As your business grows and your presence on social media increases, it can seem like a daunting task to keep up with posting every day, especially when you have so much of the ‘real’ work of your business to get done.

This is why more and more business owners are moving towards social media automation tools to save on time throughout the working week. Online apps such as Hootsuite and Kurasie allow you to manage your social media platforms on one dashboard. As well as being able to easily access and compare what is happening across your platforms, you can also schedule in updates to go out throughout the week and month.Thus, you can sit down at the beginning of the week and take an hour or so to input your content in batches – saving on time and energy later in the week.

For many business owners, whether operating across multiple platforms or just a couple, this has proved to be extremely useful. Especially when you are out of the office or in meetings, you can still keep your social media presence active. It can also be a beneficial to utilise these tools when you have a global business, operating across different timezones.

Whilst you are asleep, your social media accounts don’t need to be.

However, social media automation can go wrong if not handled correctly. There are a few simple rules to follow to ensure you get the most out of these apps without making mistakes which could set you back instead of propelling you forward.

Social Media Automation Do’s

• Create a content plan. This will enable your to plan your posts to correspond to important dates and events in your business and industry.
• Set aside time to schedule posts weekly or monthly to get the most out of social media automation.
• Remember you can re-post some of your updates: statistics show only roughly 10% of your Twitter followers will see any one post.
• Use analytics tools such as those found in Hootsuite & Kurasie to measure which of your posts perform best, and then replicate the type of post in your strategy. You can also see what time it is most affective to send out posts for your business, by looking at your followers interactions with posts at different times of day.
• Keep tabs on your accounts and reply to comments – human relationships are really important on social media and should not be neglected just because you have automated some of your posts.

Social Media Automation Don’ts

• Sound like robot – it’s important to maintain a human voice to encourage engagement on social media.
• Replicate content across social media channels. Whilst you can talk about the same topics, don’t post exactly the same thing. Tailor your content accordingly – for example Facebook users tend to ignore hashtags.
• Be too repetitive, yes you can repeat content monthly, but not all the time, your followers will get bored and stop listening to what you have to say.
• Don’t forget to keep up with what’s going on in the outside world. It’s important to comment on current events and developments in your industry. You should still login in daily to check what your key stakeholders are saying, and include additional posts accordingly.
• Assume that because you have inputted your posts for the month, you can sit back. Things can and do go wrong with automation, so it’s worth logging in regularly to ensure everything is going to plan and click on your links to make sure they actually work.

If you are looking to take some the stress out of managing your social media platforms try our own social media automation tool Kurasie free for 90 days.