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 Messaging > Social Posts
You will be directed to the Active Social Posts 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.
Canceled: These are canceled Social Post records where the Status equals Active and the Status Reason equals Canceled.
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.
Error: These are Social Post records where the Status Reason equals Error.
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.
New: Here you will see see Social Post records where the Status Reason equals New. These records have not yet been published.
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.
Create a Social Post Record
Click +New or navigate to Messaging > New Post 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:
After creating a new Social Post, you will be presented with the following:
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, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and/or Youtube). 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 social profiles in Marketing Automation.
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 Add Image/Video button to choose a feature image for the post.
This will open a new window where you can either upload a file locally from your machine or you can access additional options from the menu in the top-left hand corner.
If you select the menu option, then you will receive a list of other options that you can use to add your desired image/video.
Select the desired image once it has been uploaded into this image manager. You will then be able to use the provided image editing options to make any desired changes before you select the Add button to add the image to your post.
A thumbnail of the image will appear in the preview of your social post.
To add an PDF, click the Add PDF button to choose a PDF file for the post.
This will open a new window where you can either upload a file locally from your machine or you can access additional options from the menu in the top-left hand corner.
If you select the menu option, then you will receive a list of other options that you can use to add your desired PDF.
Select the desired PDF once it has been uploaded into this file manager. Select the Add button to add the PDF to your post.
A thumbnail of the image will appear in the preview of your social post.
More information about PDF sharing and tracking can be found here
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.
Branded Links in Social Posts
Links added to your social posts will be converted to okt.to links for tracking 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 When: Now button.
This will open up the Posting Times window, where you can set the desired date and time for your post. You can also use the Add Another option to allow multiple scheduled instances to be set 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 |