Social media networks are great for communicating, networking and engaging with your audience. But chances are that your “to do” list will become longer than your time for getting things done. Often enough you will be so busy with sharing your posts, that you end up with having not enough time for engaging with your audience. Posting content on multiple social media channels is time consuming and tedious work. This is when social media automation may sound like a pretty good solution. Social media automation is tempting to free you from the pain of sharing your posts on multiple social platforms.

With the right strategy, social media automation can help make your social media marketing more professional and consistent and boost your efficiency. If you understand the secret triggers of each social channel, social media automation will help you to tackle your tasks in no time and boost your visibility and engagement.

Basically, social media automation tools will help you to:


1. save time for manually sharing your post on each of your social platforms and social communities,
2. maintain a consistent content stream on multiple social media platforms,
3. become more productive and efficient,
4. extend the outreach of blog content on a regular basis,
5. find out and set up a plan to post at the best times for each network,

With automation tools, you will get more time to brainstorm your content and to become more creative in producing valuable content for your audience.


However, the convenience of social media automation can turn your social media feed into lifeless, robotic streams of the same ever repeating posts. So, before you start looking for a social media automation tool, consider your social media strategy carefully and understand that people on Twitter react differently to content than your audience on Facebook. There are several dos and don'ts of social media automation and there are of course several rules you should stick to when automatically sharing your posts.

#1: Don't sound like a robot
Don't automate everything. Don't automate the same content in the identical way for all social platform. Try to make some changes and personalize the content as per the requirement of the respective social medium. Don't repeat your posts ever and ever again. Mix automated content with personal content and curated content to give your social feeds a lively and personal appearance. Customize your posts and personalize the content as per the requirement of the respective social media channel. Avoid automating posts that should be personal like messages, comments or replies. Auto-replies and auto DMs are not engaging and so your followers are very unlikely to engage with them.
#2: Don't schedule too far ahead
Scheduling your posts is a great way to fill your time-lines with a consistent content stream and also to free you from work on weekends and holidays or when you go for a vacation. Nevertheless, I would recommend not to scheduling content way far in time. When scheduling too many posts too far ahead, you will easily loose track. Also, current events can make your content look outdated or misplaced. You may schedule your evergreen content to be re-posted over a couple of month. But, I would recommend not to schedule your regular posts for more than a couple of weeks to keep your schedule flexible for current events and fresh content.
#3: Don't automate curated content you haven't read yourself
Don't rely on social media automation for curating content you
haven't revised or at least scanned to grasp the relevancy for your audience. You might be posting content not relevant or even annoying for your audience due to a mismatch of keywords or other automation criteria. Don't just curate, but always add a personal comment why you post it and always encourage your follower to engage.


Here is how you can use automation to unleash the power of social media.

#1: Know your social media audience

Don't push everything everywhere just because social media automation makes it to do so. Relevant content is still king. And relevancy of content is the backbone and the core rule for your social media success. Always remember why your followers follow you. Only automate content that is relevant for your specific audience and for the specific social channel you are posting to. Always tell your audience why you think this content might be relevant for them to encourage reading and engagement with your posts.

#2: Tailor your social media posts for each social platform and audience

Every network has specific features and provides different options for presenting and promoting your post. And, every community reacts differently to specific posting formats. Understand, that the various social networks harbor a different audience with different preferences. Link posts are the common post format for sharing your post on Facebook and Twitter. However, turning your blog post into an image post instead can boost your outreach and engagement tremendously. Some networks activate #hashtags, handles or emojis for better search and networking options. While hashtags work fine on Twitter and Instagram, on Facebook and LinkedIn they simply don’t. It might come to a surprise, that posts with hashtags even generate less engagement on Facebook than posts without hashtags. However, hashtags make your posts easier to search, so you have to weigh your options and experiment a bit with what works best for you. On Facebook, you have unlimited chars, but posts with less than 50 chars work best for engagement. On Google+ longer posts will work much better.
Social media platform specific features

Every social media platform provides specific features and requirements for presenting your content and promoting your post...

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