As a business owner, having a strong social media presence can help you increase your customer base. While the process of setting up and maintaining several profiles can be time-consuming, the good news is there are now plenty of tools that can help you automate this process.
The most important thing to keep in mind is due to the nature of social media, you need to find a balance between technology and human involvement. To help you get started, here are several key strategies that will allow you to automate parts of your business’s social presence without doing anything that could be labeled as spammy:
Diversify Your Content
A common mistake is to post a link to the same content on several different social sites without any further elaboration. Visitors who find the same link on your business Facebook page, Twitter feed and Google+ page aren’t as likely to return because they feel your business has less to share in terms of valuable information. When your social media sites of choice allow you to post content of any length, take advantage of that freedom! Posting a short but compelling summary of your latest article, product or other type of project can pay off quickly because it will capture more people’s attention.
Time Your Posts Correctly
Popular social media automation tools like HootSuite allow you to write and schedule posts ahead of time. If you decide to utilize this option, be sure you take into account when you will be available to respond to them. One of the worst mistakes is to schedule a batch of interesting posts just before you go on vacation. If your readers’ comments and questions are met with digital silence, this can significantly tarnish your business’s customer service reputation.
Keep a Personal Touch
The reason it’s a mistake to fully automate all of your social media posts is because visitors will eventually realize that the content they’re reading is being produced by a program rather than a human. Since the purpose of social media is to make connections between people, it’s important to “keep it real.” That need is why you should create a mix of personal and automated posts. The exact ratio of personal to automated content can depend on your schedule, as well as the topics you’re addressing.
Automating social media for your business can be an effective measure when planned and implemented the right way. As with any business strategy, some thought needs to go into it first. Posting different material across your profiles, keeping your audience in mind and automating only a percentage of posts will help you build a strong social media presence in a shorter amount of time.