Page Text: Strategy
What is Social Media Automation? 10 Tools to Save Time
Social media automation is using software tools to reduce the amount of time spent on social media tasks that don’t require a human touch.
Christina Newberry April 13, 2022
Creating, posting, and analyzing content across so many touchpoints can take an overwhelming amount of time. Unless, of course, you engage in some social media automation
We’re not talking about bots here. We’re talking about using social media automation tools that benefit marketers and audiences alike. That means reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks, decreasing response time, and giving you the time and data you need to create more engaging content.
Table of Contents
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What is social media automation?
Social media automation is the process of using software tools to reduce the amount of time spent on social media tasks that don’t require a human touch. Examples of social media automation include:
Producing analytics reports
Not all social media tasks can or should be automated. This may sound obvious, but you should avoid any automation tactic that makes your brand look lazy, spammy, or fake.
For instance, paid bots that like, follow and comment are painfully obvious to savvy social media users. However, some #goodbots can provide helpful information to followers.
The key is to use smart social media automation in ways that help, rather than hurt, your credibility and online relationships.
What's a bot and what's not? We're making it easier to identify #GoodBots and their automated Tweets with new labels.
Starting today, we’re testing these labels to give you more context about who you're interacting with on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/gnN5jVU3pp
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 9, 2021
Let’s take a look at the kinds of automation that work and the kinds that should be left in the grimy corners of digital marketing.
How to use social media automation the right way
Here are some day-to-day tasks that are prime candidates for social media marketing automation. We’ll show you some automated social media marketing software tools to help with all these tasks at the end of this post.
Scheduling and publishing
Logging in and out of different social accounts to publish multiple times per day can eat up a lot of time. Especially because the best time to post varies by platform.
This is a case where social media automation saves time and increases efficiency without reducing content quality. Dedicate a block of time to content creation. Then, use automated social media posting to schedule the appropriate post times on each network.
Data collection and reporting
Nearly two-thirds ( 64% ) of marketers automate their marketing measurement and attribution. The remaining one-third are either:
missing out on key insights from marketing data, or…
…spending way too much time collecting and analyzing it manually.
Basic customer service
Automating customer interactions is one of the top use cases for marketing artificial intelligence tools in 2021. Yet, the Hootsuite Social Transformation Report found that only 13% of organizations increased their use of customer interaction automation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You don’t need a human team member to answer common questions like “What are your hours?” and “Do you have any coupons available?” Likewise, you can automate service requests related to package tracking, refund status, and other issues that are tied to your CRM .
Well-designed customer interaction AI can also:
walk potential customers through the buying process
provide personalized product recommendations
Source: Simons on Facebook
Social monitoring and listening
Social monitoring and listening allow you to understand the social conversation about your brand, your industry, and your competitors. They provide valuable market research and business intelligence you can use to guide your social media strategy.
Manually seeking out relevant content in which you’re not directly tagged can be time-consuming. So, it’s a good idea to put an automated social listening strategy in place.
Social ads management
allocate spending
determine placements
Automating these time-consuming tasks frees you up to dedicate more time to crafting great copy and other advertising assets.
The DONTs of social media automation
DON’T use spammy bots
The number one lesson here is to use bots for good, not evil. Embrace bots that help make customers’ lives better as well as your own.
AI chatbots that speed up customer service response times? Great. An inbox to manage DMs, comments, and tags from multiple networks in one place? Excellent.
But bots that automatically comment on or like social posts? Not such a good idea . They can cause lasting damage to your relationships with your audience. They can also land you in hot water with the social networks themselves.
DON’T post the same message to every network
Cross-posting the same content to multiple social media accounts might seem like the easiest option. But it’s certainly not the most effective.
Some tools (including social media platforms themselves) offer you the option to automatically cross-post to other platforms. Don’t be tempted.
Social platforms have different image display ratios and word count allowances. Audiences on those different platforms have different expectations, demographics , and word preferences. It’s highly unlikely one post will meet all those various requirements and expectations.
Instead, take the extra time to adjust your message for each platform’s audience. At the bare minimum, you’ll want to check and adjust:
User handles
Image specs (file type, size, cropping, etc.)
Text based on character count
Hashtags (number and usage)
Your vocabulary (i.e., retweet vs. regram vs. share)
Instead of cross-posting, use automated social media publishing at set times to use your time most efficiently.
DON’T “set it and forget it”
Bulk scheduling to automate your social media posts is a great way to use social media automation to increase efficiency. However, it’s important to keep an eye on your publishing schedule and make any adjustments required in real-time.
World-changing crises happen all the time on social media, and a poorly timed post can make your brand look out-of-touch or tactless.
So, batch-schedule your posts , but know what’s happening internally and out in the world. Be prepared to pause, reschedule, or cancel upcoming social posts and campaigns as events require.
DON’T babysit your ads
Ads cost money, and poorly optimized ads cost more money. The added pressure of a diminishing budget can make it tough to tear yourself away from your ads dashboards. But ads are so data-driven that automation is often the best strategy.
One of the easiest shortcuts is to use a tool (like, for instance, Hootsuite Boost ) to automatically promote top-performing organic content. If you have a home-run post on your hands, throw some dollars at it to give it the best chance of snowballing. Hootsuite Boost automates that trigger so it happens whether you’re at your desk staring at it, or not.
Split-testing (or A/B testing) your social ads is another area where automation can really help you hit your KPIs.
10 social media automation tools to help you work smarter (not harder)
We’ve divided our favorite social media automation tools into categories to keep it simple. Choose the areas you want to focus on first and have a look at the tools that can help.
Publishing and scheduling