5 new features that will improve your social publishing

Do you publish your social media posts directly in the apps themselves or do you use an external tool? While the built-in publishing features are often great as they are, using a social media publishing tool for this purpose can help you get a better overview of your content.

Here are the latest features of Flowbox Publish — brand new features that could help you boost your UGC game even further. Like being able to post video posts on Facebook. Or editing photos directly in the platform. 🙌🏼

#1: Start publishing on Pinterest and Twitter 📍
Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a great platform for both consumers and brands to visually connect with people around them.

However, focusing only on one or two platforms also means a risk of missing out on engaging with new audiences and potential customers through other social platforms. Did you know that almost 300 million people use Pinterest on a monthly basis? These people surf into Pinterest with the purpose of getting inspired — whether it’s finding something to buy or a place to visit. In other words, this is a great channel with huge potential.

And remember, you have a lot of UGC that you can repost in order to avoid “another to-do” to your list — and at the same time serve inspiring and converting content to your audience.

Since the latest Flowbox update you can publish content on Pinterest and Twitter too via Flowbox Publish. Just connect your accounts in your company settings and you’re good to go!

Connecting Pinterest and Twitter:

1. In Flowbox, go to your company settings.
2. Click ‘Connect new account’.
3. Connect your Pinterest and Twitter accounts.
4. That’s it! For a more detailed guide on how publishing to Pinterest and Twitter works, keep reading in the section below. 😎
   

How publishing to Pinterest in Flowbox works:

• The post will automatically be published to Pinterest accordingly to the time you set — and to the board that you have chosen.
• Adding products under ‘Prepare’ will only make your Pinterest post in a flow contain products.
• If you have tagged the post with products or tags in Moderate, they will follow to Publish.
• If reposting UGC, Flowbox will automatically create a note with original post data such as username and caption so you easily can credit the photographer and get inspired by their caption. Notes is only for internal use and not visible towards your customers.
  

How publishing to Twitter in Flowbox works:

• The post will automatically be published to Twitter accordingly to the time you set.
• Adding products under ‘Prepare’ will only make your Twitter post in a flow contain products.
• If you have tagged the post with products or tags in Moderate, they will follow to Publish.
• If reposting UGC, Flowbox will automatically create a note with original post data such as username and caption so you easily can credit the photographer and get inspired by their caption. Notes is only for internal use and not visible towards your customers.
• You can publish both images, videos and links to Twitter. Not bad, huh? 😎

#2: View your feed on Instagram 📸
An image is not just an image. At least not on Instagram. On Instagram, each post is a part of your overall aesthetic. When you post an image or a video clip, it should blend in with the rest of your feed and theme.

When you use Flowbox’s Publish tool, you can now view your whole grid, making it a lot easier to know if what you’re about to publish will actually fit with the rest of your content. Pretty good, huh?

How to:

1. Go to Publish.
2. Click ‘Create Post’.
3. Choose your account and select ‘Regular’ as post type.
4. You will now see two options on the top of your right-hand side, ‘Post’ and ‘Feed’.
5. Click ‘Feed’ for a preview of your feed.

#3: Post a video (or just a status!) on Facebook 💥

Want to post more than just images with Flowbox? Don’t worry, it’s sorted! Since July this is now possible as we’ve made some smaller tweaks for Facebook publishing.


You can now choose between three post types:

• Status post: When you want to post a regular status post, without any media.
• Photo or video post: You can now publish not only photos but videos too when using Flowbox’s Publishing features.
• Carousel post: Carousel post you can use several photos in one post. Pick ‘Carousel’ as post type in Publish and create your own carousel post.

How to:

1. Go to Publish.
2. Click ‘Create Post’.
3. Choose the account you want to post to.
4. In the drop-down menu for post type you can now see three options: ‘Photo/video’, ‘Carousel’ and ‘Status’

#4: Edit your photos directly in your library 🎨

Editing photos is a lot of fun but let’s face it, it’s also something that can take hours of your work week. With a proper content marketing strategy in place you probably have a lot of images in your library lined up for publishing. And the process of important and exporting photos between your editing software and your Flowbox library can be very time consuming in the long run.

Now, all of that is history. Since July 2019, you can edit your images directly in the Flowbox platform. 😎

Here are some of the features in the photo editor:

• Enhance image adjustments such as brightness, contrast, exposure etc.
• A vast selection of different filters
• Add stickers, text or frames

How to:

1. Head over to Library.
2. Select your image.
3. Click ‘Edit’ in the bottom right corner.
4. That’s it! Now you can go crazy and embrace your inner photo editing-skills yourself.

Example:

There are endless of possibilities to be creative and make your photos stand out in a way that enhances your brand. Only your imagination is your limit.

Here is an example of how you can use the photo editor to transform a photo. The “before” version in the example below is taken in daylight but the saturation is low and the brightness reduces the contrasts.

What we’ve done:

• Increased contrasts
• Increased saturation
• Lowered brightness
• Changed exposure
• Added ‘Summer’ filter with lower intensity

Before:

After:

#5: Regramming made easy

No need to re-invent the wheel. Got a rights granted image in your library that you want to publish? When you use Flowbox’s Publish tool, the original post data will now be included. Such as original Instagram username, caption and any tags and products that have been tagged.

A note will also be created so you easily can credit or fully regram the original poster — further embracing the UGC! 😎

How to:

1. Go to Publish.
2. Choose the account you want to post to.
3. Select your post type and click ‘Next’.
4. Click ‘Add Media’ and open your Rights Granted folder.
5. Select your media and click ‘Insert’.
6. Flowbox will automatically create a note with original post data such as username and caption so you easily can credit the photographer and get inspired by their caption.

And last but not least, some bonus features...

Reposting made possible ♼

Maybe you have scheduled a post to Instagram which you want to repost to Facebook? Now you can just click ‘Duplicate’ on a scheduled post, pick which channel you wish to post to, and a new post will be created and prefilled with everything applicable from your original post. Smooth!

How to:

1. Go to Publish.
2. Click on the three-dot-menu on a post.
3. Click ‘Duplicate’.

Create notes ✏️

Notes has now made its debut in Publish. You can now create notes when drafting your post to remind yourself or your colleagues of small and large things like “Add this filter”, “Tag this product in Instagram Shopping”, “Tag this location”. A small but handy feature. And remember, notes is only for internal use and not visible towards your customers so you don’t need to worry about that.

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