Automating with RSS feeds
Your store generates RSS feeds automatically for your products, articles and categories. Point an automation tool at them and your social profiles post themselves. It takes about fifteen minutes to set up and then it runs indefinitely.
What an RSS feed is
An RSS feed is a live list of your content that updates whenever you add or change something. Social media tools can read that list and post each new item to your profiles. Add a product or publish an article, and it appears on your social accounts without you touching anything.
Where to find yours
Go to Traffic > RSS Feeds in your store dashboard for the feeds covering products, articles and categories. Individual categories have their own feed too, under the Traffic tab when you edit the category.
Tools that post for you
- dlvr.it. Built for exactly this. Connect a feed and it posts to Facebook, X and others. Has a free plan.
- IFTTT. General automation. You build a rule that says "when a new item appears in this feed, post it to my Facebook page".
- Zapier. The same idea with more control, useful when you want custom formatting or several destinations.
Setting it up
The process is much the same whichever tool you choose:
- Sign up and copy your feed URL from your store dashboard.
- Paste it in as the source, and connect your social accounts as the destinations.
- Set how often it posts. Two to five a day is right for a new account.
- Add a few hashtags for your niche.
Getting it right
- Start slow. Two to five posts a day on a new profile, increasing as your following grows. A brand new account firing out thirty posts a day looks like what it is.
- Use the random products feed. It rotates through your catalogue, so your profile shows variety instead of the same handful of items.
- Add hashtags. Most tools let you attach them to every post. Your store name plus two or three niche keywords is plenty.
- Keep a little of it human. Automated posting keeps a profile alive and busy. Replying to comments and joining the odd conversation is what turns that into a following, and a few minutes a day covers it.
- Watch the clicks. Check which automated posts actually send people to your store and adjust what you feed in.
Set this up as soon as your profiles exist, then go back to Getting traffic from social media for the small part you still do yourself.