When working with social media it is especially important to be consistent and to publish frequently, on pre-defined days, but it is not always easy make yourself available when your audience is expecting your content.
Power Automate can help to automate your postings, so all you need to do is to prepare the content in advance and tell the tool when you need to publish it.
Note: We will explain the steps for LinkedIn, but it is possible do it in an analogous way with other social media.
From Creativity Spark we want to share this article with you and encourage you to try creating the flow.
And what elements do you need?
Automated posts to LinkedIn with Power Automate Elements
- A LinkedIn page.
- An Excel online spreadsheet.
- One drive for Business account.
- A Power Automate flow.
This is the flow that we will create:
First, I am going to briefly describe the flow components.
The Power Automate´s flow stars with an element called a trigger, we use the one called Recurrence.
And what this trigger does? It indicates the time frequency in which we want the posts to be published.
After the trigger you can see two actions, action number one, Get a row (from Excel online) and action number two, the one that is related to the LinkedIn page connection.
So now it is the time to create the flow step by step:
Steps to create the input Excel file:
- Open Excel online and add the next names to the cells A1, B1, C1: URL, KeyValue, Post.
- In cell A2 add a URL to the post you want to share in LinkedIn Page.
- In B2 write the number 1.
- In C2 write a title for the post.
- Select and click on Insert and after in Table, it is especially important to give Table format to the data.
- Give a name to the Table for example: Post to LNK by P Automate.
- I recommend renaming the sheet, for example calling it Post (It is better to work with specific names and references and do not use the ones the sheet has).
- It is possible now to add more URL, numbers, and titles in the columns as you can see on the image below.
- Close the Excel file, it is important that this was closed, and it is saved in One Drive for business, so that Power Automate works properly.
Steps to create the Power Automate flow:
- Open Power Automate.
- Click on Create.
- Choose Scheduled cloud flow.
- Add the information requested, then click on Create.
Flow name: Post to LinkedIn
Run This flow and its elements: Date, hour, etc. just as you need.
After clicking Create button a new screen is shown and there you can see the element called trigger, it is the event that starts our cloud flow.
In this flow the Trigger is named Recurrence.
Click on the blue zone of the trigger and now you can add the information needed to fix the Recurrence.
For example, you can write the same I have in my flow, where I used the information obtained from my social medias analytic accounts and choose those with more traffic.
Click on Show advanced options to open all the possibilities:
- Click on Save
Add an action to the flow by clicking on the “+ New step” button and a new option will be shown:
- Select the Excel Online icon.
- Type Get a row in the search box and select the first result: Get a row.
- Complete the action providing the required properties; The location of your Excel file, as well as the rest of the parameters shown below.
The * means that the information is mandatory.
For the *Key Value parameter, we will add an expression called rand, it is a Power FX volatile function that returns a pseudo-random number.
Click on the Add an expression button, fx icon, and then type the formula rand(1,10)
The second parameter between brackets must match the number on your Excel table. On my example, I have 10 rows, so I use rand(1,10)
- Click on Save
- Add another activity, this time for the Linkedin connector. Click + New step and write Linkedin, now click on “Share a company update V2”.
The selected action step will look like this:
- Add the 3 parameters requiered:
Company: The Linkedin page to which you want to send the posts.
Content URL: URL You need to chose a dynamic value and the options are shown.
Visible to guest: Yes.
Complete this step clicking on Show advanced options and adding some other elements: Description, Image URL, Subject and Text, but by the moment is enough with create as expalined and showed in the next screen.
- Save the Flow.
- Click on the Flow checker up to the righ, to make sure everything is correct. You should get no errors and warnings as shown below.
- Test the flow by clicking on the Test button. Select the option Manually, then click on the Test button below.
That’s it! As a result, the post will be published on the LinkedIn page provided, and this action will be repeated as frequently as you configured it on step 1, when setting the Recurrence.
Let us know on the comments on the LinkedIn page where you would like to use this flow with, and we will be more than happy to assist you configuring it.
Creativity Spark can help you implement not only Power Automate flows, but also the other products in the Power Platform family. If you need any help, leave us a message, and we will get back to you ASAP: Link to contact page.