Doing a business? If your answer is going to be yes, then you need to be available on different social media platforms. Providing your targeted audience content on different social media platforms is hectic but this the point where social media automation comes into the picture.
You might be wondering, what does social media automation mean? Well, it is a process that will enable you to align your presence on social media platforms and make use of your time in a better way on different channels of marketing.
Now, the next question circling in your mind will be why you need this? What best tools you can use? In the following blog, we are going to provide you answers to all the questions in your mind. Let’s get started:
What is Social Media Automation
It is a process where we will align the social media presence of a business so that they can spend more time in other areas of your marketing campaign. There is a common misconception that people have in their minds is that it is all about scheduling posts on social media platforms. But this is not the case! You must know that there are different areas in a marketing campaign that can be automated and we will discuss them in the later section of the blog.
Perks of Social Media Automation
The benefits of using automation for your business are as follows:
1-It will allow you to have a presence on different social platforms. You can get the benefits only when you are available on more than one platform. If you are posting different content on a different network, then this will be confusing. But when you are automating your campaign, then this will allow you to schedule your post on different platforms and it will be easy for you to keep a track of the content on specific platforms.
2-It will help you in building relationships. When you are going to spend a good amount of time on social media on posting or building reports for your team, then working on an important aspect like customer relations will be difficult. But with the spare time in your hand due to social media automation will enable you to focus on developing a better relationship with your clients.
3-This will be ensuring consistency. If you are not going to post frequently, then users will find you less trustworthy. But with the automation, you can easily schedule the posts ahead and this will make you consistent in posting on all the targeted platforms.
Cost of Social Media Automation
Price is also one of the important considerations in the mind of a person when going to get anything. If you are going to get it via tools, then you have to pay a price of $20 to $650 per month depending on the features you are looking for and the size of your business.
Furthermore, you can also get in touch with a skilled social media marketing agency and they will help you out in achieving your desired goals.
Best Social Media Automation Tools
Now, let’s have a look at the four best tools that you can get for automating your social media platforms:
Sprout Social: It will be supporting your accounts on Instagram, Linked In, Twitter, Facebook. It will be offering an analytics platform to analyze your campaign performance, social monitoring, social inbox, and much more.
SocialPilot: It will be supporting platforms like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter. The features you are going to get include inbox moderation, auto-publishing, bulk publishing, analytics, and much more.
Buffer: It enables you to manage platforms like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The features you are going to get will include result monitoring, a feature of reply to boost engagement ability to add team members to the account and a publishing queue.
Hootsuite: With this, you can manage platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and WordPress. The features you are going to get will include analytics, team management, content curation, bulk content uploads, and more.
Strategy For Social Media Automation
Thinking about how you are going to develop a social media marketing automation strategy? Below are the steps that you should keep in your mind:
1-Select the Platform To Automate and It’s Extent
Mostly, you will want to automate every social media platform. It can be very confusing if you are going to automate the selected networks, so it is better to automate all of them. You need to pick the right platform according to your business niche. You should be clear about the part of every platform you are going to automate.
2-Identify the Things You Want To Automate
You can automate the following things:
Chatbot Conversation: Use a chatbot to answer the FAQs to save time.
Analytics Reports: When you are monitoring the results of your campaign, you can also automate them to share it with your team.
Post Scheduling: The automation tools will help you to schedule the post in advance so that you can do a manual posting.
3-Do Research for Automation Tools
Once you are clear about the things you want to automate, the next important thing to do is to pick the right social media automation tool. Pick a tool that is affordable and integrates well with all the social media platforms you are going to choose.
4-Identify The Most Engaging Content
Every platform is different and you have to pay attention to the user to know about the type of content they like to consume. For instance, people like to watch videos on Facebook more than on Twitter.
5-Choose the Right Time of Posting
As said earlier, automation is all about consistency! If you are consistently posting at the wrong time, then this will not be beneficial for you. Look at your previously posted content to see when you get the most engagement on your post.
6-Develop Content and Content Calendar
The next thing you need is to develop your content calendar. Once you have created the content, you need to schedule the posting of your content as per your calendar. It can be anything like a blog, video, or images. If you need help in content creation, you can connect with an experienced content marketing agency.
7-Don’t Forget To Schedule Your Content
After crafting the content and completing your content calendar, you have to use your content calendar as a guide to complete the publishing queue on the tool you have selected. Note that, you have to work on scheduling for one platform one time for keeping your content organized and in order.
8-Repeat All
Remember that you don’t have to schedule your social media content for more than a month at one time. The reason behind this is that content might get outdated. This clearly means that you will be repeating the process at least 12 times a year! It is best to fill all those gaps with the evergreen content where you don’t have posted anything yet!
Conclusion
This was all about social media automation. I hope now you will have answers to all the questions in your mind. If you are finding all the above difficult to handle for yourself, then you can connect with a skilled company and their social media marketers will do the desired work for you. They will also guide you in the best direction possible to maximize your business sales in less amount of time with the right strategy.