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Social media platforms provide an excellent channel for startups to reach out to potential customers and relevant audience to build a huge network. But, managing your various social media accounts can be quite a challenge. It is time consuming, demands a lot of your attention, and leaves scope for error, particularly when you only have a limited amount of resources. This is where marketing automation comes in.

Additional reading: 21 Social Media Management Tips for Winning Social Media Managers. 

Advantages of Using Automation in Social Media Management

The advantages of using social media automation tools to manage your campaigns are many.

  • Save time by curating content: Curation tools scour the web for relevant social media content on themes relevant to your audience. They can save you tons of time you may otherwise spend thinking about and looking for content to post on social media to keep up your activity (aka visibility).
  • Plan better by scheduling posts in advance: Several tools allow you to schedule posts many days in advance – this helps you align your social media management effort and workflow better. This way you don’t have to spend every minute thinking about your social media account activity.
  • Share your blog posts on social media automatically: Some social media tools allow you to connect your blog’s RSS feeds to them. This ensures that your content reaches more people.
  • Manage all your accounts from one dashboard: Another advantage of automation tools is that they give you the ability to monitor all your accounts from one platform.
  • Encourage employees to participate on social media: Your employees are more likely to share your brand information on social if it doesn’t require much time and effort. DrumUp’s employee advocacy platform helps you encourage them to share while amplifying your social media presence.

 


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How to Use Automation Tools

Automation tools give you a lot of advantages. They save you time and help in minimizing human error when it comes to maintaining a posting schedule on social media platforms. But, they will only be effective if you use them properly.

  • Pre-schedule posts on promotions and events: Since automation tools help you pre-schedule posts, use the feature to ensure that your audience is notified of your promotions and events at the right time.
  • Link your blog to your automation tool: This ensures that any new piece of content that you put on your blog gets posted to your social media platforms and has a wider reach.
  • Combine real time updates with pre-scheduled posts: While you can automate the posting of several kinds of content, if something crops up which you have to share with your audience, do so. Provide real time updates and interact with your audience. Your automation tools will do a lot, but they cannot decide how to respond to queries or general posts – so do monitor accounts regularly and reply to all initiated interactions and comments.
  • Monitor your accounts: When your tools allow you to keep track of all your accounts from one place, you should. You should also use analytics to figure what works and modify your social media campaign accordingly.
  • Incorporate insights to optimize strategy: The insights that social media analytics give you  are valuable in terms of optimizing your social media strategy. Every insight that you convert to an improvement in strategy will move you closer to maximizing your social media presence.
  • Use conversion optimization: You will be sharing a lot of content on social media, which will bring visitors to your website or blog. To make the most of these visits, and to convert some of them into customers, you should use conversion optimization tools and strategies. Here are some tips for conversion funnels that you’ll find useful.

Use social media marketing automation tools as a part of your campaign. They will save you a lot of time and effort. But, do not make them your campaign. Remember, human involvement is essential to drive engagement on social media platforms.

Image Credit: greyweed via flickr

Note: This article was originally published on Apr 6, 2015 and has since been updated with additional information.


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