Hey what’s up guys welcome to Inside The Mind where we talk about online marketing
strategy, what it is, why it’s important, and why you should care.
Hey guess What? this is the last episode before our big season finale! (yay!)
One of the questions I’ve been getting asked a lot lately is “Tommy, how do I automate
my social media?”
(Warning Warning Warning)
Now I have to be honest, I hate the term social media automation because it promotes this
whole set it and forget it type mindset. And if you automate too much, you’ll just look
like a human trying to be a robot.
You can love a robot for the work they do but don’t make the mistake of thinking they
can replace you entirely.
I like to believe you all take all of my advice, but if nothing else I hope you pay attention
to this: if you use any automation for your social media, don’t expect that the automated
tool is going to instantly make you rich and famous. There will always be work that you
have to do to get there.
Now, I don’t use a lot of automation myself, but I have started using a handful of tools
more recently and for the most part they’re achieving the goals I had for them.
First up, the tool I’ve been using the most regularly is called socialflow.com. A basic
account with social flow starts at $99/month but you can get your first month for $1.
Social flow falls into the “optimized scheduler” category, but what separates it from the other
scheduler programs like bufferapp or hootsuite is that it analyzes the linguistic content
of your stream to find the ideal time for you to publish.
So for example, if you’ve scheduled a piece of your own content on “landing pages”,
it will publish your link when enough of your followers are talking about “landing pages”
so you can get the maximum amount of clicks, retweets, and replies.
If you’re not interested in paying $99 a month for social flow... Sites like tweetwhen.com
(free) and whentotweet.com will tell you when most of your followers are online, and Bufferapp
will publish your tweets or facebook posts when most of your followers are online.
While this is useful, I still prefer socialflow because it doesn’t just focus on how many
people are online, but also what they are talking about.
. If you run multiple social media accounts,
tools like hootsuite, tweetdeck and buffer allow you to schedule your content and manage
multiple social media accounts all from the same interface.
Out of the free tools, buffer wins here because it will publish when the majority of your
followers are online. Plus, it gives you analytics so you can gauge the effectiveness of your
headlines.
There are plenty of tools like twitterfeed & Ping.fm that automatically push updates
out to multiple networks from any rss feed that you specify.
But, my belief is that it’s more important to put stuff out when people are going to
be the most likely to interact with it. Otherwise, your bot’s just like...
Publishing the same things to multiple networks doesn’t really give people a reason to follow
you across multiple platforms.. And that’s a lesson we covered back in Episode 1.
I also don’t recommend relying on automators, since Facebook has decided that these “auto
update” programs like rss graffiti, and networked blogs should be hidden from the
newsfeed. Since that’s the case now, what you’re doing to save yourself some time
ultimately does you more harm than good.
If you’re looking to automate who you follow, there are a TON auto follow tools for twitter
that are meant to help you follow the people who are most likely to engage.
I personally do not use these tools, as I believe in a more organic approach to gaining
followers. However, since these tools exist, you should get to know about them and make
your own decisions.
The highest rated out of these autofollow tools is Tweetadder which basically allows
you to follow targeted accounts based on keywords people use in their tweets or bios. You can
also automatically follow an account, or the people they follow, or the people who follow
them.
(Tgm Follow that?)
There are a number of other functions like being able to automatically reply to users
or send dms, but that’s a terrible idea. If someone is tweeting you, and your robot
sends out an automatic message that’s not even close to what they’re saying, you’re
just going to look like a tool. Which you should, because that’s what’s operating
on your behalf.
If you decide to use tools like this, use them with extreme care, as it can be very
easy to succumb to the dark side. (search your feelings, you know it to be true... Noooooo)
Like I said, I don’t use tweetadder, BUT, if I did, I would use its search function
to find and follow the people who are using the keyword of whatever the most recent piece
of content I was putting out.
That way, if they click on my profile, my most recent content would be relevant to them.
For a review on tweet adder, follow this link.
And If you’re just looking to automate some of your “listening” Tweetbeep is a service
that will send you email alerts letting you know when a specific keyword is used.
On a basic level, this can be useful for people who need to monitor mentions of their company
or products. But, service providers will also see the benefit, since they can easily filter
out potential customers who are asking questions related to the service they’re selling.
The point here is, if you’re going to use automation in your social media, use it wisely.
Don’t just set it and forget it. Keep updating its parameters so it operates as much like
you as it can.
I like socialflow a lot because it gives reports on the click and retweet data on each link
I publish.
With that data, I can analyze the headlines that get the most clicks, thus learning over
time how to write more eye-catching headlines.
I do use some automation in my social media, but I use it wisely by taking the time to
schedule the content and analyze the reports. Ultimately, I’m setting goals for my robots
to accomplish, and using them to create better content for my audience. They’re working
for me, not trying to become me.
For full reviews on each of the products mentioned in this episode, follow the links in the description.
And that’s all I’ve got for this week’s episode of Inside the Mind! Tell me, do you
use automation as part of your social media strategy? If so, I’d love to get your thoughts
on what you’re using and how you’re using it, in the comments below, or on Facebook
Twitter or google plus.
Oh yeah, and be sure to subscribe via email to get all of the episodes delivered to your
email and get exclusive bonus goodies.
Thanks so much for watching.