You might have heard of social media automation here and there but most of you may not be very sure of what it is exactly or you haven’t it done before. I decided to talk about social media automation, especially how it could massively boost brand awareness. You’ll read about the impact of content visibility later on in this article; it’ll educate you on the power of social media automation.
I’ll go deep into different social media aspects but let me give you some perspective on the current state of social media.
We’ve entered into an interesting era where social media is a massive tool available at everyone’s disposal and standing up against traditional media. As Gary Vaynerchuk often says that it’s the greatest time to be alive. It truly is an interesting time to live because we aren’t just seeing a shift in technology, but we’re also seeing how communication between people is changing.
We’ve seen mail changing into an email and cable TV into streaming services. It’s fair to say that continuous evolution is the biggest reality that everyone should digest in today’s world. Since social media has turned out to be a vital tool of communication and connectivity in today’s day and age, so you can expect the newness in social media as well.
We’ll explore:
- What social media automation is
- Why it is important in today’s world
- Steps involved in social media automation
- Essentials required to this pull this off
- How you can benefit from social media automation
So without any further ado, let’s get right into it.
What’s Social Media Automation?
Social media automation is a strategy of running social media on autopilot. What social media automation does is that it allows you to schedule your social media posts beforehand using any third-party social media management tool.
The automation has become a vital part of a social media campaign. The fundamental reason for the importance of social media automation is that it eases your social media posting. For instance, you can’t show up 10 times on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter every day to post content, but you can schedule 10 posts for tomorrow that could go live on each platform at defined times.
3 Benefits of Social Media Automation
Here are three benefits of social media automation that will help you understand why it’s important for businesses, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and marketers:
1. What people see is what sells
Gary Vaynerchuk recommends posting on social media more often. He went on to say that everyone should post 100 pieces of content every day.
Gary is someone who has millions of followers on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Obviously, he has a team that manages his personal brand. He once shared that 17 of his employees work on his personal brand “GaryVee” to manage branding, promotion, content, and scheduling.
Similarly, many social media experts tell that you should post on social media quite often to get noticed. It’s a tried-and-tested strategy that if you increase the frequency of your social media posting, it’ll get more you viewership and attention on social media.
One of the key factors of winning on social media is connectivity and engagement with followers and friends. You’d notice that people who interact a lot on social media or communicate more often, they always have a bigger following. The reason is that their engagement on a social platform leads to more followers and friends. Therefore, their numbers keep getting bigger.
It’s also true that social media automation influences engagement. When you automate your social media content, it means, you’re putting out more content without even checking out your social media. Chances are, you’ll be getting more engagement on social media.
One of the perks of social media automation is the ease of managing your social media account. Isn’t it difficult to log-in to your Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn every time you post content, for example, 3 to 5 times a day? So a social media management tool like ContentStudio provides a one-stop solution to posting on social media accounts.
Not only that if you have a larger team and you want to master team management, add team members to assign them tasks and chat with them within the app.
4 Essential Steps of Social Media Automation
Let’s take a look at the steps that are necessary for setting up a social media automation campaign:
1. Building a Content Development Plan
Content development is the starting point of the social media automation process. If you don’t have content in your pocket, then there is no point in social media automation. Therefore, think about establishing a content creation plan before thinking about automation. You might not want to eat the half-baked cookies. So before pounding on social media automation strategy, think about the content that you’d be sharing along the way.
The content development plan is a strategy for creating and utilizing content to achieve certain goals. Therefore, it’s necessary to understand how content works. For example, keywords are important in written content; they help boost your brand reach through search engine traffic. Similarly, high-quality graphics designing could do wonders on Pinterest and amazing pictures would make a difference on Instagram.
I refer to the key factors of content development as the 3Ts of content planning:
I. Types of content to produce
There are multiple types of content that could be produced, for example, there is written content in the form of articles which you can use or the video content could also be used in the form of tutorials or how-to videos. Moreover, the audio format is also getting popularity in the form of podcasts. The better is to pick the type of content that seems natural to you.
II. Target audience to reach out
Keeping the target audience in mind while creating content is necessary. It helps you write industry-related content. Otherwise, you’d stop focusing on the specific problems of your audience or niche, then the content is likely to get generalized. Not only does it lose its attraction, but it also starts to look boring to the regular audience.
III. Tools to utilize while creating content
Tools are vital elements of the social media marketing process. I use a lot of tools online and offline that contribute to the work. For instance, I use Canva for designing banners, ContentStudio for scheduling content, Davinci Resolve to edit videos, and Thunderbird to send and receive emails. Therefore, it’s understandable that tools are utilized to create content.
So the 3Ts will help provide you with some content pieces to build your social media automation campaign. What you need to understand is that it’s not always the frequency of content you share, but the quality of your content that matters the most. Meaning, you can re-share the same articles a few times a week, but they aren’t relevant or helpful for your audience, they won’t attract readers and visitors from social media.
On the other hand, if you share a couple of articles that are extremely helpful to your audience, they are likely to perform better than the previous ones.
The whole point of the emphasis is that one must know that the “right content” would do justice to the social media automation campaign.
2. Choosing a Social Media Management Tool
When you’re trying to reach more audience and boost your brand awareness through effective content techniques, then a social media management tool is a must-have part of the marketing arsenal. The reason is that social media automation would not have been possible without a fantastic social media management tool.
The social media platforms don’t have native options for scheduling content so you’d have to rely on the third-party tools for social media automation.
There are three fundamental requirements your chosen social media management tool must have:
I. Integration with all major platforms
It would be unfair if your social media management tool only supports Facebook and Twitter. There are social media platforms that don’t integrate with LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest. Make sure that your chosen social media platform seamlessly integrates with all major social media platforms. Moreover, sometimes, the free plan doesn’t have all the platform integration, so it’s understandable to go for a paid plan instead.
II. Scheduling feature for all platforms
You may have noticed that Facebook pages used to have post scheduling feature which was revoked, but it may come again. Surprising, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform didn’t have any scheduling option. So it creates an opportunity for social media management tools to offer scheduling service.
A lot of social media management tools offer to schedule posts on top social media networks. Scheduling is a basic feature for social media automation, and if a social media management tool doesn’t offer to schedule for all the major platforms you’re on, it’s a huge disadvantage. Therefore, it’s essential to choose the platform that has a scheduling feature for every major social platform.
III. Mobile apps to manage accounts on the go
Smartphones are part of our lives now. We spend a good portion of our leisure time scrolling through social media feeds every day. So mobile apps are vital for a social media management tool. Make sure that the social media tool you’re choosing must-have mobile apps so that you can manage your social media accounts on the go.
ContentStudio is a popular social media management tool that provides content publishing, scheduling, and managing features. The state-of-the-art social media and content automation research, influencer look-up, and social media analytics make this tool stand out from the crowd.
You can schedule your social media posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Furthermore, ContentStudio also allows you to schedule content on Medium, Tumblr, and WordPress. In short, it takes a social media automation campaign to the next level.
Automation is not limited to social media. There are many expense automation software as well.
3. Deciding the Frequency of Posting
Social media automation isn’t limited to creating content and figuring out the automation tool. The frequency of posting on social media does have an impact on the overall campaign. Boosting brand awareness and popularity is a multi-dimensional strategy. Therefore, the frequency of social media posting is a vital element of social media success.
Most users who utilize a social media scheduling tool don’t push hard. They schedule a piece of content once and then forget about it. I have heard top bloggers and marketers talk about re-posting your content on social media.
Darren Rowse of Problogger.com talks about the automatic re-sharing of social media posts in his content.
Gary Vaynerchuk often pushes followers and audiences to post multiple times a day on social media.
So the frequency of social media posting does have its role in social media automation. To understand this role further, take care of the four things while deciding the frequency of social media posting:
I. Focus on the quality over quantity
A lot of you might get excited and start posting content that won’t matter much just to show up more often in followers’ feed. Let me burst the bubble that it won’t help the cause. You shouldn’t create more content at the cost of the quality. The quality must be top-notch even if you have to publish three posts instead of five every day.
II. Don’t serve a half-baked cake
Have you ever started reading an article that has vague ideas on the matter? Meaning, the content doesn’t have a direction whatsoever. Well, I say such content a half-baked cake. The point is that if your content doesn’t have clarity, then readers lose interest in it. Try to stay focused and don’t do unnecessary stretching to make it longer.
III. Too many posts can annoy followers
If you see so many posts from an account whether it is Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram, you get annoyed. As a result, you unfollow that account after a while. I’ve done it; perhaps, you’ve done it too. So the takeaway is that don’t post content so frequently that it starts to annoy followers.
IV. Start conversations through your posts
Engagement is a significant element of social media. Try to start conversations by asking questions at the end of the content or responding to the comments. It’d impact your social media reach massively. It’s better to post three times a day and have conversations in the comments on all three posts than posting six times a day and never respond to the comments.
So the above-mentioned points would help you decide the frequency of social media posts.
The idea isn’t to create random stuff and push it to your followers on social media, but instead, the content you’re putting out must be valuable to your audience. Otherwise, it won’t matter much, and if it doesn’t matter to the followers, then your efforts would go in vain.
4. Analyzing Social Analytics
The social media automation process does seem like a simple task of scheduling content so that you don’t have to show up multiple times a day to post on social media. In reality, social media automation is a diverse concept that encapsulates small essential bits that have specific roles to play.
The insights, for example, may easily be overlooked by any new user who just joins the social media marketing world and starts using a social media marketing tool. Therefore, it’s essential to pinpoint some basics in the content to clear the picture.
The analysis of your posted content on social media usually refers to the phrase “social media analytics”.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have their native insights tools to provide users with necessary data on their content performance. However, the emphasis on the insights doesn’t stop here. There is more to this concept.
Social media analytics give you insights on the performance of the content and engagement on your profile. Most experts would tell you to keep an eye on social media analytics. The reason is that it gives a sense of direction where your profile is heading.
There are three things that you need to analyze:
I. Brand Persona
Is your content aligned with your brand persona? Meaning, if you have been posting content on social media that doesn’t correlate with your product or service, then you aren’t clear about your brand persona. Once you figure this out, your content is like to perform better because you’ll be producing the relevant content next time.
Another great way to create a brand persona is by utilizing the services of an experimental marketing agency. They offer a unique way to promote brands, products, and messages with integrated marketing solutions.
II. Hottest Content
Don’t ever overlook your hot content. If you’re wondering, what’s the hot content? The hot content is your best-performing content on social media. The insights will showcase the data and let you see what posts have done better than others. Once you end up finding the topics that are doing well, you should start hammering on those areas even more. It will bring more attention to your social media accounts and visitors to your website.
III. Conversion
One of the most important things you should analyze from your social media standpoint is the conversion after a few weeks of establishing a social media strategy. If the conversion isn’t impressive, then alter the strategy, and if it’s booming, then keep pushing it hard.
ContentStudio does have an analytics section that keeps an eye on the performance of your social media posts and lets you know what’s going on with your social media.
The best thing about the Analytics section of ContentStudio is that it provides insights into all major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
The Analytics section would take your content creation, curation, and scheduling to a whole new level because it enables you to understand your content performance. You can download the reports in your Analytics section in ContentStudio so that you could look-up later on.
It’s essential to have an analytics tool that gives you an inside out performance reports. Not only will it help in improving your social media appearance, but it will also impact your content strategy in the long run.
What’s the takeaway?
We strive to dominate social media all the time, but it rarely works by chance. 99% of the people who make it to the top are the ones who consistently put in the work. So once you’re clear about that, you could start building a solid foundation of the wall (of your social media strategy). As far as social media automation is concerned, it’s one of the bricks of the very same wall that you’re trying to build.
What social media automation does is that it enhances your brand visibility on social media platforms, which results in the form of more attention, eyeballs, and clickability. If things work out great, then you’d notice a surge in your website visitors, social media fans, and the number of engagements on social media.
I walked you through four simple steps of boosting your brand awareness through different aspects of social media management and automation being one of them. Moreover, I now also know about ContentStudio, which is one of my go-to social media management tools.
Would you consider trying social media automation using a social media tool?
I’d like to know the answer so that I could help you out more in the comments.
