Social media marketing can be powerful.
You can target customers based on their interests, location, age, behaviour and more. And better still, you can capture them at a time when they’re not too busy… You have their attention.
Social media marketing allows you to enter your customer’s world. And while you’re there, you can use the opportunity to promote your product or service.
Powerful, yes. But, automating your social media marketing efforts is a lot easier to get wrong than right. Here are our key things to beware of.
Don’t Be A Robot
We’ve talked before about the importance of humanising your communications. And this is especially important for social media activity. You’re interrupting your audience in a social, informal setting, so don’t be too formal with your message.
When automating your social posts or direct messages, keep it personal and conversational. There are some great tools out there to help you schedule. Try tools like WeConnect and Dux-Soup to master your LinkedIn automated strategy. They can help you connect, follow up and manage your conversations.
(A word of warning though: you need to be VERY careful with automating anything on LinkedIn. The platform explicitly forbids the use of automation tools, and has got pretty good at spotting them. So you didn’t hear about them from us.)
Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite allow you to schedule content for posting across multiple channels. And automating targeted paid content on social can be an effective part of automated customer journeys.
Whatever social channels you use, remember to consider your audience and the context of your messages when you’re planning your content and scheduling.
Don’t Be Fake
In a world of product influencers and fake news, remember to be authentic in your approach.
Automation is effective, but is even better when you adopt an authentic and human tone. A great way of keeping things authentic is to behave and think like a human. Reply to posts, share the activity of others and engage with your audience often. Be creative with your replies; they’re also an opportunity to promote your brand.
Don’t Buy Followers
Stay well clear of this all-too-common shortcut. When you buy followers, you’re buying unengaged people. Choose to use this money elsewhere to grow engagement with real followers. By choosing engagement over the volume of followers, you’re choosing quality over quantity.
And Last But Not Least…
Don’t be lazy!
The best marketers won’t use this time saved as an excuse to sit around. Instead, they will keep a close eye on things. They will track results and optimise future automation practices.
So now you know what not to do, find out how you can use marketing automation before, during and after conversion.
Discover how marketing automation could work for your business get in touch today.
