Nov
13
How to automate social media?
Posted by: deanbillings | November 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment
I’m not exactly lazy but I do like to conserve effort wherever possible. Okay, I’m a little bit lazy.
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- Remember this guy?
I have always been fascinated with the concept of bots such as those in homes, the military, Google cars, and online gaming.
In a recent article, Jeremiah Owyang of the Alimeter group described several growing categories of social media automation: Content Publishing on Timer, Social Content Optimization, and Virtual Agent Software.
Some seem to believe that much of this social media automation is basically borderline SEO manipulation, or becoming a value-add curator because one lacks the time to create content. Or create Twitter bots because one lacks the money to hire humans. (There are even Twitter bot competitions!).
Aggregating newsfeeds has been around for some time. Several very popular websites have started this way, such as the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, and have introduced competition for traditional newspapers in the process.
However, my searches of social media software or social media automation may simply be returning examples of existing software rebranded and revised to cash in on dazzling buzzwords. While some new monitoring software is undoubtedly innovative, some of it seems like rehashing of fairly long-standing software and web crawling functionality.
As you would expect, not all uses of automation have worked out in all cases. This Hubspot article describes a fairly funny example of over-using Twitter. In a follow up article, Hubspot lists the following 11 Social Media Automation Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague. IMO, these seem just like manifestations of typical marketing mistakes.
- You’re Scared of It
- You’re Using Way Too Much of It
- You Leave No Room for Ad Hoc Updates
- You’re Setting it and Forgetting It
- You’re Hiring an Agency to Manage It and Not Properly Setting Expectations
- Your Scheduled Updates Even SOUND Robotic
- Your Content Is Stale or Unremarkable
- Your Timing Is Way Off
- You Treat Scheduled Updates the Same Way on All Social Networks
- You’re Not Measuring Results and Adjusting Accordingly
- You’re Not Adding Sharing Links to Your Content
What do you think?