5 automation ideas for social media success
7th October, 2016
Social media is a fantastic way for accountants and business owners to connect with prospects, customers, influencers and even potential investors – but you need a plan.
Putting that plan into action can be daunting when you’re busy running a business, but at the same time, you need to be active on social media.
So, what to do?
We’ve put together some tools and techniques to help you automate parts of your social media marketing, so you can focus on growing your business.
Social media automation software and apps
The easiest way to automate social media is by using automation software and apps.
They all allow you to schedule social media posts in advance and monitor your accounts when someone mentions your brand or leaves a comment on a post.
If you’re just starting out, select just one tool and experiment with it by scheduling a couple of updates.
Most tools also have apps so that you can stay up-to-date with your social media accounts while on the go.
Some options to look at are:
Recycle evergreen content
Social media can be used to amplify a company blog, making sure content reaches the widest possible audience, or a very targeted audience.
Unless you literally started a blog last week, there’s a very good chance that you have some old blog posts in your archives.
While it wouldn’t make much sense to share an article that discussed the hottest marketing trends of 2010, you could share content which is timeless and still relevant.
Tweet multiple times
While you don’t want to be a social media account that floods your followers’ feeds with the same content, there’s also no rule saying that you can’t post it multiple times.
The most effective Twitter users tweet three times per day.
Even if you are only sending out the same content, you’re increasing your chances of it getting noticed by a different audience.
If you are doing this, we recommend creating different tweets or posts to introduce the content.
If you look at your audience, most people will find that they are from all over the world.
This means that whenever you tweet, you’ll have followers online.
I like to set up a schedule for tweeting several times a day at specific times. I then go and find my best pieces of content and schedule them out over the coming weeks.
This allows me to spend a couple of hours a month creating a good base level of great tweets. Of course, you can post whenever you like – tweeting and post things that are topical at the time.
This is just scheduling things so when you get busy, you don’t look inactive.
Curate content
Social media isn’t just about sharing content that you’ve created. It’s also about sharing other people’s content and treating it like a community.
No one likes someone that just talks about themselves!
Thankfully, curating is easier than ever with the help of those automation tools.
For example, Hootsuite gives you the option to discover suggested content that you’re interested in based on keywords.
Newsfeeds like Feedly, dlvr.it and Scoop.it can also be used to curate and share relevant content.
If you need a more heavyweight content curation tool, take a look at Curata.
The human touch
Finally, you have to realise that you can’t automate 100 percent of your social media activity – as tempting as that is.
There need to be moments when you have an actual interaction with customers, fans or followers.
People can easily notice when you’re not doing this, and it gives the impression that the account is basically a robot.
Instead of getting overwhelmed, focus on accomplishing one task whenever you have some down time.
This could be anything from responding to or leaving comments, interacting with your clients or prospects, personally sharing updates or refreshing your profile.
Try finding a little bit of time each day or each week to give your account a human touch.
The more personal touch, the more real you are to your followers and fans. This gains trust and with their trust you can make a more powerful impact online.
Learn more about social media
Bizink and MYOB have teamed up to present Marketing Quickstarter. It’s a series of online workshops to help MYOB Partners succeed online.
The session on Thursday 13 October is about social media. Register now to secure your free place.
Or to take your social skills even further, I’m running a course this month. There are only 20 places available.