4 Underrated Social Media Automation Practices (+Tools)

The world of social media is always changing. Whether it’s TikTok marketing or Instagram marketing, it’s almost as if each day brings new trends, new discoveries, and even new meanings of words.

The way we use social media and its various platforms also continues to evolve. There are so many different strategies for using these sites that it can be a little overwhelming at times. 

Regardless of all these changes, one thing remains constant – you need to automate your social media presence if you want to remain relevant in today’s world.

Social media automation is the secret sauce when it comes to streamlining your social presence without sacrificing time and resources. These tips will help you set up an automated workflow that optimizes engagement with minimal effort from you or your team. 

Read on for some of the most overlooked yet effective practices and tools when it comes to automating your social media presence, as well as some easy-to-implement ideas for doing so without completely saturating your followers and viewers with updates from every corner of the internet.

Social Media Automation Practices: How Far Can You Go?

First, let’s dispel the myth that social media automation is somehow “cheating” or inauthentic. 

In actuality, social media automation can be used to supplement your organic content and help you free up time to focus on other tasks (like creating more great content!).

A solid social media automation practice will take into account the following:

• The ability to post updates across multiple platforms with little effort
• Scheduling content in advance so that you’re not scrambling at the last minute
• Repurposing content to get the most mileage out of each update
• Analytics tracking to help you gauge what’s working and what isn’t

By all means, social media automation can be so much more than scheduling posts in advance. These days, there are automation tools that can help you with everything from content curation to identifying influencers in your niche.

Often-Overlooked Social Media Automation Practices

Social media automation should be so much more than just setting up a few automated posts and forgetting about them. If you want to do social media right, you need to think about automating the more tedious tasks so that you can focus on bigger-picture strategy and content creation. 

Automate Your Content Calendar

One of the most important aspects of social media management is staying organized and keeping track of your content. 

Once you get the hang of things, it’s easy to get into a content creation groove and start pumping out great updates on a regular basis. But if you’re not careful, it’s all too easy to let things slip through the cracks.

That’s why a solid calendar is a must-have if you want a well-oiled social media machine. By keeping track of your content, you can ensure that you’re always ahead of the game and never scrambling to come up with something at the last minute. 

This can be a full-time job in and of itself, especially if you’re managing multiple channels and platforms. 

The good news is, there is plenty of great time tracking for Mac and Windows that can help you automate and monitor this process. 

• CoSchedule
• SmarterQueue
• Google Calendar

Showcase Live Social Media Feeds on Websites

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram each allow both large and small businesses to communicate with their clients in a more intimate and direct manner. But, few people who use your services are aware of your presence on social media.

They may not be aware that you upload photos of events or people who use your products on Instagram. Or, regularly post product videos on relevant social media. 

Why not showcase your best content on your website by embedding your feeds from social media directly on your site? Because you can do it at no cost, it’s an easy decision.

Use RSS to Find Topics to Buffer

If you’re looking for a way to quickly and easily find content to share on social media, RSS is your best friend. RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) is a technology that allows you to subscribe to content from websites and blogs so that new updates are automatically delivered to your feed reader. 

This is an incredible time-saver when it comes to social media because it allows you to quickly find and share relevant content without having to scour the internet yourself. All you need to do is set up a few RSS feeds from your favorite websites and blogs, and the content will come to you.

There are a number of great RSS readers out there, but our favorites are Feedly and Inoreader.

Use Triggers to Automate Responses

Another great way to automate your social media presence is to set up triggers that will automatically respond to certain actions. 

By automating responses, you can free up valuable time that would otherwise be spent manually responding to comments, questions, and messages. 

Also, your audience doesn’t have to wait as long to get a response from you.

A few examples of triggers that you can automate include:

• Answering frequently asked questions
• Responding to comments on your posts
• Sending out automatic DMs to new followers
• Thanking people for retweeting your content
• Automatic social media ad campaign data export to track results, e.g., Facebook Ads exporting.

For example, you can use IFTTT (If This, Then That) to create a “recipe” that will automatically post your latest blog update to Twitter whenever you publish a new post. 

You can also use Zapier to automate a variety of tasks, including sending out automated thank-yous to new Twitter followers and adding new leads to your CRM.

Use Semantic Markup to Get More Visibility

If you’re not using semantic markup, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to get your content in front of more people.

Semantic markup is code that you can add to your website or blog that helps search engines better understand the meaning and context of your content. 

By adding semantic markup to your site, you can improve your chances of being featured in rich snippets and other search results features. This, in turn, can help you get more traffic and engagement from your social media updates.

While adding semantic markup to your site may sound like a daunting task, it’s actually not that difficult. If you’re using WordPress, there are a number of plugins that can help, including Yoast SEO and All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets.

Wrapping Up

Social media automation doesn’t have to be a dirty word. When used correctly, it can be so much more than just a way to spam your followers with automated updates. By following the tips and techniques outlined above, you can use social media automation to free up valuable time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.