Social automation is precisely the same as blindly walking up to every single person that you encountered in your typical day to day and saying “hello”.
You would meet hundreds if not thousands of people and be exhausted. Not enough hours exist in the day for you to warrant spending the time saying hello, hola and bonjour to everyone.
You just wouldn’t do it.
So why do people do it on social media?
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Social Automation: Don’t do it
We have all seen and encountered it some capacity, usually, a DM (direct message) on Twitter or InMail on LinkedIn saying:
“Hi, have you seen my Facebook page?”
or
“Did you know I can save you £££’s on accounting fee’s?”
This style of automation is known and referred to as webspam. A process designed to help you increase leads through clickbait while saving you the time and actual effort of networking.
All the time breaking most social media TOS (terms of service):
Most automation is detrimental to the user experience and frequently results in blocks and suspensions — Twitter TOS
You do not have to venture very far into social media networks to uncover this style of automation. The process initially designed to help you increase business has a far worse impact.
If you are using automation, you can expect to see interaction and engagement numbers decline, as well as followers, drop.
Many tools exist that will have a positive impact on your social profiles, when and if used correctly. For example, we use Hootsuite, a social dashboard system that allows me to monitor multiple channels, feeds and streams at once.
Through Hootsuite you can add an RSS feed from a source you trust, that will post new content to your networks for you.
Hootsuite RSS feed
You control various settings here, including how often to check the feed for new content and when to post.
This is fantastic at saving you time when it comes to sharing both your content as well as content from a trusted source.
Brand and date-specific content
It goes without saying that you need to keep you content streams up to date and relevant. It is useless to your followers if you are sharing a breaking news story 3–4 days after the event in question. This is where social media managers and or social media marketing agencies can assist you and add real value.
Doing something the correct way will naturally boost your profiles reach and impact growth, whereas doing something poorly or incorrectly can have a much more significant, negative impact.
Poorly managed profiles will see next to no increase, reach, interaction and impact on your business.
Maintaining your brand identity and personality through social media is an integral part of the relationship to have with your followers, and automation can damage that if not used correctly.
Social automation is not designed to replace you completely.
It is designed to save you time when managing a social presence.
