The DOs and DON'Ts of social media automation

There are many pros to Social Media Automation, such as keeping track of your online presence at all hours. However, there are a few cons to watch out for: since automation is easier than manually organising your social media, it is worth concentrating on not losing the human personality of your brand. Here are a few do’s and don’ts to make sure your social media doesn’t slip when you automate a somewhat manual task.

Dos For Social Media Automation

Share catchy comments and insights

It is important to share eye-catching comments and insights even when you are not in the office. By automating your exciting news stories, you don’t have to repeatedly log on to share the same story; you can just schedule it for different times, dates and comments to reach a wider audience without duplicating content or spending hours outside of work to achieve this task.

Research popular times of the day

Many of the social automation tools give you an insight into popular times of the day to reach your audience. It might be a good idea to post between 8am and 9am when a lot of people are commuting to work on public transport. To best target your audience, you can also post at lunch breaks when people are in the canteen flicking through their social media, and during the commute home between 5pm and 6pm. A tip is to use your characters to describe the type of article you are posting. For example, ‘Tea break read’ or ‘long read.’ Titles like ‘perfect for the commute home’ can also catch a browser’s attention and encourage them to click on your post. If you manage clients based in different countries, the time difference no longer matters – you can set your posts for a specific time of day to suit the desired country- and you can be present when needed. Here is our blog about the plan we follow: https://www.digital22.com/insights/inbound-marketing-social-media-planning

Research popular days

Your working week maybe over on a Friday afternoon and the office is closed over the weekend but you could potentially be missing your target audience’s prime browsing time. Saturdays and Sundays involve leisurely activities and shopping for most people, and weekend problems mean that consumers search on the internet for answers. If my garden needed maintaining and my lawnmower broke, I would search for new ones on Saturday as I discovered mine needed replacing. By scheduling your social media over the weekend, you can reach a whole different audience with more free time to research their next purchase. Furthermore, you can offer them a discount code on Facebook that particular weekend, creating an urgency for the product. It is important to check trends and understand which days are the busiest on social media for your target market.

Research your target persona’s schedule

A Monday morning might be the perfect time to reach a HR Director searching for software to manage CV’s as this is at the top of her to do list for the week. Understanding people’s habits can help decide when to schedule posts.

Try to understand the level of their job. If they have more responsibility they are likely to work longer hours, and if they own a business, can be reached over the weekends. Getting inside the mind of your ideal persona will enable you to show up just as they need you, which can lead to engagement.

Share the same blog or industry news article more than once

Now that this process isn’t manual, schedule each story a few times in different time slots and days to test engagement levels. You can monitor the effect this has and analyse the overall result with your social media tool.

Always stay positive and enthusiastic

As a brand, it is essential to remember to be upbeat, helpful and dedicated to your niche. If you are not enjoying using social media, it will show and you just won’t get the traction you desire.

Keep up to date with the latest news in case any of your social posts need amending

It’s always worth staying in touch of what’s going on in your industry (which you should have a good handle on anyway). If you follow the key news sites on Twitter, you get recent news to ensure if you’re mentioning brands, politics or celebrities and that your tweet is accurate. If you make a few errors that your audience spots, it could reduce your following drastically if they think your content is inaccurate.

Do analyse each month to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t

Having everything in a social media tool is great. I can see any messages, what has been published and when as well as reports. It records visits, contacts, clicks, interactions, followers, published posts and top messages in quick and easy to understand graphs.

Make your process is simple & time saving

Every company needs day to day tasks as simplified and efficient as possible. It can reduce staff hours on social media management by more than half which is great news.

Don’t For Social Media Automation

Don’t rush through it, leaving spelling mistakes

Leaving spelling and grammatical errors looks unprofessional and can give the wrong impression of your brand. You want to keep your brand presence positive, normally formal (depending on the niche) and trustworthy. A great tip is use high quality images – they can always give a sense of professionalism.

Don’t post generic comments

If you find them boring to read, so will everyone else. Think what you would be intrigued to click on. How can you make it eye catching and leave the reader wanting more?

Don’t ignore replies

Although your social media is automated, it’s important to have your account notifications on so if you get any replies or questions you can respond quickly. Social media is time-sensitive and needs a fast response as messages get lost. Many consumers expect the customer service team on social media to respond immediately and help resolve their problem. On the other hand, any positive mentions should be replied to efficiently and retweeted to show your timeline how many happy customers you have!

Automation can lack character

It is important to share social news in real time when appropriate. To keep your brand’s personality alive, engage on social media when worldwide events happen and truly engage with the real world.

Don’t give up if you don’t see momentary results. It takes time to build up a following and get engagement. Your social automation tool should help show you the rate your presence is growing and give you lots of points to work on!