8 Tips To Automate Your Social Media Efforts

By Evie Harrison

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Social media is undoubtedly one of the best means of communicating with lots of different people en masse. It also serves as an amazing way to market and promote your services, web page, products, organization, etc.  It is particularly valuable for business owners and marketers who leverage social media to connect with potential customers or even investors.


Social Media Automation

However, time can be your enemy when it comes to frequently updating your profile, sharing new content everyday, responding to customers and managing multiple social media accounts simultaneously. 

If you are struggling in terms of boosting your content virality to make it reach a greater number of people, perhaps there's an easier way for you. You could hire freelancers or companies that provide these outreach services. They can be very efficient in terms of increasing the target audience for your online content, which will also lead to an increase in your sales.

On the other hand, if you are unable to dial in your social media efforts with minimum time and maximum output, social media automation should be your go-to strategy. This refers to tools that are used to automate a big chunk of the process of posting content on social media and getting more exposure in less time. If you wish to adopt this approach, here are some simple tips to help you get started.

 

Get your hands on the best social media automation apps

By using an app or two, you can easily automate a big part of your social media strategy so that you don’t have to be on your toes all the time, fretting over posting one thing after another. Let the apps do that for you.

Hootsuite is one such amazing app that will let you manage your social media efforts from a single dashboard. This app’s platform allows its users to get all the tools they would need to effectively handle their social profiles.

It is more like a social listening and engagement app that lets you schedule your posts in advance and also keeps track of the latest trends on social media.

Another common app you can use is Edgar which is extremely useful if you have content in bulk to share each day. This app lets you organize and classify all your content within a digital library after which you can set what update to share at what time and on which channel.

While there are several other tools too, it is your job to choose which app or software best suits your business needs.

However, we don’t recommend you plan for months in advance because of the continuous changes taking place in the world. Let’s say you’ve added tweets on an automation tool for women’s day but a sad incident takes place on the day and your tweets go out as expected – offering a discount on the happy occasion. You will definitely be making some customers angry by your ignorance.

 

Make sure to always follow up and keep track

To ensure that all this automation isn’t for nothing, it is better to follow up with people who share your content, retweet your posts, and those who message you. You should also keep track of your website’s stats and the responses that your posts and content generate online.

It is very important to always be updated about social media metrics; how many people are talking about your brand, how many likes and comments are you generating every week, which posts are generating maximum results and which ones aren’t, the number of messages you receive, amplification rates, conversion rates, web referrals, etc.

Facebook, for instance, has a very useful metric called “People talking about this” which shows how many people have posted about your brand or page on their social media walls. Monitoring these stats will help you assess your growth and performance on social media overtime. Here’s a quick guide to help you understand and use social media metrics better.

Although automation mostly serves the purpose of freeing up your time so that your social media can be handled in the most effective manner, it is good to not let automation completely take over your social media.

Try to not automate personal messages so that your customers and viewers don’t feel that they are talking to a machine or a robot. Automation gone overboard won’t do your social presence any good. For example, in July’13, the famous pizza brand Domino’s mistook a compliment for a complaint on Facebook and posted an inappropriate automated response to the customer’s statement. Now this is a clear example of automation gone wrong on social media.

 

Don’t forget to recycle evergreen posts or content!

Evergreen content is one that doesn’t expire in a short period of time and helps prop up your website overtime due to its high quality. Such posts are absolutely important in your content development strategy because they help provide traction to your blog and social media.

The key here is to generate quality content that remains shareable and interesting over a period of time. There are several tools for recycling content on WordPress, the option to Revive Old Posts will automatically share and update old blogs or posts on social media.

 

Familiarize yourself with the 5-3-2 rule

Speaking of social media automation, there is quite a famous rule known as the 5-3-2 rule introduced by TA McCann from gist.com particularly for social media content. The rule simply lays out the proportions of the content that you share on your social platforms.

For every 10 posts or pieces of content that you share, 5 should be from other sources but relevant to your audience, 3 should be from you but you have to make sure that you are not selling anything, and 2 should be something personal or funny that isn’t work-related – this last bit will humanize your brand.

The thought behind this rule is that social media platforms are more about your audience and customers than you. The audience is the priority here.

Avid Twitter and Facebook user? Link them up!

If you often find yourself stressing over posting on Twitter and then having to post the same thing again on, say, Facebook, why not set up a connection between the two? If these two platforms are more frequently used by you given the nature of your social media work, all you need to do is create a link between both your accounts.

So every time you post something on Twitter, it will automatically get posted on your personal Facebook profile. To do that, all you need to do is login to your Twitter and Facebook accounts on separate windows.

On Twitter, click on the Apps tab under Settings. Click on ‘connect to Facebook’. You will then receive a prompt that will explain which information Twitter will have access to from your Facebook account.

Click ‘okay’ and then go on to privacy settings to determine who gets to view your tweets on Facebook. Click on ‘okay’ again to complete the process and your Facebook is now linked to your Twitter account.

 

Find out who is talking about your blog or company online

When you are very active on social media, chances are you may get mentioned by several people on their blogs or websites. You would definitely want to be updated in such cases and what better way than using a tool that does the job for you.

Brand24 helps you discover what people have to say about your brand or company and provides an instant access every time you are mentioned on social media across the web. Not only that, it also segments the reviews or mentions to positive, negative or neutral. This certainly helps speed things up as you won’t have to check for these updates manually and save a lot of time in the process.

 

Build a well-spaced schedule to target the right audience

Social automation can get very overwhelming as you strive to leave everything to these apps. However, it is important to realize that not all social platforms have the same kind of viewers and not every post is for all kinds of audiences.

One needs to be very specific in terms of posting their content according to their target audience. Needless to say, automation tools like SocialBro (renamed Audiense) and Tweriod also help you do just that by analyzing your followers and letting you know the best time to post.

This will help you figure out when your audience will likely be most engaged and involved with your posts. It is also a great way to ensure that your posts were received by the right audience at the right time.

In today’s times, machines and tools are taking over the majority of the manual work and tasks, if not all. Similarly, in the world of social media, social automation has definitely made work really easy and aims to give online businesses the edge they need over competitors. They also enable businesses, especially startups, the time to do things that really matter.

However, it is best to carefully analyze your company’s social media needs because relying on these tools completely can ruin your social media presence. When used smartly, this kind of automation will certainly upgrade your social media efforts in the best possible way!

 

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The social media marketers in our company are the best in the business at helping our partners enhance their online marketing. We outline and implement cutting-edge social media marketing plans that help our customers realise their organisational objectives and further their social media presence. Our experienced team of digital experts do your social media strategy creation and management in an uncomplicated monthly plan that is cost-effective and is genuinely useful, whatever results you demand from your marketing team.

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You might like these blog posts 10 Key Ingredients For A Successful Social Media Strategy, Why Instagram is Excellent for Growing your Business, Case Study Reveals How a Management Consulting Business Can Use Social Media To Generate Leads, and Starting Up Part 2: Conquering the Lean Startup Phase.

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