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Table of Contents

What Can Be Automated? ............................................................................................... 3

So What Should You Automate? ..................................................................................... 4

Scheduling Social Media Posts .................................................................................... 4

Detecting Most Shared Content in Your Industry ......................................................... 5

Tracking Followers/Unfollowers on Twitter .................................................................. 7

What Shouldn’t You Automate ........................................................................................ 8

Creating Auto-Generated Welcome Direct Messages for New Followers on Twitter ... 8

Auto-Posting Content to Multiple Platforms at the Same Time .................................... 9

Sharing Content of a Specific Type Automatically via Your Social Networks ............. 10

Tools of the Trade ......................................................................................................... 11

Buffer ......................................................................................................................... 11

Hootsuite .................................................................................................................... 13

IFTTT ......................................................................................................................... 14

Zapier ......................................................................................................................... 15

To Automate... ............................................................................................................... 15


Automation is one of the most useful and strategic ways to maximise your social media

presence, enabling you to reach your target audiences at optimum times, maintain an active

social media presence without having to be physically online 24/7 and ensure you remain

constantly aware of all relevant mentions and updates related to your brand. It can also be a

major turn off for prospective customers – automate too much, remove yourself too much from

the process, and you just become a robot. And no one likes talking to a robot. Do you like it

when you call a customer service line and get an electronic voice prompter instead of an actual

person?

A key element of social media is being social, interacting and being present, being available and

contactable for those seeking to reach you via your social channels. Social media provides

everyone, everywhere, with a voice – the key to maximising this medium, from a brand

perspective, is to be available to hear them. People use social to share their perspectives and

experiences, as a platform for their thoughts. If you automate too much, you’re not listening to

this, and people will turn away as a result.

So how do you do automation? What can you automate? What do you need to watch out for in

the process? In this guide, we’ll go through the basics of social media automation, covering as

many of the most frequently asked questions as possible. While we may not be able to cover

everything, we’ll certainly be able to give you a good idea of what you can achieve through

automated processes, and why millions of businesses and individuals around the world are

utilising automation to maximise their social media activity.

So first – what social media tasks can be automated and why would you do so?

What Can Be Automated?

There’s a huge amount of tasks that can be automated in social media, too much to list in one

report. Really, any process you can think of can likely be automated to some degree – the

question really comes down to what you want to do and why you want to do it. To get you

thinking of what’s possible, here’s an incomplete listing of some of the more commonly

automated tasks in social media marketing.

Scheduling content to be shared via social channels at optimum times

Detecting the most shared and discussed content in your industry

Creating auto-generated messages to thank users for certain actions

Posting to all social networks at once, rather than posting to each individually

Sharing content of a specific type automatically via your social networks

Automatically update your Twitter profile when your Facebook profile changes

Posting Instagram pictures to Twitter as embedded photos, not links

Saving favourited tweets to read later


Tracking price changes on eBay or Craigslist

Unfollowing people who don’t follow you back on Twitter

As you can see, there’s a huge spectrum of options in the automation tool kit – as all of your

tasks in social media are conducted via digital systems, everything is tracked, and everything is

logged. And most things can be automated, if that’s what you’d like to do. But you don’t want to

automate all of these things. Some of them are flat out bad practice that will only give you a bad

name, what you really want to do is to narrow down your pain points – what tasks take up the

most time or cause you the most headaches in social media marketing? Those are the tasks

you want to consider automating, and really, the only limit on this is in your own thinking, what

your imagination can come up with, as the tools are most likely already available.

So What Should You Automate?

While the definitive logic behind what you should consider automating comes down to your

individual wants and needs, there are a few things all brands should consider setting up to help

save time and better manage their social media presence.

Scheduling Social Media Posts

Among the most commonly automated tasks, scheduling posts would have to be the most

utilised function. Scheduling enables you to maintain an active social media presence, all the

time, without having to physically be present. And while you should still ensure you’re personally

responding to interactions and comments based on the content you share, you can do this quite

easily, while saving a huge amount of time through automation.

What’s more, automating your posts enables you to reach your audience when they’re most

active online. Using a tool like Followerwonk, for example, you can get a listing of the times of

the day when your Twitter audience is most regularly tweeting and interacting – posting at the

times of peak activity will increase your chances of being seen by those users.

https://followerwonk.com/


This is particularly relevant if your audience crosses various time zones – if your peak audience

is active at, say, 2am your time (as in the example above), through automation, you’d still be

able to reach them without having to be up till all hours.

Detecting Most Shared Content in Your Industry

One of the greatest strength of social media, for marketing purposes, is data. There’s a massive

amount of information being shared on social media each day, information you can listen-in to

and learn from in order to better inform your strategies and outreach practices. One way of

utilizing this data is to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s being discussed within your industry

– to do this, you can set up automated alerts to stay informed of social discussion around

specific topics and keywords.

Using a tool like BuzzSumo, you can set up e-mail alerts for mentions of specific keywords,

authors, shares of links and new content from specific URLs.

http://buzzsumo.com/


This automation tactic enables you to stay on top of industry news, and ensure you’re aware of

what’s trending, even when you don’t have time to be scanning through online sources. The

brand alert and domain alert functionality is particularly helpful when trying to keep tabs on

competitors – you just set up an alert for their domain and you’ll be made aware every time they

publish new content.


Tracking Followers/Unfollowers on Twitter

This one is a little more contentious, as it’s not all about the numbers in social. People will follow

and unfollow for their own reasons, you can’t get too caught up the “popularity contest” aspect

of it, but it can be helpful to see who unfollows you. For example, if you lost a heap of Twitter

followers on any given day, you’d want to know about it, because it may have been something

you said, you may be losing audience because of your tweets.

Using an app like Crowdfire, you can keep tabs on all the people who both follow you and

unfollow you in real-time.

https://web.crowdfireapp.com/


Crowdfire also enables you to see which of your followers are inactive (possibly fake profiles),

which users are not following you back, as well as providing options to help you find new people

to follow.

While having higher follower numbers is nowhere near as important as building a genuinely

engaged community, being aware of what’s happening within your Twitter following is worth

tracking – Crowdfire enables you to do just that.

What Shouldn’t You Automate

There are no definitive rules on what will and won’t work in social media marketing, and as

such, there’s no rulebook on what you should definitely not automate. Some brands might do

something that others would never get away with, the needs of your community and presence

will be largely unique to your brand. However there are a few practices that are generally

frowned upon, and while they do work for some, they can present you in the wrong light, and

damage your reputation as a result.

Creating Auto-Generated Welcome Direct Messages for New Followers on Twitter

This is one of the biggest peeves for social media marketers, and users more generally. There’s

a wide range of apps that enable you to set up auto-DMs (direct messages) that are sent to

people who choose to follow you on Twitter. The idea behind these is that they welcome new

followers, giving them a “personal” message to thank them for following.

It’s not personal. It’s pretty clear that these messages are auto-generated – the one thing that

you need to keep in mind in automation is that you can’t automate actual engagement. In this

sense, automation should not be used to replace something a human can, and should do – and

generally, sending a message to another person is something that works best coming from an

actual person.


Auto-Posting Content to Multiple Platforms at the Same Time

There’s an option within both Twitter and Facebook that enables you to link up your accounts

between the two social networks. In doing this, every time you send a tweet it will also be auto-

posted to Facebook, killing two birds with one stone, right? Wrong.

By linking the two, more often than not you’re killing all your engagement with one stone.

A key element that all social media marketers need to get a handle on is that all social media

platforms are different, each one has different best practices and procedures. Your audience,

too, is different on each - the better you understand this, the more effective your social presence

will be for it.

In this context, what you post on Facebook is not the same as what you post on Twitter. Why?

Hashtags for one – while hashtags are a staple of Twitter, they’re not widely used on Facebook

(in fact, studies have shown that using hashtags on Facebook can actually reduce the reach of

your posts). Given this, it makes little sense to have your tweets show up in Facebook News

feeds.

http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/09/03/study-hashtags-are-a-turn-off-on-facebook-reducing-the-viral-reach-of-posts/


As you can see in this example, a Facebook post which has been linked direct from Twitter,

while the information is all there, the mention of “retweeted” makes no sense in the Facebook

eco-system, and the various @handles don’t work – it just looks out of place. The user would

have been better posting this link direct to both Facebook and Twitter in order to maximise the

effect and utilise the unique strengths of each channel.

Sharing Content of a Specific Type Automatically via Your Social Networks

With all the emphasis on content marketing, an increasing number of brands and businesses

are looking to be active in this arena by constantly sharing content. And that makes sense, but

given that it also takes time – a luxury many business people don’t have – automated processes

have been developed which take the hassle out of the content curation process. The “hassle” in

this sense often being defined as reading, consuming and actually thinking about the content

they share.

Content suggestion tools can be a massive help – they use algorithms which detect the most

shared content amongst your communities and recommend other, similar articles and posts that

you might be interested in based on your audience, or on links you’ve shared previously. Some

content discovery tools also incorporate automated scheduling systems – using the content

discovery tool on social media data tool Klout, for example, gives you a one-click option to

schedule that recommended content to be sent out via your social profiles – even providing an

auto-generated tweet to streamline the whole process.

http://www.klout.com/


That functionality is handy, but it also makes it very easy for someone to share that content

without actually reading it, and that’s where the problem lies.

Anything you share via your social networks, any link you send out, that’s going to be presented

as something you support or endorse. If you share content without reading it, you’re taking a big

risk, not only because it may actually present an opinion which is in variance to your own, but

also because by presenting this as information you’ve read and agreed with, you’re giving the

impression that you have actually read it. What if, when you meet with a client, they ask you

about that content you shared the other day and you have no idea what they’re talking about –

what then?

More than just curation tools, there are automatic tools out there which can be set up to auto-

tweet out links from specific URLs and give the impression that you’re reading that content

when you’re not.

This should be made absolutely clear - you should never, ever be sending out links to any

content you haven’t actually read. It’s risky, it presents a false impression and it can reflect

badly on you, professionally. It may seem easier to just share out content from that writer you

like, just to ensure content keeps flowing through your social profiles, but the potential for fallout

is very high – automation should not be used for this purpose.

Tools of the Trade

So apart from those apps already mentioned in this guide, what are some of the best

automation tools for you to use and experiment with? There are a wide range of automation

tools and systems, all with functionalities specific to each, and specifically suited to each social

network. Deciding which is best for you will largely come down to personal preference – but to

get you started, here are some of the best automation tools available that you should consider

looking into, considered amongst the best in the game for what they provide.

Buffer

Buffer enables you to schedule content to be sent out via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+

and Pinterest.

http://www.buffer.com/


Buffer has been designed from the ground up with the user in mind, and as such, their tools are

incredibly responsive and intuitive. Buffer enables you to schedule and maintain streams of

social media posts to be sent out via your various social properties, as well as providing the

ability to build your own, tailored posting schedule (which Buffer can then use to ensure your

content is sent out at optimum times). Buffer is also integrated with Followerwonk, so you can

use the peak audience times provided by Followerwork to schedule content through Buffer’s

system.

In addition to scheduling, Buffer provides analytics on content sent through Buffer, including

likes, re-tweets, total clicks and potential audience reach for each post.


Hootsuite

Similar to Buffer, Hootsuite offers scheduling functionality to all the major social networks, along

with analytics and schedule creation options.

Hootsuite’s offerings extend further than Buffer’s, with users able to set up streams to search for

specific keywords or usernames across social networks, and advanced analytics functions

within the further reaches of the Hootsuite dashboard. Hootsuite also incorporates a range of

apps and tools that can also be set up within your streams to give you greater oversight of your

social media activities – the Crowdfire app mentioned earlier in this guide, for example, can be

set up within Hootsuite so you can track unfollowers from within your Hoostuite dashboard,

along with the rest of your social activity.

It should be noted, too, that both Buffer and Hootsuite have Google Chrome extensions that

enable in-stream scheduling – so when you’re reading something you want to add to your

schedule, you just click the extension tab and add it in, without leaving your reading window.

http://www.hootsuite.com/


IFTTT

IFTTT stands for “If This Then That”. The app works as a conduit between various social

networks and apps, enabling you to set up any number of ‘recipes’ that enable you to automate

functions – for example, through IFTTT you can set up recipes that will add your Instagram

photos to your Buffer queue or save Facebook photos you’re tagged in to an album on your

iPhone.

The possibilities of IFTTT are almost limitless, with so many tools and apps incorporated into

the IFTTT framework. There’s huge range of ready-made recipes listed on the site – if you can

think of what you want to automate, there’s a good chance IFTTT can do it for you.

https://ifttt.com/


Zapier

Much like IFTTT, Zapier enables you to automate social media tasks – though Zapier lists their

processes as “zaps” as opposed to IFTTT’s “recipes”.

Zaps are easy to set up and can be created to link various trigger events across devices and

apps to automate processes and tasks – the best way to work it out is to go to the website and

check out the available zaps, no doubt there’ll be some in there that take your fancy.

To Automate...

So there you have it, an overview of social media automation and the opportunities it provides

for users and businesses alike. While it can be, and often is, used poorly, automation is a critical

tool for a great many social media marketers the world over, and it’s a great way to free up time

whilst also maintaining an active presence. Done right, automation will change the way you

manage your social media efforts, helping you maximise your time and optimise your results.

And while misuse of automation has given it something of a bad name over the years, as you

can see from this guide, it really comes down to how you use it. The extent to which you

automate, or don’t, comes down to you, to your business and your individual needs. The best

way to approach automation is to first ask what you want to achieve. Tools should always come

second to purpose, just because you can automate something, doesn’t mean you should. By

approaching every element of your strategy with a goal in mind first, you’re seeking the tools

https://zapier.com/


and apps to best fit your needs, rather than structuring your strategy around what you know to

be possible. Because really, anything is possible, anything can be improved or automated if

required.

Start with what you want to achieve, what your pain points are, where you need to save time.

Then look to automation options to bridge those gaps. And you’ll be on your way.

Copyright

Social Media Automation 101 by Adel de Meyer

© 2015 by Adel de Meyer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying

without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief

quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is

specifically granted by the publisher or author.

Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained

herein, the author and publisher assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No

liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of information contained within.

If you have any questions please get in touch with me via my website contact form:

adeldemeyer.com

Thank you for reading!

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