Social media automation vs. manual effort?
I get a lot of my clients through social media or social referrals. Because I have a strong network, I use my personal accounts, but I'm always struggling to figure out how much I should automate.
I've used a bunch of social automation tools in the past and some are definitely better than others. On the flip side, fully automated social media strategies seem to lose the human, spontaneous side of posting.
The problem is that posting manually takes so much freaking time.
So what do you do? Are you using social media as a channel and how much of it do you automate?
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i think a lot of folks just spread themselves too thin, tbh. that's why it feels like a "chore" to most folks.
but, if you authentically engage in the channels that you ACTUALLY LIKE then it's not a chore... it's actually fun and a business value-add!
... imagine that.
got me thinking)
cool!
what tools you have already used?
i use twitter, mostly for social.
great
do you work with B2B or B2C markets clients?
currently, i'm working with both for YEN.
Totally true.
I'm starting to shift my social focus to the places where I like spending time rather than trying to hit everything. I do work with a social ghostwriter too who handles some of the content. He's helped keep things flowing on Linkedin when I get too busy to post.
+1.
i've chosen these spots:
... i can do those really well every week.
I think you have missed to mention which social network you are referring to. Twitter: No, LinkedIn: Yes.
But, that doesn't include the question about the content. I mean, even if you schedule, you have to create images or videos in advance.
Honestly, myself and most post I know who've done "pretty well" on e.g. Twitter have never scheduled tweets.
I think it's the exact issue you described -- it loses the spontaneous side, and a lot of social media is about sharing what's happening now. It's what makes it different than reading a blog, for instance.
Maybe scheduling makes more sense once the person or whoever is running the account understands what resonates. Then you can get ahead of it. But scheduling before you've really cracked what works on the platform seems like busy-work to me -- feels productive but you're not making progress on the KPIs you care about?
I do agree it's time consuming, but I also think that less is better. One, really well-crafted post is worth more than a dozen mediocre ones.
(FWIW I used to schedule stuff on Facebook and Instagram, which worked fine -- but my focus was on photography, so the photo speaks for itself. A bit of a different ballgame.)
Came here to say this. I don’t like automation, when I tweet something I always try to reply in real time (at least for the first hour). Conversation > broadcasting.
Very true.
Unrelated, but are you still taking sponsors for BloggingForDevs? I filled out the sponsor form a couple weeks ago and didn't hear anything. Would love to support the project if you're interested?
If not, no worries, just figured I would mention it since you replied. 😁
Hey Karl - I just checked and your email landed in my spam folder! Gotta check that more often, I'm not sure why that happened.
I'll get back to you over email now, sorry about that.
Hey Karl, thank you for including RiteKit in https://draft.dev/learn/tools/social-media-automation. I use RiteKit to make organic, free social media our primary inbound marketing channel. I would be happy to do a call with you or, if you prefer, people on the Draft team responsible for social media. Please chat to us on the site and I'll gladly give you my availability for a call.
Oh yeah, I've used RiteKit a lot. We actually spoke on a call a couple years back.
Great tool!
Okay, cool. I was just thinking, especially since we just added IG publishing, for your product, if you can take a single blog post and generate an entire social media campaign from it, it might be something you could offer, perhaps if you trained a couple VAs to use your RiteKit Package to generate the posts and schedule them. This should give you ideas: https://help.ritekit.com/en/article/how-to-spin-one-blog-post-or-web-page-into-many-social-posts-that-sell-with-the-ritekit-package-1fy3xmb/
Thanks, Karl.
Social media automation can save time and effort by allowing scheduled posts, automated content sharing, and management of multiple accounts simultaneously. Manual effort requires individual handling of each social media task, which can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.
I have found a great piece of content regarding Instagram Automation, which can help beginners to understand the need of social media in their business. Here are some ways in which it can help:
Targeted Audience Engagement: Instagram automation tools allow you to engage with your target audience on a larger scale. By automating actions such as liking, following, and commenting, you can reach a broader audience that aligns with your ideal customer profile. This targeted engagement increases the chances of attracting potential leads to your Instagram profile. You can also give your store link to your Instagram Bio for easy lead generation. There is great website where you can get some of the optimized Instagram Bio Ideas.
Efficient Content Scheduling: Automation tools enable you to schedule and publish your Instagram posts in advance. This feature ensures a consistent presence on the platform, even when you may not have the time to manually post. Consistency plays a significant role in building brand awareness and attracting potential leads who regularly engage with your content.
Hashtag and User Discovery: Automation tools can assist in finding relevant hashtags and user accounts within your niche. By utilizing features such as hashtag research and user discovery, you can identify popular hashtags that your target audience follows and engage with users who have an interest in your industry. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of attracting leads who are genuinely interested in your products or services.
Direct Messaging Automation: Instagram automation tools often offer features for automating direct messages. This can be particularly useful for initiating conversations with potential leads. By crafting personalized and targeted messages, you can start meaningful interactions, provide information about your offerings, and ultimately convert interested prospects into leads.
Analytics and Insights: Many automation tools provide analytics and insights that help you track the performance of your Instagram efforts. You can analyze metrics such as engagement rates, follower growth, and post reach to gain a better understanding of what content resonates with your audience and generates the most leads. These insights enable you to refine your strategy and optimize your lead generation efforts on Instagram.
It's important to note that while automation can streamline lead generation on Instagram, it's crucial to strike a balance. Maintain a human touch by regularly monitoring and engaging with your audience manually, responding to comments and messages personally. Authenticity and genuine interaction play a vital role in building trust and converting leads into customers.
Overall, Instagram automation, when used strategically and ethically, can help you generate consistent leads by reaching a wider audience, maintaining a consistent presence, and engaging with targeted users. Combine automation with personalized interactions to create a well-rounded approach to lead generation on Instagram.
This is how i am growing 5+ instagram accounts at once
One of the accounts i have been handling - qurenciajhb
Leave a comment if you try this for yourself
Social media is one of the effective platforms to target your audience and for getting leads for your business, a manual process is quite time-consuming.
Social media automation is effective when compared to the manual process.
I worked on a social media scheduling tool, which minimizes your time and it is very easy to track
I think using a social media scheduling tool really helps, but you're right - you don't want to lose the personal touch.
I'm the founder of a social media scheduling platform called Pallyy, and for me personally I schedule all posts - but always respond to each and every comment to keep the personal touch, and still be engaged with my audience.
It's worked well this far, and my audience wouldn't know I'm scheduling (although they could guess that haha).
Hey Karl, automation is great, but as I think you're alluding to, it can alienate your followers. Really is comes down to publish lazy and you shouldn't expect much. People want interesting and relevant content, and that gets the engagement.
Another way to look at social media automation is automating for your users, if you have a platform. A bit of a hybrid: personal curation + automation. For example, a real-life use case is an auto dealership platform that dealerships use to manage inventory and create marketing material - videos, images, promotions. Each dealership needs to download all the created media and then post on their own social media networks - multiple times a day. Yuck! So the automation comes in where the platform automatically posts a dealership's media to their own social networks. The dealership is tailoring the content for their audience, but the automation is the platform handling the social network connectivity and posting.
Disclosure: I'm co-founder of Ayrshare - social media APIs that allows posting from your platform on behalf of your users.
Hey Karl, definitely agree, social media automation can take the human touch out of it.
HOWEVER, I'm the founder of BirdyBots.com (soon to be timeless.so), Twitter automation that focuses on automatically recycling your best old tweets. I really believe in tweeting in the moment, but we're a great supplement for any creator's Twitter strategy since we re-surface evergreen past tweets you may have forgotten about.
Feel free to check us out & let me know what you think!
Thanks for the tip!
I'm the creator of Howitzer - a marketing/growth hacking tool for Reddit!
You can check it out if you are interested in a different kind of social media automation.
The average response rate is 40-45%, which is far more than cold emails.
It was for only this reason, I created Designtack whose sole purpose was to create bulk social media content in minutes.
But guess what, it would still require a lot of manual effort after doing automation. More the tools, more complex it gets. The moment automation steps in, the human side seems to get lowered which then results in poor engagement rates.