Social media automation means using tools to automate the procedure of posting content to social networks and social bookmarking sites. It helps social media marketers and entrepreneurs who are strapped for time. However, it also has its downsides. You can easily get carried away and stop engaging with your audience. Here are some reasons why you should embrace automation, how to use it, and its pros and cons.
Why Use Social Media Automation?
It Helps You to Manage Your Marketing Strategy Effectively
If you have many social media accounts, it can be hard to focus on all of them at once. Automation helps you to gain more control over your social media accounts. You can control the content you share, the time you post, and the frequency of posting. You can also keep track of engagement and adjust your strategy in order to get more shares, likes, and retweets.
Automation tools help you to gain a deeper insight into the nature and personality of your readers so you can share content in a targeted manner. They help you to post more content on multiple platforms and easily deal with the volume.
Saves Time
Social media can take up a lot of time, time you can’t afford to waste. The best thing about automation is that it frees up your time. You don’t have to spend hours sharing content your readers might like and prospects might be interested in; all you have to do is use tools to share relevant content. You can schedule content on a centralized dashboard in advance and avoid the hassle of logging in to each account individually to post your content.
But automation doesn’t give you an excuse not to spend time on your social media accounts. You have to monitor each one and answer comments and mentions. How will you increase brand visibility if you never take the time to engage with clients and prospects? You must communicate properly with your target audience if you want your marketing strategies to succeed.
Helps Maintain Consistency
The key to building a strong social media presence is consistency. Lack of it can spell doom for a business. When you are consistent, you get more fans as they know what to expect from you. They know you won’t share great content one day and disappear the next. Automation helps you to create a balance: you neither clutter your fans’ feeds with content nor neglect them. Your social accounts remain active even when you are offline.
How to Use Social Media Automation
Know When to Automate
Automation helps you to post social updates when your audience is most active, whether you are online or not. Know when your audience is active and post content within that time window to increase engagement. If your followers are in different geographical locations, study their demographic information. Timing necessitates a trial and error approach, but you can research data on audience behavior on different social networks.
Be Flexible
When scheduling posts, always leave room for important updates. You may need to make an announcement concerning your business, share viral content, or post some interesting news. Sometimes, events occur and disrupt your schedule. Be sure it allows for unplanned posts. However, don’t post ad-hoc posts all the time as they make automation ineffective.
Utilize Analytics
After establishing a strong presence on social networks, take time to see how you are performing. Use analytics tools to gauge the performance of your tweets, posts, and pictures. They should take you closer to your business goals. Don’t focus on the views your posts get when your goal is more sales. Focus on the metrics that will help you to attain your goals.
Pros of Social Media Automation
#1 Boosts Reach
When you automate posts, you are able to connect with all your fans, including those in different time zones. You can use analytics tools to see the best time to share your content for maximum reach. You can also schedule posts for weekends or when you are away.
#2 Helps You to Become More Productive
There are times when you are so busy you can’t afford to log into your social media accounts. You may be in a meeting or working on a project that requires undivided attention. Automation can help increase your productivity. You will feel like you have more hours in a day as you are able to do more in less time. You can schedule posts in advance and rest assured that they will be posted.
#3 Helps You to Manage Content
Automation can help you to balance different types of content for the best results. You can share text, videos, images, and links to guide people down the sales funnel without leaving anything to chance. You can create a strategy that incorporates various forms of content which resonate with your audience.
#4 Enhances Your Strategy
When you control what you share with your followers (and when you share it), you can track your performance and compare various approaches. Even after scheduling posts, you can change them depending on their performance. You can check how your audience responds to each post, test different approaches, and easily tweak your strategy.
#5 Improves Visibility
The more you tweet or post, the more exposure you get. When your fans share and like your posts, they can help you to reach people who never knew you existed. The more you post interesting and helpful content, the greater your chances of increasing your social media influence.
Cons of Social Media Automation
#1 Lacks Personality
The biggest downside of social media automation is that it lacks personality. When you automate too many posts, tweets, and pictures, your followers may lose interest. When connecting with people in real time, you are able to continue conversations or react to comments. This is hard to do when you automate posts.
That’s why the best strategy is to have a balance between automated and manually posted content. You don’t just “set it and forget it”. You need to check your activity, answer to questions, reply to comments and show your personality through spontaneous posts.
#2 It’s Easy to Miss Opportunities
When you schedule posts all the time, you can easily miss opportunities. You may be unaware of major industry events or news as they unfold and fail to publicize them. As a result, your audience may start seeing you as an unreliable source.
A way to prevent this is to always stay on top of the industry news. You can easily accomplish this by using social listening tools that will also help you identify and assess what people are saying about your products or brand.
Wrapping It Up
When it comes to social media automation, marketers are divided. Some say that it’s anti-social while others say that it’s efficient. But there are many great reasons why you should integrate automation into your strategy. The key is to mix real engagements with automated updates.
Deliver a consistent presence and you’ll be a success!
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