Some companies implement automation for their social media accounts. This means that users set up their tweets or posts in advance through automation tools and platforms, such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
While automation is a great way to start the conversation with your fans and followers, you shouldn’t rely solely on automation for your social media endeavors. In order to have an effective social media campaign, you need to engage with your fans and followers. After all, social media is about being social. If you rely only on automation, you won’t be able to have conversations with your fans and followers, and you certainly won’t be able to respond to their inquiries or get to know what they’re most interested in.
When used correctly, automation can help you set up posts and tweets in advance so that you don’t forget about them or so you’re not wasting valuable time everyday on different social media sites. The following are four times to employ automation for social media.
1. Holidays
When it’s a holiday, you don’t want to be wasting time on social media—you should be spending it with your family. Holidays are a great time to employ automation on your social media channels. On the first day of every month, go through the calendar and see what holidays are occurring. Then, set up your tweets and posts to wish everyone a happy holiday or let them know that your company will be closed because of the holiday. This way, you can actually enjoy the holiday instead of spending it on social media.
2. Vacations
If you’re in charge of your company’s social media accounts, you are required to engage with your audience at all times. But sometimes, you will take a vacation, and you don’t want to be sitting poolside and creating interesting posts for your company. If you’re going to be on vacation, use automation to set up your posts in advance. This way, you will still have a social media presence while you’re away, which will continue to engage your customers.
If you’re going to do this, though, you need to designate someone else at the company to monitor the posts. If you set up an automated post that generates a ton of comments or questions and you don’t respond until you return from your vacation, it can irritate your fans and followers. Make sure that someone else is there to comment and answer questions in your absence so that your social media accounts continue to engage your clients.
3. Company events
If your company is hosting or attending an event, you can automate your social media messages for this. Schedule a few posts weeks in advance so that it generates interest among your friends and followers. This may incline some of them to attend.
Automating these events also ensures that you remember to market the event via social media. Depending on your level of involvement with the event, you may be too busy to remember to market it, but if you automate it in advance, you can ensure that your fans and followers will know about the event and its details while you’re busy hiring caterers.
4. Generate traffic to blog posts
If your company has a blog, some platforms allow you to set up automated tweets or posts whenever a new blog post is published. This way, all you have to focus on is publishing your blog and not also pushing it out via social networks. Plus, this automation ensures that your blog posts are being pushed out in real time.
These are four times when automation is a great tool for your social media accounts. Just remember that while they will help free up some time, you shouldn’t solely rely on automation as it takes the engagement out of your endeavors. Instead, employ it when it’s absolutely necessary and remember to be physically active so that you can continue to have conversations with your fans and followers.