5 Social Media Automation Tools to Help You Manage Your Time More Efficiently
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Loading... - Gemma Brown
- 30 Jul 2021
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Automation remains a controversial topic among some social media managers. To some, automation is seen as inauthentic - you can't build real engagement without actually engaging, and responding to your audience. But others find that a level of automation, combined with personal interaction, can save a heap of time and efforts, making it easier to post at the right times, maintain account activity and provide responses faster and more effectively.
Used well, social media automation tools can be just as effective as the content that you schedule using them. If you create genuine, engaging content, you'll be able to maximize its performance through strategic use of automation tools.
Here are five social media automation options that can help you manage your time more efficiently.
1. DrumUp
DrumUp is a social media management and content curation tool for businesses of any size. Using the tool, you can curate content by setting-up industry keywords and RSS feeds. This content and custom content can then be scheduled through various means and methods.
The tool has a 1-click schedule mechanism for posts, while you can also add hashtags and @mentions suggested by the tool to curated posts and then auto-schedule them. You can also save posts to customizable content libraries and schedule them at a later date.
If your brand has a lot of evergreen posts, you can store them in libraries and set them up on auto-posting schedules to maximize traffic.
2. IFTTT
IFTTT is a multi-faceted automation platform which enables you to create 'recipes' between automation tools to build more complex automation tasks.
For example, in the above image, you can see recipes that will automate posting updates about your latest Wordpress blog posts to social platforms - each recipe involves a trigger and a response, which can be between various apps of your choosing.
This is not always the ideal posting strategy, as you want to ensure you're making best use of the tools on each social platform, but it is worth considering how IFTTT can be used to maximize your efforts - there's a heap of recipes on offer.
IFTTT also has integrations which include email, notepads, calendars and more.
Some social media-specific recipes include automatic cross-posting of Instagram photos on Twitter, automatic sharing of newly published videos on Facebook and more.
3. Survey Anyplace
Survey Anyplace is a survey maker tool which you can use to collect information from your target audience. The tool enables you to add brand signage to your surveys, adding a more individualized element.
When you sign-up on Survey Anyplace, the tool automatically pulls your logo from the email address you provide. You can work with different templates which can be text-based, image based, or can even simply be an emoji form to gauge audience emotion and reactions.
Survey Anyplace can also be used as a way to get your audience to engage with you through interactive surveys.
4. Brand24
Brand24 is a social media monitoring tool which can help you keep tabs on all mentions of specific keywords across social networks and the web. Using the tool, you can better manage the reputation of your brand, and engage with your customers and target audience in real-time, in response to mentions.
Social media monitoring is a hugely underrated element in building an influential web presence. Unless you monitor your brand and industry keywords, you can’t participate in the conversations that occur among important people in your industry.
Monitoring the web and social media manually is a tough job, but you can automate the job by setting up keywords on a social media monitoring tool. Brand24 also has a mobile app which pushes notifications each time your brand or keyword gets a mention.
5. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a social media calendar tool which enables you to plan and execute your social media marketing strategy more easily. You can build templates for specific actions in the tool, then add them to your calendar, helping to streamline your planning process.
The templates available on CoSchedule enable you to create promotion schedules, while you can also save templates to the tool’s library, which can then be added to your publishing calendar as you need.
CoSchedule’s calendar reflects scheduled content, and enables you to edit, delete and move social media posts at your convenience.
Wrapping Up
Social media automation can be a smart way to make room for more important elements on your schedule, such as analytical review and strategic planning. Using social media automation tools, you can spare yourself some manual work and concentrate on what will really make a difference.
