks to ClickDimensions Social Marketing, creating, scheduling, and publishing social posts to various social profiles and tracking the click activity is easy! This is a powerful way to enhance your marketing efforts and engage with your audience -- all from within your Dynamics environment! This article will discuss how to create social posts, after the prerequisite steps of setting up a CNAME for social marketing and the necessary social profile connectors have been authenticated.
NOTE: Before you can create Social Posts, a CNAME for social marketing must be set up, as well as setting up the connectors to post to various social profiles. Click here to learn how to set up a CNAME for social marketing. Click here to learn how to set up the various social profile connectors.
Goals
- Learn how to create a Social Post
- Learn how to schedule Social Posts
- Learn how to set up a recurring Social Post
Table of Contents
Navigate to Social Posts
When you are ready to create your Social Post, navigate to ClickDimensions > Social Posts
Or if using the new UCI view, navigate to Messaging > Social Posts
You will be directed to the New system view. You can alternate between the following system views:
System Views for Social Posts
Active Social Posts: These are Active Social Post records, as opposed to Inactive Social Post records. Social Post records where the Status equals Active.
Draft in Queue: You can disregard this view, unless you are a customer using a higher tier of service called ClickDimensions Social Engagement. Click here for more information.
Drafts: You can disregard this view, unless you are a customer using a higher tier of service called ClickDimensions Social Engagement. Click here for more information. This view will show posts that are currently drafts that cannot be published until they have been approved by another user.
New: Here you will see see Social Post records where the status reason equals New. These records have not yet been published or are scheduled to be published.
Inactive Social Posts: These are Inactive Social Post records, as opposed to Active Social Post records. Social Post records where the Status equals Inactive. If you used our legacy Facebook Connector, you would see any previous posts from this legacy connector in this view.
Posted: Here you will see Social Post records that have been Posted to the various social profiles. Within the view, the various columns will show the social network the post was published to, the profile name, when it was posted, the CRM Campaign associated, status reason, and when the record was created within CRM.
Scheduled: Here you will see Social Post records that are scheduled to be posted at a future date and time. Or, you can
Create Personal View, which will allow you to create a view based on your own specified values and columns. This is Microsoft Dynamics functionality integrated with ClickDimensions data.
Create a Social Post Record
Click +New and fill out the fields:
After version 11.1, it is also possible to clone an existing Social Post to post it on other social networks:
Name (required): the name of this particular Social Post record within your Dynamics environment.
Campaign (optional): associate this social post and the click event activity generated from the people who interact with this post with a CRM Campaign. Choose the CRM Campaign record from this lookup field.
NOTE: If you are using a higher tier of service, by associating a Campaign with your Social Post record, this will create a new Campaign record on the Oktopost platform.
NOTE: After creating your Social Post, additional fields displaying information such as the relevant social platform name and when the Post was published will automatically be added to the record.
Click the Save button from the ribbon in order to continue creating your social post.
The Create Post button will appear once the record has been saved. Click Create Post.
Creating the Post
You will be directed to a new window where you will set the details for this social post:
Choose which social profile(s) this social post will be published to (choose between Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and/or Google+). You can choose multiple profiles on the same social network. For example, two Facebook profiles at the same time. If you did not already set up the connector for the social profile you wish to publish to, you will be prompted to set up the relevant connector. Click here to see an index of articles on how to set up the various connectors with Oktopost.
Set the content for your social post in the field in place of the What would you like to share? text. This can include links, and the clicks on these links will be what is tracked and collected within your Dynamics environment. For this example, we will be using our Facebook Page connector, but the process is essentially the same no matter which social profile you are posting to.
To add an image, click the camera button to choose a feature image for the post.
Drag and drop an image file to upload it from your computer and/or choose from images in other locations. Select the desired image once it has been uploaded into this image manager.
A thumbnail of the image will appear in the preview of your social post.
Facebook Link Images
When linking to a webpage in your Facebook post, you can select the image your post should use, however, if linking to your site, you will need to verify your site's domain with Facebook. Otherwise, the image shown in the post will be pulled from the page and not be the image that you set up here.
Oktopost has some additional information if you would like to further look into this for your Facebook posts.
Twitter Links
Links added to your Twitter posts will convert to okt.to if they start with http or https. But a link beginning with www (or something other than http/https) won’t convert to okt.to.
Scheduling a Social Post
To schedule the Social Post, click the NOW link, then specify the schedule: Post now or Select date and time
- Post now: the social post will be published as soon as you complete the setup and click Post
- Select date and time: choose the date and time you would like your post to be published. Click Set when complete.
NOTE: For now, all time zones are set to America, New York (Eastern Time)
When scheduling a post to be published later, clicking the + icon next to Select date and time will allow you to set multiple scheduled instances for the same post.
Once you are happy with your social post properties, click Share Now (if the post is scheduled, the button will read Schedule, you will need to click this button to fully schedule the post.)
You will see a success redirect when the post has been scheduled or posted (depending what you specify).
Once a Social Post has been published, if you click View Social Post in CRM, the record will refresh within Dynamics CRM and you will see a different form containing additional information about the Social Post. Continue to the Social Post Reporting article for more information.
| Feature Added: 8.8 |
| Feature Updated: 11.1.0 |
| ClickDimensions Version Needed: 8.8 |