Social media marketing campaign – is it a good idea?
Social media seems to be the last place one ought to do any automation as social media marketing demands a high level of transparency and engagement to succeed. There is no way that you can automate the “human element” and you can’t have a robot represent your business in social networks right? Despite the significance of lending a personal touch to your business presence in web marketing and social networking, automation doesn’t need to be harmful to your online marketing efforts across various social networking platforms. Automate it just right and it can prove beneficial to your business although this begs the question, how does one go about doing this though?
Automating your social media efforts
Social media marketing tools
Look around and you’ll find that there are practically hundreds of tools out there aimed at enabling people to automate their web marketing efforts across social networks. Be wary of using them though – practice and get the feel of a particular tool before going all out and automating your posts and updates least you end up doing something disastrous like ending up posting hundreds of content in a single day. Of course even with the right tools you’ll have to allocate ample time and effort to keep your social media campaigns well supplied with the “human element” in the form of interesting posts and comments engaging followers and fans.
Content diversity
You probably have various fans and followers connected to your business across various social networks. The last thing you should be doing is bore them to tears by automatically putting up the same content across various social networking platforms. Consider the leverage that a particular social network offers and diversify your content. For example:
- Google+ is a good platform for publishing and sharing visual content
- LinkedIn has proven to be an effective platform for lead generation
- Facebook is a great place to explain and convey your thoughts and ideas regarding your content, products or services and niche market. Use it as an opportunity to engage fans and followers with comments and insights eliciting more engagement and traffic
Never forget your roots
Success in social media only comes to those who had shown dedication in interacting and engaging their fans and followers. Think twice before automating anything and approach it with the sole intention of supplementing your social media marketing efforts or you may end up having to deal with serious backfire or backlash which can adversely affect your brand or business. Users of social networks are immediately turned off with the slightest suspicion that they are dealing with a robot or automated system. Make sure that you are quickly and reliably notified every time you receive a message, comment or replies among your fans and followers which would enable you to push out content that is genuinely “you” and be able to provide quick and reliable responses.
Automatically scheduling content, posts and updates at the right moments
Among the significant perks of automation in online marketing when it comes to social networking is that it provides the added convenience of scheduling your posts and updates. You need to consider a couple of things though – when are fans are followers more likely to interact with your brand or business? Keep track and anticipate such times. After all, you wouldn’t want to create a stir on Twitter garnering a lot of responses and reactions from your fans and followers and not be around to respond to them because you’ve just decided to take a couple of days off.
Automation in your web marketing efforts across social networks is not necessarily bad. One only needs to learn to properly and appropriately use it in moderation.
