Social Media Automation And Why You Need To Consider It More Seriously

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Most marketers feel 24 hours a day is not enough for them.

Their to do list keeps getting longer and longer and their stress levels are rising. Something needs to get pushed back. Social media is on the chopping block. Even though you know it has long term benefits, right now it feels like a pretty low priority. No one will notice if you don’t send out a Tweet today, right?

Wrong. Social media marketing is really one of the most fundamental aspects in content marketing and distribution. Pausing the social media efforts is not the answer.

What if there was a way to have an even bigger impact on social media than you are having right now, and do it in less time?

Social media automation might be the right answer for your problem.

There are three benefits social media automation can offer:

1. Maintain consistent content

Consistency is key to building a strong following on social media. Businesses often create accounts on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, but have trouble achieving consistency. A survey conducted with 900 social media users identified consistency as one of the most important factors that determines whether people continue to follow a brand.

Businesses that are strapped for time or do not have sufficient manpower to assign a dedicated team for social media management tend to drop off the social media radar. As a result, they reap little or no benefits from marketing on social media.

2. Get control over your strategy

Automation tools give you more control over your social accounts and helps you post more content. Depending on the tool you choose to use, you can control the kind of content that is shared, the time at which it is posted, and also the frequency of posting. Moreover, you can monitor the level of engagement you’re receiving and modify your strategy to get more Likes, Shares or Retweets.

Since social media automation tools help you develop insight into the nature and extent of readership (or viewership) you’ll also be able to share content in a more targeted manner. More importantly, automation helps you deal with volume – it allows you to post more content on multiple accounts, more frequently, with more ease.

3. Give back your time

The biggest incentive of using social media automation is the amount of time it helps you free up. Rather than spending hours on end trying to find content that might just get shared and bring your website a few visitors, use tools to identify trending topics and discover relevant content. Using a centralised dashboard to schedule content in advance also saves you the trouble of having to log into each account individually and post the content manually.

However, keep in mind that saving time does not mean spending no time at all on your social media accounts. While you can automate some of the tasks associated with social media management, you’ll still have to keep a tab on all your accounts and respond to comments and mentions.

Remember that one of the objectives of using social media marketing is to make your brand more relatable. This can only be achieved by communicating with your audience.

Key points to remember

  • Social media automation is a good idea, particularly for businesses with multiple accounts
  • Automation helps you achieve consistency in your social media marketing efforts
  • It gives you greater control over the content you share, and how you share it
  • It helps you save time, which you can then use to grow your business
  • Post schedules must be flexible and ad-hoc posts are important, especially if they’re time-sensitive
  • Posting content at a time when your audience is online increases the likelihood of it being viewed and shared
  • Analytics help you understand what works and what doesn’t for your business