Benefits Of Social Media Marketing Automation [+ Killer Tips To Ace It] 

You might have heard of social media automation here and there but may not be very sure of what it is exactly or you haven’t done it before. I decided to talk about social media automation, especially how it could massively boost brand awareness. You’ll read about the impact of content visibility later on in this article; it’ll educate you on the power of social media automation.

We’ve entered into an interesting era where social media is a massive tool available at everyone’s disposal and standing up against traditional media. As Gary Vaynerchuk often says, it’s the greatest time to be alive. It truly is an interesting time to live because we aren’t just seeing a shift in technology, but we’re also seeing how communication between people is changing.

We’ve seen mail changing into an email and cable TV into streaming services. It’s fair to say that continuous evolution is the biggest reality that everyone should digest in today’s world. Since social media has turned out to be a vital tool of communication and connectivity in today’s day and age, you can expect the newness in social media as well.

This blog will explore:

• What social media automation is
• Why it is important in today’s world
• Steps involved in social media automation
• Tips to ace automated social media marketing
• Takeaways for marketers

So without any further ado, let’s get right into it!

What is Social Media Automation?

Social media automation is a strategy of running social media on autopilot. Social media automation allows you to schedule your social media posts beforehand using any third-party social media management tool.

Automation has become a vital part of a social media campaign. The fundamental reason for the importance of social media automation is that it eases your social media posting. For instance, you can’t show up 10 times on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter every day to post content, but you can schedule 10 posts for tomorrow that could go live on each platform at defined times.

Read: How often to post on Social Media

7 Benefits of Social Media Automation Every Marketer Should Know

It can be tough to keep up when you’re trying to juggle all of your social media. You may spend hours a day just curating content, editing photos, and scheduling posts. And if you have a small business with only one or two people working in marketing, it might be hard to justify the time spent on social media when there are so many other more pressing responsibilities.

Here are seven benefits of social media automation that will help you understand why it’s important for businesses, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and marketers:

1. Gain attention effortlessly

Gary Vaynerchuk recommends posting on social media more often. He went on to say that everyone should post 100 pieces of content every day.

Gary is someone who has millions of followers on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Obviously, he has a team that manages his personal brand. He once shared that 17 of his employees work on his personal brand “GaryVee” to manage branding, promotion, content, and scheduling.

Similarly, many social media experts say that you should post on social media quite often to get noticed. It’s a tried-and-tested strategy that if you increase the frequency of your social media posting, it’ll get more viewership and attention on social media.

2. Consistent engagement on social media

One of the key factors of winning on social media is connectivity and engagement with followers and friends. You’d notice that people who interact a lot on social media or communicate more often, they always have a bigger following. The reason is that their engagement on a social platform leads to more followers and friends. Therefore, their numbers keep getting bigger.

It’s also true that social media automation influences engagement. When you automate your social media content, it means you’re putting out more content without even checking out your social media. Chances are, you’ll be getting more engagement on social media.

3. Ease of managing multiple social media accounts

One of the perks of social media automation is the ease of managing your social media account. Isn’t it difficult to log-in to your Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn every time you post content, for example, 3 to 5 times a day? So a social media management tool like ContentStudio provides a one-stop solution to posting on social media accounts.

Not only that if you have a larger team and you want to master team management, add team members to assign them tasks and chat with them within the app.

4. It extends your social media reach

It’s a tried-and-tested reality that when you schedule your social media posts, you get better social media reach. You might have heard people complaining about the organic reach of social media platforms. Well, to compensate for that problem, you can do content automation to fill that gap up. It may not bring similar results that we used to see back in 2012-13, but you can still make a lot of difference. It’s also true that we often forget to share our content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. 

Let’s admit whether you publish once a week or twice a day, it’s difficult to keep up with the social media standards. You have to have a system that helps you without grabbing your phone or laptop three times a day. 

Once you start content automation, not only do you publish more often, but you also increase your social media reach. The reason is simple; the more your content would appear, the more eyeballs it would get.

5. You can make time for research

When you know that your content is being published on autopilot and your social media posts have already been scheduled. It creates a room for other stuff, for instance, you can do research on your next topics to cover. 

Additionally, who doesn’t like scrolling through Instagram and Facebook feeds? I’d highly recommend using your time productively to come up with great ideas for your content. Use the Pocket tool to bookmark the sites and blog posts during your research.

6. Being away from work won’t be an issue

Have you ever noticed that sometimes our social media posts get pending because of other commitments? Family dinners, birthday parties, and friends’ weddings often put off some of the stuff on your to-do list. 

Social media posting is one of those things that get disturbed during such occasions.How many times have you realized around 11.30 pm that you didn’t share your content on social media? 

Then, we think that it won’t matter now because apparently, half the world is asleep at the moment. So we plan to share that content the next day. This means that we didn’t share any content that day or didn’t show up on social media at all. 

Once you have a content automation system in place, being away from work or home won’t matter much because you would have scheduled the content already

7. You can analyze the content performance

 When you’re publishing and sharing content at scale, you would have this opportunity to analyze the performance of your content on social media and otherwise. There are social media analytics tools such as ContentStudio and Buzzsumo, which help you analyze your content performance and social media statistics. 

Moreover, you should also look at the pageviews of your blog posts, the number of comments, and total shares on social media. These parameters also explain content performance. Go through your web analytics through your Google Analytics account to see which content is doing well. Alternatively, you can try out the StatCounter or ExtremeTracking tools for this.

4 Essential Steps to Ace Social Media Automation

Let’s take a look at the steps that are necessary for setting up a social media automation campaign:

Step #1: Building a Content Development Plan

Content development is the starting point of the social media automation process. If you don’t have content in your pocket, there is no point in social media automation. Therefore, think about establishing a content creation plan before thinking about automation. You might not want to eat the half-baked cookies. So before pounding on social media automation strategy, think about the content that you’d be sharing along the way.

The content plan is a strategy for creating and utilizing content to achieve certain goals. Therefore, it’s necessary to understand how content works. For example, keywords are important in written content; they help boost your brand reach through search engine traffic. Similarly, high-quality graphics designing could do wonders on Pinterest, and aesthetic visuals would make a difference on Instagram.

I refer to the key factors of content development as the 3 T’s of content planning:

I. Types of content to produce

There are multiple types of content that could be produced; for example, there is written content in the form of articles that you can use, or the video content could also be used in the form of tutorials or how-to videos. Moreover, the audio format is also getting popularity in the form of podcasts. The better is to pick the type of content that seems natural to you.

II. Target audience to reach out

Keeping the target audience in mind while creating content is necessary. It helps you write industry-related content. Otherwise, you’d stop focusing on your audience’s specific problems or niche, then the content is likely to get generalized. Not only does it lose its attraction, but it also starts to look boring to the regular audience.

III. Tools to utilize while creating content

Tools are vital elements of the social media marketing process. I use a lot of tools online and offline that contribute to the work. For instance, I use Canva for designing banners, ContentStudio for scheduling content, Davinci Resolve to edit videos, and Thunderbird to send and receive emails. Therefore, it’s understandable that tools are utilized to create content.

So the 3Ts will help provide you with some content pieces to build your social media automation campaign. What you need to understand is that it’s not always the frequency of content you share but the quality of your content that matters the most. Meaning you can re-share the same articles a few times a week, but they aren’t relevant or helpful for your audience, they won’t attract readers and visitors from social media.

On the other hand, if you share a couple of articles that are extremely helpful to your audience, they are likely to perform better than the previous ones.

The whole point of the emphasis is that one must know that the “right content” would do justice to the social media automation campaign.

Step #2: Choosing a Social Media Management Tool

When you’re trying to reach more audiences and boost your brand awareness through effective content techniques, then a social media management tool is a must-have part of the marketing arsenal. The reason is that social media automation would not have been possible without a fantastic social media management tool.

The social media platforms don’t have native options for scheduling content, so you’d have to rely on third-party tools for social media automation.

There are three fundamental requirements your chosen social media management tool must have:

I. Integration with all major platforms

It would be unfair if your social media management tool only supports Facebook and Twitter. There are social media platforms that don’t integrate with LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest. Make sure that your chosen social media platform seamlessly integrates with all major social media platforms. Moreover, sometimes, the free plan doesn’t have all the platform integration, so it’s understandable to go for a paid plan instead.

II. Scheduling feature for all platforms

You may have noticed that Facebook pages used to have post scheduling feature, which was revoked, but it may come again. Surprisingly, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform didn’t have any scheduling option. So it creates an opportunity for social media management tools to offer scheduling services.

Many social media management tools offer to schedule posts on top social media networks. Scheduling is an essential feature of social media automation. If a social media management tool doesn’t provide to schedule for all the major platforms you’re on, it’s a considerable disadvantage. Therefore, it’s essential to choose the platform that has a scheduling feature for every central social platform.

III. Mobile apps to manage accounts on the go

Smartphones are part of our lives now. We spend a good portion of our leisure time scrolling through social media feeds every day. So mobile apps are vital for a social media management tool. Make sure that the social media tool you’re choosing must-have mobile apps so that you can manage your social media accounts on the go.

ContentStudio is a popular social media management tool that provides content publishing, scheduling, and managing features. The state-of-the-art social media and content automation research, influencer look-up, and social media analytics make this tool stand out.

You can schedule your social media posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Furthermore, ContentStudio also allows you to schedule content on Medium, Tumblr, and WordPress. In short, it takes a social media automation campaign to the next level.

Automation is not limited to social media. There are many expense automation software as well.

Step #3: Deciding the Frequency of Posting

Social media automation isn’t limited to creating content and figuring out the automation tools. The frequency of posting on social media does have an impact on the overall campaign. Boosting brand awareness and popularity is a multi-dimensional strategy. Therefore, the frequency of social media posting is a vital element of social media success.

Most users who utilize a social media scheduling tool don’t push hard. They schedule a piece of content once and then forget about it. I have heard top bloggers and marketers talk about re-posting your content on social media.

Darren Rowse of Problogger.com talks about the automatic re-sharing of social media posts in his content.

Gary Vaynerchuk often pushes followers and audiences to post multiple times a day on social media.

So the frequency of social media posting does have its role in social media automation. To understand this role further, take care of the four things while deciding the frequency of social media posting:

I. Focus on the quality over quantity

A lot of you might get excited and start posting content that won’t matter much just to show up more often in followers’ feeds. Let me burst the bubble that it won’t help the cause. You shouldn’t create more content at the cost of quality. The quality must be top-notch, even if you have to publish three posts instead of five every day.

II. Don’t serve a half-baked cake

Have you ever started reading an article that has vague ideas on the matter? Meaning the content doesn’t have a direction whatsoever. Well, I say such content is a half-baked cake. The point is that if your content doesn’t have clarity, then readers lose interest in it. Try to stay focused and don’t do unnecessary stretching to make it longer.

III. Too many posts can annoy followers

If you see so many posts from an account, whether it is Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram, you get annoyed. As a result, you unfollow that account after a while. I’ve done it; perhaps, you’ve done it too. So the takeaway is that don’t post content so frequently that it starts to annoy followers.

IV. Start conversations through your posts

Engagement is a significant element of social media. Try to start conversations by asking questions at the end of the content or responding to the comments. It’d impact your social media reach massively. It’s better to post three times a day and have conversations in the comments on all three posts than posting six times a day and never responding to the comments.

So the points mentioned above would help you decide the frequency of social media posts.

The idea isn’t to create random stuff and push it to your followers on social media, but instead, the content you’re putting out must be valuable to your audience. Otherwise, it won’t matter much, and if it doesn’t matter to the followers, then your efforts would go in vain.

Step #4: Analyzing Social Analytics

The social media automation process does seem like a simple task of scheduling content so that you don’t have to show up multiple times a day to post on social media. In reality, social media automation is a diverse concept that encapsulates small essential bits that have specific roles to play.

The insights, for example, may easily be overlooked by any new user who just joins the social media marketing world and starts using a social media marketing tool. Therefore, it’s essential to pinpoint some basics in the content to clear the picture.

The analysis of your posted content on social media usually refers to the phrase “social media analytics.”

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest have their native insights tools to provide users with necessary data on their content performance. However, the emphasis on the insights doesn’t stop here. There is more to this concept.

Social media analytics give you insights into the performance of the content and engagement on your profile. Most experts would tell you to keep an eye on social media analytics. The reason is that it gives a sense of direction where your profile is heading.

There are three things that you need to analyze:

I. Brand Persona

Is your content aligned with your brand persona? Meaning if you have been posting content on social media that doesn’t correlate with your product or service, then you aren’t clear about your brand persona. Once you figure this out, your content will perform better because you’ll be producing the relevant content next time.

Another great way to create a brand persona is by utilizing the services of an experimental marketing agency.  They offer a unique way to promote brands, products, and messages with integrated marketing solutions.

II. Hottest Content

Don’t ever overlook your hot content. If you’re wondering, what’s the hot content? The hot content is your best-performing content on social media. The insights will showcase the data and let you see what posts have done better than others. Once you find the topics that are doing well, you should start hammering on those areas even more. It will bring more attention to your social media accounts and visitors to your website.

III. Conversion

One of the most important things you should analyze from your social media standpoint is the conversion after a few weeks of establishing a social media strategy. If the conversion isn’t impressive, then alter the strategy, and if it’s booming, then keep pushing it hard.

ContentStudio has an analytics section that keeps an eye on the performance of your social media posts and lets you know what’s going on with your social media.

The best thing about the Analytics section of ContentStudio is that it provides insights into all major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

The Analytics section would take your content creation, content curation, and scheduling to a whole new level because it enables you to understand your content performance. You can download the reports in your Analytics section in ContentStudio so that you can look them up later on.

It’s essential to have an analytics tool that gives you an inside-out performance report. Not only will it help in improving your social media appearance, but it will also impact your content strategy in the long run.

Must-Follow Tips to Ace Social Media Marketing Automation

1. Identify your social media goals

The first thing you need to do is identify your social media goals. What do you want to happen as a result of the content you post? For example, are you trying to increase brand awareness or grow your customer base?

2. Start small

Next, start with three primary channels: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You’ll want to set up automatic posting in all three places so that it’s as easy as possible.

3. Create an editorial schedule. 

No matter how much a tool facilitates you, the key is to stay organized while working in a happening niche like social media marketing. Therefore creating an editorial calendar will always pay off. 

 4. Keep social listening tools handy

Social listening tools will help you figure out talking about your brand on which platform. What’s the general perception about your company, and how do people mention it on various platforms. And frankly, there is no better jury for you to listen to than the general public.  

5. Track your metrics

Use a social media analytics tool that helps you monitor your engagement metrics. You may have to monitor key metrics: which posts perform well on which platform and what could be the best time to post on social media. You might also be able to track competitor analytics with tools like ContentStudio. 

Following the above-listed tips will give you a good foundation for figuring out what posts work best on each platform. From there, you can try other channels like Instagram and content distribution platforms for growth hacking.

Do you think social media marketing automation works? 

We strive to dominate social media all the time, but it rarely works by chance. 99% of the people who make it to the top are the ones who consistently put in the work. So once you’re clear about that, you could start building a solid foundation of the wall (of your social media strategy). As far as social media automation is concerned, it’s one of the bricks of the very same wall that you’re trying to build.

Social media automation enhances your brand visibility on social media platforms, which results in the form of more attention, eyeballs, and click-ability. If things work out great, then you’d notice a surge in your website visitors, social media fans, and the number of engagements on social media.

Automating social media marketing is a great way to reduce the time it takes to create content. It’s also a great way to make sure your content is always fresh and on-brand. By following these tips, you’ll be able to write and publish great content without ever having to lift a finger.