Social Media Automation
Do you use automated tools to post to your social media sites? I know many people use different third party tools which are very helpful for organizing, tracking, scheduling and managing. And managing the onslaught of information and interaction is a key part of the social end of social media. But there are some down sides to it:
- Static messages across platforms.
I have this blog automatically publish to several platforms, but I don’t have the option to customize the message that goes to each one to the audiences. - Not all social media sites are represented on third party programs.
Most are, and many aren’t, and the features that are included are rudimentary. - Not engaging at the base platform.
If you post from other sources it shows. People can see on most by default and audiences notice where the post comes from, and sees you’re not actually there. - Circular Display.
Today you can connect your Pinterest to your Facebook to your Twitter to your Blog to your Linkedin to your Instagram ….. So if you post to one, you end up with duplication of posts, and it can get messy. - Display.
This is an issue mainly with Facebook, where third party posts are less likely to appear in users feeds (some have put this as about 1/3 the frequency of direct posts). Of course with Facebook always twiddling with their feeds, especially from page updates, it’s not an exact science, but the whole point of posting is to reach your audience, and if you’re not, then that’s an issue.
So how do you overcome the balance of multi-tasking and cross-platform messaging with the organizational features and added tools that the third party programs offer?
Simple, visit the sites. Post in combination with your automated posts, so users can see you do show up there. Engage with your users on the platform. Customize some of the posts for the platforms as well. But most importantly?
Visit the Platforms and Look
You can go visit company (or individual’s who are branding themselves) and see the exact same content across all channels, with no variation. Sometimes you see even multiple posts of the same content. It’s annoying, and it’s sloppy. That affects the brand.
Worse, if you get a connection wrong, you might be posting to the wrong place. I know a company that has gone through many changes and each time someone else took over the social media management, changes took place. Now their Facebook page has been stagnant for over a month. Why? They got the connection wrong. They’re posting to an old ID that no one uses. Why is it still happening? Because no one checks. What’s the effect? Loss of page fans, no engagement with existing ones, and the throwaway ID had a limited audience because it’s not promoted.
So go into your pages, your profiles, your accounts and stop by to look and interact. That’s what you’re supposed to do on social media anyway, BE SOCIAL. Engage with others, don’t just “hang out at home”.
And while you’re there, customize your messages. Afterall, aren’t we all a little sick of seeing hashtags in Linkedin Feeds and truncated tweets?
