There are two types of people on social media: those who love to participate enthusiastically, commenting on every Sally, Susie, or Sam’s Facebook post, and there are those who would rather take the backseat, only logging in once a year to see who wished them a happy birthday.
Of course, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but its core rings true. Some people view social media as an eager opportunity awaiting their presence, while others see it as a bit of a nuisance in their everyday lives.
I have good news or bad news, depending on who you are: Social media is a useful tool for establishing and growing business.
Some would even dare call a social media presence table stakes for business owners in this day and age. (It’s us. We would dare say that.)
Luckily, services exist for those who would rather remove themselves from the social media equation. If the idea of curating a feed, sharing thoughts and facts with your followers, and maintaining several social channels intimidates you, we have some solutions to address your problems.
The solution: social media automation.
Though social media automation doesn’t make social media responsibility disappear completely (psst, but we can), it does allow you to focus your digital energy on the most meaningful parts of digital interaction.
Here are eight ways social media automation makes your life easier:
1. View Your Social Content From An Overarching Perspective.
Social media automation tools are a great way to alleviate the struggles many companies deal with regarding social media management. With tools like Loomly, you can schedule
and modify different social posts across all channels with ease.
Social media automation allows you to edit content accordingly for each social media platform and schedule posts at varying times. This is a huge perk since different platforms thrive on different types of content.
2. Makes it Easier to Implement Your Social Media Strategy.
When you utilize social media automation to schedule future posts, you can take more time to create a social media marketing plan of action.
Though it may take a bit of extra time in the beginning, the further you schedule ideas out for your social media platforms, the more time you have to execute them.
You can look at the combination of social media marketing and social media automation as a game of chess. You can have a general idea of the moves you wish to make, but you can also reflect on the performance of past posts to determine which moves to make in the future, as well as when to make them.
3. Gives You More Time to Interact with Your Audience.
When you use social automation, you don’t have to worry about spending an abundance of time every day going to each social media platform and crafting a post. You can schedule your posts out to post automatically, keeping that constant contact between your customers and your business.
From there, you can add the extra special touches that make interacting with your business stand out. When you don’t have to think about what to post and when to post at every turn, you can utilize that time by actually interacting with your customers on social media.
This will prove to current customers that you’re interested in maintaining relationships and show potential customers that your business is attentive to its customers’ needs.
4. Allows You to Plan Ahead and Ensure All of Your Content Has Been Quality-Checked.
Social media scheduling is a blessing for most businesses. Not only can content be planned ahead for the sake of keeping constant communication with customers, but it ensures that every single thing you post is to a certain set standard.
Social media scheduling tools let you put the final check of approval on your social posts without the disadvantage of having just freshly crafted it. After a few hours have passed, you may see a typo or realize that what you wanted to say was getting lost in translation. Luckily, with social media automation tools, that post is still in the drafts and can be easily fixed.
With careful eyes, there will be no more “oh no, I didn’t mean to post THAT!” moments.
5. No Longer Interrupt Your Busy Day to Post On Time.
Another true blessing of social media automation is that you no longer have to interrupt your day to post within a certain time frame.
With social media automation, you can ensure that your post is going out at the prime time to reach potential customers without having to miss a step in your already busy day.
6. Ensure Cohesiveness Between Your Content.
Do you want your feed to look somewhat cohesive?
Social media automation can help you reach that social media goal.
Many social media automation sites let you see a preview of what your feed will look like. This is particularly useful for sites like Instagram, where all of your images are displayed side by side.
With social planning, you can make sure that you have a good mixture of content when potential customers visit your social media channels.
7. Keeps Your Online Presence Fresh.
A plethora of fresh content is one way to keep potential customers interacting with your page. It’s easy to get bogged down with social media, but being able to work on social media in your own time, especially when you’re feeling particularly inspired, can lead to the most authentic content.
Just be sure that over time, you’re keeping your content relevant. No content stays fresh forever.
8. Automate Your Message Responses so No One Ends Up Feeling Out of the Loop.
One of the often forgotten tools of social media automation is message automation. Having default messages or chatbots in place can help customers find the answers they’re searching for without having to stop and directly interact with them at that moment.
Of course, you will want to follow up your messages with some human interaction, but having something in place that can help potential customers get immediate answers can put you ahead of the competition, as it shows customers you’re making an investment in them.
What Social Media Management Softwares Reign Supreme in 2021?
Social media management tools come in all shapes and sizes and tend to accentuate different features and functions. Though the best social media management tools will include analytics, feed previews, and scheduling tools, here are a few we suggest for businesses, depending on their main goal.
If Your Main Focus Is:
Measuring Engagement: SEMRush
SEMRush offers a social media toolkit that allows for social media scheduling and automation, as well as an in-depth look at post performance, providing detailed analytics.
Creating an Aesthetic Feed: Buffer
Buffer is a social media automation tool that helps you get what you want out of your feed’s look. Here, you can preview your feed and rearrange Instagram posts from the grid view.
Monitoring Comments and Messages: SproutSocial
SproutSocial is an excellent tool for seeing and responding to mentions of your business in addition to its regular scheduling and monitoring features.
Hiring Someone to Automate Your Social Media Efforts
Many businesses fail to realize just how involved social media can be. It requires creativity, social awareness, business knowledge, and an understanding of performance analytics. It is also about being in the right place at the right time, every time.
The expectation to keep social media content rolling out can be a lot for some people to handle, in addition to running their business. We get it. It’s a lot.
When problems arise, solutions are created. Hiring a social media manager can help you keep everything on track. At Gravity Junction, we offer comprehensive social media management services, including post scheduling, creating and managing ad campaigns, monitoring messages and comments, and overall ensuring that your brand is being represented properly online.
If you have any more questions about how we can help your business, from digital marketing guidance to do-it-all social media marketing, contact us today.
Automating social media is essential if you want to free up time and focus on your strategy.