The Pros of Social Media Automation

For many businesses, using social media platforms is becoming an imperative. It is one of the most cost-effective and direct means of communicating with your customers, colleagues and connections.

As a result, we are tweeting more on Twitter, liking more on Facebook, and exploring platforms such as LinkedIn, Google Plus, and blogs on a more regular basis. Each social media tool has its specific use and purpose, but staying active in the social web can be incredibly time consuming. So while it is useful to be original and specific to each social site, there are times where social media automation can assist.

Here are some of the pros of social media automation.

Scheduling your social media updates to post over time will help ensure more people see them. Just ensure that you use a combination of scheduled updates and regular conversational posts added in real time, to maintain two-way dialogue with your followers.

Timing is everything. Followers are more likely to catch up on social site updates at particular times of day, and social media scheduling can help ensure you space your social media updates out effectively and at the times of day when engagement is highest.

Automating social networks to your business articles on platforms such as blogs ensures that updates go up in a timely fashion. Although you should generally avoid mirroring content from one social network to another, automating some content such as news headlines keeps the brand on messages and frees up time to focus on day-to-day human engagement.

On the topic of social media automation, this week LinkedIn announced the automated function from Twitter to LinkedIn is no longer available. This was an effective tool for reaching your LinkedIn business connections with tweets and article links via Twitter. You’re still able to send information via LinkedIn to Twitter.

To ensure you can still inform your LinkedIn connections on relevant information, use the LinkedIn button on articles share function, or set up the LinkedIn share bookmark.