There are indeed rights and wrongs in social media automation. The first question you may want to address is ‘should you be automating your social media at all’? In my opinion there, the answer is a resounding yes. Social media is a 24/7 thing, especially with global connections, and even the most committed of social media uses can’t achieve that, so a little automation can help lay the foundations upon which to build the ‘social’ elements. The important and difficult task however is making sure you don’t over do it.

a little automation can help lay the foundations upon which to build the ‘social’ elements

That balance of automated and non-automated is the key, because social needs to be social and if you are just automating everything there is no way you can be social with with it – social is a 2-way thing all about conversations, engagement and relationships.

So how do you achieve that balance? Here’s a few ideas to put into practice:

Automate only special content

When using social media your aim should be to engage with your audience. Get them to comment on it, get them to share it so that you can broaden your reach and brand awareness. If you are simply serving up stale or dreary content via your automation you are wasting both your time and those of your followers. They won’t engage and they may even stop following. Serve up regular content – even if not strictly relevant to your main line of business and you will begin to develop a reputation of being worthy to follow.

Tried to blend it seamlessly

If you are using automation to send links to other articles make sure you also share some of these in real-time too. Using scheduling automation doesn’t mean it has to become less human. If you share a link, add a comment first so at least it has your touch. Again not every time, shake it up, make it human.

Automate to patterns that work

One of the benefits of automation tools is they will usually suggest ideal times to post to various social media platforms based on the best engagement patterns. It pays to use these suggestions where you can as the more likes and shares you get, the better your social growth.

To like is good but don’t overlike

People who seemingly like everything on their timeline…. do I not like that. It’s possibly the  connotation of the word like, but liking everything won’t help your credibility. Show some human consideration too. Don’t set up automation to like everything keep this an ad-hoc decision when you are online. Consider the like button as actually a “really like” button, to show that the item you have liked is beyond just good.

How far do you automate? Get in touch and let us know below.