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Creating a LinkedIn social media automation - with video

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Hello everyone,
I am trying to use Airtable as a way to automate corporate communication on various social media.
The Twitter integration seems to be working fine, but I don’t see anything that would allow me to post to LinkedIn, which is the most important social media I am using.

I tried using #zapier “company update” function to create my posts, but I am encountering several issues that I can’t find solutions to.

  • The @mention someone doesn’t do anything. I’m guessing nothing can be done here, similar to Twitter, but it’s worth mentioning.

  • Now to the core part: I would like to attach a video to my file, just like when I post a video on LinkedIn by uploading it. I can’t seem to find how to do that, as the Zapier “preview - image” field doesn’t seem to support video files.

  • Even if I give up posting videos and focus on images, all I can get is for them to appear as “previews”, as mentioned by the field name. This leads to the image being cropped and generally not aesthetic.

Is there a way for me to fully automate my content so I can post a text with a clean attachment ?
This way I could use Airtable’s integration for Twitter and something else for LinkedIn.
(I am not familiar with #integromat but I’m more than willing to dive into it if this is where the magic happens !)
Thank you in advance !

4 replies

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8829 replies
  • June 17, 2021

Welcome to the community, @Clement_Lapierre.

Yes, Make is the vastly superior & vastly more powerful platform than Zapier — and it’s easier & cheaper too!

As you can see on Make’s LinkedIn integration page, they support 16 additional LinkedIn actions that Zapier doesn’t support.

They even support other LinkedIn apps, as you can see by looking at these LinkedIn search results on their website.

Additionally, unlike Zapier, they also let you make your own custom API calls to LinkedIn’s API, if Make doesn’t natively support what you’re looking to do.

However, you can see from LinkedIn’s API that their API only supports URL sharing and image sharing, not video sharing. So you’ll need to provide a URL to share a video: docs.microsoft.com

There can be a bit of a learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video for Make, along with the links to a few other Make training resources. 

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld 

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  • Clement_Lapierr
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  • 6 replies
  • June 19, 2021
ScottWorld wrote:

Welcome to the community, @Clement_Lapierre.

Yes, Make is the vastly superior & vastly more powerful platform than Zapier — and it’s easier & cheaper too!

As you can see on Make’s LinkedIn integration page, they support 16 additional LinkedIn actions that Zapier doesn’t support.

They even support other LinkedIn apps, as you can see by looking at these LinkedIn search results on their website.

Additionally, unlike Zapier, they also let you make your own custom API calls to LinkedIn’s API, if Make doesn’t natively support what you’re looking to do.

However, you can see from LinkedIn’s API that their API only supports URL sharing and image sharing, not video sharing. So you’ll need to provide a URL to share a video: docs.microsoft.com

There can be a bit of a learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video for Make, along with the links to a few other Make training resources. 

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld 


Hello @ScottWorld !

First of all, thank you for your very kind and comprehensive answer.

Following your advice, I dove into Integromat, and I have to admit it is way more powerful than Zapier. After a lot of tinkering and retro-engineering on their “Airtable to social media” template, I managed to do the following:

Twitter
Here I’m using Airtable’s embarked automation features, that are arguably easier to use. My automation is triggered when:

  • “Status” is “Ready”
  • “Platform” = “Twitter”
  • “Scheduled Time” = Today

LinkedIn - Airtable
Here, the same kind of automation is triggered, the only difference being that its only action is to set the “Status” to “In Progress (Integromat running)”
Conditions:

  • “Status” is “Ready”
  • “Platform” = “LinkedIn”
  • “Scheduled Time” = Today

LinkedIn - Integromat
Integromat’s default template for social media is pretty comprehensive. For anyone that might want to use it, just copy the provided base, fill the template with it and remove/modify anything relevant.

Video Issue
I figured that the simplest thing to do was to format my videos (mainly animations and corporate content) as GIFs. This seems to work perfectly with everything.

NEXT ISSUE (Of course there is one)
I would like to post at specific times in the day, for various reasons (post efficiency and international coworkers).
However, my automations seem to instantaneously trigger whenever the status is set to “Ready” and the day is today, without taking the time field included in the “Scheduled Time” field into account.
Is there a way to make the automation trigger only at a certain time of the day ?
(I’m truly sorry if this is not the place where to ask this slightly different question, but I figured it might be simpler to just centralize everything in one place.)
I will keep fiddling and looking around in the meantime, but maybe there is a simple fix I missed ?
Thank you again !

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
    ScottWorld
ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8829 replies
  • June 19, 2021
Clement_Lapierr wrote:

Hello @ScottWorld !

First of all, thank you for your very kind and comprehensive answer.

Following your advice, I dove into Integromat, and I have to admit it is way more powerful than Zapier. After a lot of tinkering and retro-engineering on their “Airtable to social media” template, I managed to do the following:

Twitter
Here I’m using Airtable’s embarked automation features, that are arguably easier to use. My automation is triggered when:

  • “Status” is “Ready”
  • “Platform” = “Twitter”
  • “Scheduled Time” = Today

LinkedIn - Airtable
Here, the same kind of automation is triggered, the only difference being that its only action is to set the “Status” to “In Progress (Integromat running)”
Conditions:

  • “Status” is “Ready”
  • “Platform” = “LinkedIn”
  • “Scheduled Time” = Today

LinkedIn - Integromat
Integromat’s default template for social media is pretty comprehensive. For anyone that might want to use it, just copy the provided base, fill the template with it and remove/modify anything relevant.

Video Issue
I figured that the simplest thing to do was to format my videos (mainly animations and corporate content) as GIFs. This seems to work perfectly with everything.

NEXT ISSUE (Of course there is one)
I would like to post at specific times in the day, for various reasons (post efficiency and international coworkers).
However, my automations seem to instantaneously trigger whenever the status is set to “Ready” and the day is today, without taking the time field included in the “Scheduled Time” field into account.
Is there a way to make the automation trigger only at a certain time of the day ?
(I’m truly sorry if this is not the place where to ask this slightly different question, but I figured it might be simpler to just centralize everything in one place.)
I will keep fiddling and looking around in the meantime, but maybe there is a simple fix I missed ?
Thank you again !


Great find on that “Airtable to social media” template on Integromat’s website!

Yes, you can schedule your automations. Just click on the clock icon on the first module and you can set the schedule.

If you don’t see a clock icon but you see a lightning bolt icon instead, the lightning bolt represents an instant trigger. You may be able to change the lightning bolt to a clock by right-clicking on it, or you may need to use a different module as your first module — such as “search records” or “watch records”.

C
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  • C
    Clement_Lapierr
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  • Clement_Lapierr
  • Author
  • Participating Frequently
  • 6 replies
  • June 19, 2021
ScottWorld wrote:

Great find on that “Airtable to social media” template on Integromat’s website!

Yes, you can schedule your automations. Just click on the clock icon on the first module and you can set the schedule.

If you don’t see a clock icon but you see a lightning bolt icon instead, the lightning bolt represents an instant trigger. You may be able to change the lightning bolt to a clock by right-clicking on it, or you may need to use a different module as your first module — such as “search records” or “watch records”.


Great find on that “Airtable to social media” template on Integromat’s website!
Thank you !

However, I don’t think the “Scheduled time” Trigger is what I need.
As you can see below, all I can do is to program a set action at every given time.

What I would like to do is to have my “Record matches condition trigger” take into account not only the day, but also the time (see below).

Automation trigger

Scheduled date field

One very inelegant way to solve this would be to create statuses like “Scheduled - Morning” and “Scheduled - Afternoon”, and have a dedicated automation with a “Scheduled time” trigger checking twice a day for scheduled post and move their statuses to “Ready”. Then the other automations could start.
However I’m afraid this is going to burn through my automation quota quite fast, and it is quite restrictive, allowing me for only 2 posting windows a day. I’m sure there is something simpler and more elegant, allowing me to set the time at which I want my content posted.

Thanks for your help anyway !

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