Is Automating Social Media a Good Idea?

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Is Automating Social Media a Good Idea?

The answer depends on what you want to do. Keep reading to find out what you can automate and which tasks you should not automate.

Why You Should Automate Some Tasks

  • Managing social media is time-consuming and automation will save you a lot of time.
  • Posting manually takes time away from other important tasks.
  • When posting manually, you'll get less posts out and you may not get them out at optimal times.
  • Automating helps you get your posts out that you may otherwise not get out. Do you have time to tweet 4-20 times a day?
  • If you don’t have time to manage your social media every day, it’s better to automate scheduling of posts than have days without posting.

Which Tasks You Should NOT Automate

  • Personal interaction can not be automated.
  • Replies should be done manually.
  • Check tweets manually for quality before retweeting.
  • Check pins you save. Click on the url and check the content before saving pins to avoid spam pins.

Which Tasks To Automate

  • Scheduling is the main tasks that can easily be automated. Some say that people don't reply or interact with automated posts. That is simply not true. I get plenty of likes, messages, retweets and repins on my automated posts. Recently I listened to an interview with a Pinterest employee who clearly stated that they do NOT make a difference between a manual post and a post that is scheduled with automation software. They do like you to log in to your account occasionally but they do NOT penalize you at all for automatic scheduling.

Automate Scheduling

Automating Social media scheduling can save you a huge amount of time. Here are some ways  you can benefit from social media scheduling programs:

  • Automate scheduling. Automating tasks like scheduling recurrent posts, sharing blog posts, sharing events and spreading out your posts will save you a lot of time.  And you can schedule at times you want.
  • Spread out your posts. Space out your blog posts and articles over hours or days instead of sending all your content at once.
  • Reach a larger audience by posting your updates at the best time and date. Some programs like Social Pilot will suggest the best times to post.
  • Schedule time-sensitive tweets in advance so you don’t forget to send important messages.
  • Remind people of deadlines, discounts and specials that will expire soon, upcoming events, seminars, webinars and more.

Social Media Automation Tools

There are many tools to automate social media scheduling. I'm discuss a few popular ones here.

HootSuite

Starts at $49/mo for 1 user and 10 social media accounts – schedule unlimited posts

HootSuite is an established social media scheduling program for Twitter and Facebook. It's also good for monitoring and curating and has great reporting tools.

I like their bulk scheduling feature but stopped using it when I couldn't bulk-schedule image posts. You use a CSV file to bulk schedule. You can add images and videos to your posts after uploading the CSV file but I wanted total automation.

I used HootSuite for a couple of years and then switched over to SocialPilot because I couldn't bulk-schedule images with HootSuite.

Negatives:

You can not bulk-schedule image posts.

The price has really gone up.

Click here to get more information about HootSuite.

Socialoomph

Free trial version.
15/mo – 1 social profile
25/mo – 10 social profiles

This was formerly known as TweetLater.com, was originally for twitter only and was great for Twitter initially. It now supports many different types of social media including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Plurk – but not Instagram. You can also post to Mastodon, Reddit and Stick Twits.

Socialoomph is a powerful social media management program but many people complain that it has an outdated user interface and that it's difficult to integrate with some social media networks and especially with Facebook.

There are various features for the different networks, including scheduling updates, managing multiple accounts at once, and sending tweets via email.

Here's an interesting comment from John T.

Socialoomph does something that no other social media posting tool can do: automatically generate content streams from RSS feeds. While pretty much every other platform out there will let you access RSS feeds, Socialoomph does it better by letting you define keywords that limit what you publish to only the topics or ideas you want. Additionally, Socialoomph lets you publish in virtually any configuration you want, from specifically scheduled dates, to regular intervals etc. Customer support is prompt and excellent.

John T.

Click here to get a 30 day free trial from Socialoomph.

SocialPilot

Starts at $25.5/mo – 1 user – 10 social media accounts

I have used Hootsuite for scheduling Twitter and Facebook posts for many years. I like Hootsuite but you can't bulk-schedule image tweets.

I switched from HootSuite about two years ago and have been using SocialPilot to schedule image tweets to Twitter and Facebook. I love SocialPilot because I can bulk-schedule images posts.

As with any program, you need to prepare your posts the first time but once you have them set up in an Excel or text file in the required format, you can use it over and over again.

With SocialPilot, you can choose to either add your own dates and time to your Excel sheet if you choose to do so. Or you can set up dates and times for specific accounts and you won't have to change those ever unless you want to.

I schedule my posts once a month. I schedule some new posts manually during the month and then add any new posts to my Excel sheet for the next month. And if I have something important or urgent I want to post regularly during the month, I create an additional Excel sheet. Or better yet, I use the repeat feature of SocialPilot.

Click here to get more information about SocialPilot.

What You Should Do

Your social media will be more successful if you show your audience that you are a real person. If you combine automatic scheduling with some personal interaction, you can get great results and your followers won't care if you automate some of the process.

Social Media Articles 

SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCES

  • Check out this planner bundle to help you plan your social media, your marketing, and your newsletters.
  • Graphic design software: Canva, PicMonkey, and Photoshop.
  • The Best Free Stock Photos and Images.
  • Tailwind – The best scheduling tool for Pinterest. They have an Instagram version too (but I haven’t tried Tailwind for Instagram yet). Read my Tailwind review here.
  • Hootsuite – Automates scheduling for several social media (I used to use it but switched to using SocialPilot). You can read my Hootsuite review here.
  • SmarterQueue – An all-in-one social media management tool that boosts engagement and lets you curate, schedule, listen, reply, and analyze in one place (SmarterQueue comes highly recommended by experts).
  • SocialPilot – Automates scheduling for a wide range of social media (I’m using it for Twitter and Facebook scheduling). You can read my review of Social Pilot here.
  • Tasty Pins plugin –  WordPress plugin that hides and optimizes Pinterest images in your blog posts.