Marketing automation refers to the technology that is designed for marketing departments. It is developed to help business effectively marketing their product. We have published a few blog posts regarding email automation, which is an important side of marketing. But, in this post we are going to cover social media marketing automation, which is another very important part of marketing as well.
Social media marketing automation uses software to reduce the amount of time a marketer spends on those platforms. For example, with these tools you can schedule posts ahead of time. This way, your posts will publish without you having to go on the platform and post them yourself.
In the rest of this post, we are going to go over what exactly you can automate, why you should use this software, and what you should and should not do with social media automation.
What Can you Automate?
Although there are a variety of tasks that you can automate, that doesn’t mean you should. You want to avoid automation tasks that will make your accounts look spammy and unprofessional. You must set out to use marketing automation to inform and entertain your audience.
Having your social media automated to randomly like, comment, and follow is quite obvious to users and will make them notice that your account is a bot. That is an example of something you want to avoid.
Sending out a helpful and informative tweet about an upcoming product is not too obviously automated. That is an example of a task that you should use this software for.
The following are some more common things that can be automated:
Scheduling and Publishing
When you are marketing through social media, you are often using multiple different platforms. It is also important that you post multiple times a day. Logging in and out of so many accounts gets tedious and hard to keep up with. So, automating your scheduling and publishing is something that can be helpful to your business by saving time. But don’t worry, even through automation your posts will be effective and on time!
Customer Service
When running a business through social media, you will receive multiple questions and concerns everyday. That is something else that will eventually become time consuming. But you can also automate this task! Automating basic customer service can save your business a lot of time while ensuring your credibility. It is so important to answer any questions or comments that your customers have for you. Though you may not always have the time to do that. Automate your platforms to answer common questions that users may have.
Social Monitoring
Another huge part of social media marketing is just scrolling. Scrolling through other pages on social media will help you get an idea of how you can better market your brand. You will see what your customers are talking about, you can interact with people, or you can retweet related information to your page. Valuable market research is provided through this process so you can better guide your social media strategy.
Data Collection
Finally, data collection is another task that you can automate. Collecting data through your social media platforms is important to your success. Data and analytics of your platforms will help you know whether or not you need to change or better your strategy.
Conclusion
Social media automation can be extremely helpful to your business, but there are a few things that you should still avoid. Make sure that you are not using too many automation tools, as your accounts will begin to feel spammy. You should also avoid posting the same content to all of your platforms. It may be easy, but it is not very effective. And lastly, when you set something to be posted or sent, be sure that you remember it. Go check it, edit it, and don’t forget about it.
We hope that we helped you learn a little more about social media marketing automation. This is a great strategy to use for your company. If you have any questions: