Posting regularly on social media is one of the best ways to encourage customer engagement. A Facebook account that has been silent for six months is not a good advertisement for your business! But for many business people, finding the time to search for relevant articles or write interesting posts can be almost impossible. Then they realize they haven’t posted in a while, and put something – anything! – up, just to have something there. Sound familiar?
There is a better way! You can take charge of your social media presence without spending a huge amount of time and energy. The solution is to automate your social media content. Social media automation can help you schedule content according to your marketing plan (you have a marketing plan, right?). You invest a little time in planning your content, and the automation helps find that content and post it regularly. Here are the top reasons why you should automate your social media.
- It will save you time. Keeping up to date with all of your social media accounts can be tedious and time consuming. This takes valuable time away from all of the other important tasks you need to accomplish to run your business. Some automation systems will even suggest content to post that is relevant and up to date so you don’t have to spend time searching. You can review the suggested content and add high quality images to catch your audience’s attention.
- It’s easier to manage. When you automate your accounts, you can then manage them all in one place, instead of having to jump from site to site. Having all of your accounts in one location makes it easier to reply to comments or questions, which is so important for customer engagement. Ignoring customer questions is a big no-no!
- You get the big picture. When your social media accounts are automated and all in one place you can easily check the analytics. You can compare across your accounts to see what is working and what isn’t. Review your marketing campaign reports and make adjustments as necessary.
- Your messaging will be consistent. Having your accounts in one place makes it easy to have a consistent message across all of your platforms. You don’t want to post about your awesome sale on Facebook and forget about it putting on Instagram. While it is best to cater your posts to each platforms audience, don’t worry about posting the same thing on multiple platforms. Seeing the same thing over and over makes it easy to recall and creates brand awareness.
- You will have a schedule! Being consistent with when you will post is also important. How many times have you seen a Facebook page where there are ten posts in a week and then nothing for two months? Would you bother posting a question to that Facebook page? You don’t have to post every day but posting regularly (whatever that is for you) will let your customers know that you are still engaged with the platform. Automating your posts is the easiest way to stick with a schedule.
Automation helps you stay on track with your social media marketing strategy and saves you time and energy. You’ll finally feel like you’re on top of your social media rather than running along playing catch-up. And your social media will feel more like the customer engagement tool it should be, rather than a chore you’d rather avoid. Your messaging will be consistent. Your posts will be timely. And you’ll have time to respond to customer comments and questions and really engage with your audience, the way social media is supposed to be!
If you are ready to automate your social media posts, check out our social media posting platform. Or, if you would rather someone else take care of it for you, you can check out our social media management services.