Nearly 3.5 billion people worldwide use social media. That is almost half of the people on the planet.
No business can afford to do without a strong presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other popular social media sites.
If you are an entrepreneur or an executive at a large and established company, you should leverage the power of social media to promote your brand and your product.
What is Social Media Marketing Automation?
Engaging people on social media is time-consuming. According to a recent survey, marketing teams spend 16 hours a week on tasks involving social media.
You can save your team and company time and money by installing special tools that will do the work of monitoring and managing social media.
Social media marketing automation consists of a set of tools that are designed to decrease your workload and enhance your social media marketing campaign.
The three most popular automation devices are:
- Scheduling tools
- Content curation tools
- Social listening tools
Social Media Scheduling Tools
Members of your executive team have more important things to do than update your company’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.
A scheduling tool relieves them of this burden by posting valuable content on your social media accounts automatically.
The posts will be sent out at optimal times so that you get maximum engagement with your audience.
Here are some of the more popular scheduling devices available on the market:
1. Buffer
Buffer allows you to schedule posts and tailor the content to each social media account. Buffer also has a calendar feature that allows you to review what you have already posted. This gives you the ability to organize, manage, and rearrange your posts as you like.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is known for its elegant and accessible design, which makes it easy to automate your posts. It offers a bulk scheduling option. It also gives you the ability to schedule content you see while surfing the web.
3. Sendible
There are 3 main features that stand out in this tool. First, there is a content recommendation device. If you want to send a post with a news article link, you can conduct a search by topic and it will give you a long list of trending articles to share.
Second, Sendible has a built-in CRM. The latter presents background information on anyone you interact with. This will enable you to send customized content to whomever you are in conversation with.
Third and finally, Sendible can monitor Twitter for certain keywords and phrases and send an automatic reply.
Content Curation Tools
Content curation tools allow you to easily find content that you can share with your social media followers through your posts.
According to one recent study, companies that share curated content receive 33% more clicks than those without it.
Here are a few of the top tools available on the market:
1. Feedly
This tool analyses the topics that interest you and your target audience and shows you related content. The tool comes with an AI research assistant named Leo who helps declutter the information so that you are able to share the best pieces with your followers.
Socialinsider.io is one of the most comprehensive social media analytics and reporting tools. It is perfect for digital agencies and companies that employ digital technology extensively. You can track your company’s level of engagement on different social media pages and compare them. You can also compare these numbers with your competitors and industry benchmarks.
The site makes it easy to build a large report and to download it as a PDF and PPT file.
3. Curata
This tool will automatically search thousands of web sources to find content related to your keywords. You will then be able to approve or reject the suggestions that are to be shared on your social media sites.
Curata also allows you to edit the text and alter the images in the content that you share. You can also add notes and comments to each piece.
Social Listening Tools
These devices help you monitor all online chatter about your company and brand. They help you identify influencers who may be praising and promoting your products.
They can also inform you of any negative reviews of your products or company online.
Social listening tools provide great insight into how consumers are interacting with your company and its products in real-time.
Social listening sites will help you discern trends that drive your highest performing posts. They also help companies build better relationships with followers and identify profitable gaps in the market.
You need not track down every single comment and critique that is made about your company. You can have this done for you with social listening software.
Here are some of the sites that offer social listening solutions:
1. Mention
This tool sifts through billions of sources each day and informs you when and on what site your company’s name has appeared in conversation. You can also set up alerts that inform you when the names of your competitors are mentioned, which can help you analyze social discussions they are involved in.
Mention can be especially helpful to large companies with well-known brands.
This social media management tool was designed with businesses in mind. The team at Social Sprout has identified 5 key pieces of information that are gained from social listening: brand health, industry insight, competitive analysis, campaign analysis, event monitoring. The software allows you to tailor your social listening experience to fit one or more of these categories.
Sprout Social also has tools that allow you to go beyond the mere mention of your company to figure out the sentiment behind it. Your company can be talked about in a positive or negative context. Sprout Social helps you determine which.
In summary, there are plenty of ways to automate your social media marketing operations. Using one or more of the sites discussed above can help your company punch above its weight.
Using social media marketing automation tools can give you deep insights into your target market and help you build better relationships with customers.
Sendible is far better than Hootsuite. Buffer is not really a contender at all in my opinion in terms of features. We used to spend so much time keeping track of social media, now we have someone dedicated to it as an employee, and she is automating everything with Sendible. Love your articles!
Social media is a good way to get some sales going because there are billions of people using social media. If you automate your social media marketing that is money you don’t have to work so hard for. The company I have my website set up with already handles this for me. Thanks for the good information you provided it doesn’t go unnoticed no matter what year it currently is.
Scheduling social media posts is a lifesaver! We started using Sendible and have not looked back. This saves the team time that can instead be spent with customer service. Sendible makes it easier to engage with followers.
I have also heard good things about Mention. When there is an app that monitors feedback, then the team can incorporate that information into improving the product. They also get the chance to respond to customer mentions. It gives followers the impression that the business cares about the customers voice.
Hey Taylor,
I fully believe in the benefits of scheduling practices for social media. I manage over one hundred brands. Without scheduling resources, I would never be able to keep up with the demanding work load. I can research and plan automatically posts for tomorrow, a week from now, or next month. It really does make life much more simple! Plus, many of the scheduling resources allow you to see a preview of your upcoming posts so you can see what your page will look like once the post is published.
I think people often underestimate how essential it is that one posts at an optimal time for social media marketing. So automating post scheduling could really shift a business’ engagement. From my personal experience 5pm-8pm is the best time to post. Next, using automated social listening makes a lot of sense but I think really only for bigger companies. Small companies aren’t really discussed as much I’d assume. I do think for companies that cause a lot of chatter this could be really helpful. I just don’t think it’d be logical for a business that is just starting out. One also has to be careful and make sure the programs that are reading text sentiment are being accurate. As someone who has learned a little about programming, programs can be biased and just as imperfect as the people who make them.
You know your social media automation is done well when your audience can’t tell that it’s automated. I think to really do automation right can take quite a bit of time and initial legwork, but it will be worth it, saving you time in the end while not losing quality on your social media marketing.
Another interesting point (that could make a good follow-up post) is how much automation to use in social media customer service channels. I’ve used Sprout Social before and one of the coolest features they offer is their “Content Suggestions,” which can help on those days when you are stumped for ideas.
I concur that marketing on social media is time-consuming; in fact, our team spends more than the average you mentioned of 16 hours a week on this task alone. We do have a rather large network, but we underestimated the amount of time needed to make social media platforms work for us.
If you’re not taking the time to figure out a marketing plan, you could be wasting hours of precious time on zero returns. We recently switched to Sprout Social, and it’s made a world of difference!
These are all great suggestions. Running social media accounts for a brand can sometimes be tedious and it’s like you have multiple personalities. It’s important that if you want to run a brand or business, that you’re familiar with social media automation. If not, you’re going to stretch yourself thin. I’m curious if there any programs or sites that work specifically for one social media site. Like for instance, Tweetdeck is made especially for Twitter and lets you manage multiple accounts and schedule tweets. Is there anything like that for Facebook or Instagram? Informative post as always, thank you Taylor.
I completely agree with you that special tools for monitoring and managing social media should be installed. I personally like Hootsuite. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows anyone to plan their posts without the need for a tutorial effortlessly.
I currently have my own business but I am also the assistant for someone else’s business. One of my main jobs is ensuring that social media content for all platforms is scheduled for the following month so I don’t have to worry about logging in daily to update everything. Social media is a powerful marketing tool and it’s extremely important. The amount of users on Facebook alone could help funnel business opportunities. Currently to date we use Hootsuite, Canva, and Mailchimp scheduling tools. Content curation isn’t necessary because my boss is “radical” and speaks on evidence based information that people need to hear versus what they want but it’s worth while probably looking into because it can help direct to more like minded content. Social listening is definitely going to be brought up at the next meeting it’s great to know what impact your content is making and monitor all of that.
I use Hootsuite and I can say that using a scheduling tool is very effective, instead of manually posting on your social media accounts. It also gives me ample time to think and create my next content. I also agree that curating the content makes a huge impact, especially if you’re targeting today’s generation where everything should be aesthetically pleasing.