How To Use Social Media Automation To Improve Your Results (And Not Lose Your Mind)

01 Nov How To Use Social Media Automation To Improve Your Results (And Not Lose Your Mind)

Not too long ago I broke down my daily social media management routine to explain how I manage all my client accounts without losing my mind. So in this post I wanted to briefly cover how planing and social media automation are my best friends when it comes to effectively staying on top of regular posts while having time for other activities that improve your social media marketing results.

Why Use Social Media Automation?

If I didn’t use social media automation I would be pulling my hairs out because I would not have time for anything besides posting to each social network – not too effective. It’s super helpful to schedule your pre – determined posts (which you’ve worked out in your content schedule) ahead of time, so you’re free to spend your new found time on whatever your heart desires…which will probably be to cross another item off that ever growing to – do list. Getting posts scheduled and out of the way will give you time to do one of the most overlooked and time consuming social media tasks – actually engaging with your audience. I usually plan and schedule about a month’s worth of content for each of my clients ahead of time.

Another benefit to scheduling your social media posts is that you’ll have the opportunity to plan out your brand story through your social posts. Using social media automation will give you a chance to see all your posts in a “big picture” view which makes it way easier to think about how to lead one post into another, where you can improve, or where live posts can be plugged in.

Some of my favorite scheduling services are:

• Hootsuite: Because I like the look of the publisher once everything is scheduled in. Hootsuite lets you schedule content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (profiles and Company Pages), Google+, Instagram and YouTube. The service has its kinks (like not being able to tag companies on LinkedIn via the dashboard) but it is a reliable free to low cost option to use.
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• AgoraPulse: I am not only an AgoraPulse Contributor I am an AgoraPulse user. If you have a budget this is the tool to go with. Creating posts for all your networks is easy to do and the analytics are very beautifully presented and easy to understand.
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• Buffer: My favorite content of the day gets scheduled at the times when my audience is most active in one click. This tool also lets you takes older tweets and retweets them again in one click. I only have the basic plan at the moment, but upgrading gives you more “slots” to schedule along with other great features (including tweet analytics).
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• Planoly or UNUM for planning my Instagram feed and scheduling. These apps can also provide some very basic analytics for your account. (I’d still stick to the built in Insta analytics or sqaurelovin for more in depth insights). Planoly can be used on desktop while UNUM is a mobile app only.
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When it comes to Facebook I schedule posts right from the built in Facebook Fan Page publisher on desktop and on the phone app. There are many scheduling services out there from really simple, to more complicated ones. Try different ones and see which one suits your needs.

Finally, do automate, but don’t rely solely on post scheduling. You need some live action mixed into your content strategy. Whether that’s a timely tweet using the hashtag for the event you’re attending, or sharing an article your favorite industry magazine just published, leave room for real time posts and interactions. Make sure to leave spaces for timely posts when you’re planning your content posting schedule. This will keep you from sounding robotic and break up the look of your pre-scheduled posts. When using social media automation for your posts, be sure to check up on them to make sure they’ve posted. Service outages and system failures do happen so it’s good to keep a look out for your posts.

Do you have any favorite social media automation and scheduling services? Drop them in a comment below.

<3 DhariLo