How to Get Started with Social Media Automation

October 25, 2021

Social media automation tools enable seamless management of social accounts across a range of different platforms. These automation tools let you dedicate more time to building an audience and implementing social media campaign strategies that work.

To start off, we’ll discuss the following in this article:

what social media marketing automation is
tips on how to automate social media posts
top social media automation tools

After reading this article, you’ll have learned more ways to leverage social media automation to improve your content strategy.

What Is Social Media Automation?

Social media automation involves using tools to bolster your social presence. It lets a social team schedule posts ahead of time, engage with prospects, and streamline results all in one place.

concept image: man posting to social media

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Scheduling content isn’t about losing control

Having social media automation doesn’t mean letting AI, chatbots, and automation tools take over your social media accounts.

Social media automation tools are meant to help you manage your social accounts efficiently. They can uncover ways to widen your social networks, monitor brand mentions, and offer content ideas. However, you’ll still need the human touch when it comes to writing posts, communicating with your audience, and interpreting results from analytical tools.

Tips for Social Media Automation

Social media automation enables brands to save time and build an active online presence on social media networks. To maximize its potential, let’s take a look at some of the best practices you should follow.

1. Set goals for social media automation

When you’re starting out, you don’t have to purchase multiple automation tools in an instant and automate everything.

Start by identifying your social media goals. What do you want to achieve? And what should you automate in the process?

Here are some goals to consider:

posting social content consistently
responding immediately to customer support requests
speeding up content curation
improving the efficiency of social media marketers

You can set any goal you want. However, your objective will determine the type of social media automation tools you get first.

For example, if you want to improve customer service, then integrate chatbots into your social media pages. Alternatively, teams that want to focus on consistency may find that a social media scheduler is an absolute game changer.

2. Be aware of time zones for social media marketing

Social media lets brands engage with consumers from across the globe.

So, where are your consumers located? What time zones are they in? Knowing the best time to post based on your target audience’s location will help you get more eyeballs for your content.

clocks showing various time zones

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The social media algorithm favors posts that rack up a lot of engagement immediately after they’ve posted. Because they get more likes and shares, they’re perceived to be relevant content. Thus, this increases the likelihood that more people will see your post on their feed.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for posting times. Results may vary depending on your industry and the social media habits of consumers in a specific location or country. As an experiment, try to post at different times and see which times generate the most impressions, before committing to a specific pattern.

3. Automate social media posts

Posting frequency matters a lot in social media. If you don’t post often, followers will easily forget your brand. But if you post too frequently, followers may be bombarded with too many marketing messages on their feed. So, how do you find the sweet spot?

For most social media platforms, it’s best to consistently maintain the rate of your posts. As long as your engagement rate is consistent, you’ll be able to grow your audience.

A good tip is to build a social media calendar with a posting schedule for every piece of content you plan to publish. The calendar serves as a visual representation of your posting frequency. That way, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are consistent for every platform.

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There’s no need to create a social media calendar from scratch. Social media automation tools let marketers schedule posts at a specific time. This can save you from the tedious process of posting content across different platforms, especially for ambitious social media marketing campaigns.

4. Use social listening tools

Social listening lets marketers know what people say about their brand on social platforms.

A social listening tool lets marketers monitor brand mentions from multiple sources all in one place. On top of that, you can follow a specific topic, hashtag, or keyword to uncover valuable insights about your small business or your competitors. What’s new in your industry? Why are your competitors getting more social media engagement?

Using social listening tools will help uncover gaps in your strategy and even spark content ideas for your upcoming campaigns.

5. Leverage chatbots for customer service

It’s no secret that chatbots are great at customer service.

According to Comm100, chatbots can handle 68.9% of chats from start to finish. In addition, customers are receptive to chatbot interactions, with 87.2% of consumers having neutral or positive experiences with chatbots.

These numbers show that chatbots are a must-have tool, because they can handle a significant number of inquiries 24/7. They’re also neutral and less pushy compared with an actual salesperson.

For example, Sephora’s Kik chatbot can provide personalized product recommendations and beauty tips.

For the prom season, the brand created makeup tutorials and conducted Q&A sessions with the chatbots. The results? They were able to drive more engagement to the Facebook Live tutorials. The overall campaign led to 600K+ Kik bot interactions, 1,500 submitted questions, and 132,000 viewers per month on the Sephora Facebook Live.

Kik chatbot sephora

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Besides handling customer service inquiries, chatbots can assist in processing orders and share a link to a specific FAQ section to solve issues. They can also direct customers to sales or support agents for more personalized responses.

6. Curate content that your audience will love

Building a social media presence doesn’t entail creating all the content yourself.

You can share tweets, social posts, and photos that your audience will love. An alternative option is to share breaking stories that will get your audience talking. That way, you can get instant engagement with minimal effort.

re-tweeted social media posts

Curating content seems fast and easy, but finding the right post can take a lot of time and effort. On the bright side, content curation tools can help you find viral stores or breaking news that will resonate with your readers. Some posts may even inspire your upcoming posts in the foreseeable future.

7. Add a human touch

Social media tools with AI capabilities can write captions on autopilot. While it’s possible to sit back and watch a machine do the work, it’s best to have a real marketer work behind the scenes.

Sure, tools can write factual posts. But on social media, people are more likely to engage with casual and witty captions. They want fun and relatable posts with a bunch of emojis. Even if AI has advanced capabilities, “copy-and-pasted” words don’t have the ability to move people.

Your marketers understand your audience best. As such, automation tools are meant to supplement your brand’s social media strategy, rather than serve as a total replacement for an actual social media manager.

8. Monitor analytics in social media platforms

Sure, automation tools can get tasks done, but you still need a solid strategy to get results.

Trends and best practices can change over time. Results can easily dip if your posts don’t resonate with your audience. Thus, you need to monitor your social media analytics and results to determine whether you’re still on track to achieve success on your chosen social media platforms.

Monitoring analytics entails taking note of metrics and KPIs to determine whether the automation tool is generating results. Are customers satisfied with the service they get from chatbots or support agents? Are you generating more engagement with your brand? How many impressions or shares did your posts get for the past week or month?

concept image: man surrounded by social social media posts

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We recommend generating social media reports per month or quarter to evaluate the performance of your content. You should also consider monitoring the results of your competitors to determine how you stack up against them.

Top Social Media Automation Tools for Social Media Platforms

Good news: there are lots of social media automation tools that can improve your customer service, automate posting, and monitor analytics, among other essential tasks. Still, picking the right solution can be daunting.

To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of the best social media automation tools that you should consider. Below, we take a look at their features, pricing, and suitability for eCommerce, small businesses, and creators.

Sked Social

We’ll begin with Sked Social — an all-star tool for scheduling posts. True to its name, this automation tool lets users schedule social media posts, visually plan their Instagram feed, and evaluate social media performance for the past two years.