More often than not, when we ask construction business owners why they haven’t yet taken their business onto social media the answer we receive is, “We just don’t have the time for it right now.”
Our immediate response is always the same: “Do you know about social media automation?” To those who are unfamiliar with the tools that are used to automate the process of posting content to social networking websites, it’s easy to come to the quick conclusion that social media automation won’t save them much time at all.
After all, somebody’s still got to find the time to find relevant content and schedule posts, haven’t they? Yes, but now we have the ability to set aside a specific chunk of time to update our social media profiles. If you want a post to go out at, say, 2pm you no longer have to be logged on at that time in order to communicate with your customers online.
Customers now expect businesses to be “always-on” – what with being connected 24/7 via their mobile devices – but prior to social media automation, that wasn’t achievable for more modest-sized organisations. However, social media automation can give the impression that you are active throughout the day on social networks, even when you’re doing your day job.
Social media automation doesn’t only give you some of your time back. Here are two other ways you can benefit from scheduling your posts in one hit:
Bring about some consistency
Marketers are forever being reminded about the importance of consistency. By maintaining a consistent tone and personality across all the social networks, your followers will get a sense for who you are.
An approach which varies from week to week will make it really difficult for your followers to relate and build solid relationships with your business. Social media asks businesses to show their human side – minus the mood swings.
Inconsistency tends to show itself when more than one person is assigned the job of posting on social media and the individuals don’t take any time to sit down and discuss the brand voice or a content strategy.
Social media automation, however, encourages social media specialists to make sure they are all reading off the same page. They will have the posts queued up in front of them, so they have no excuse but ensure their posts are in-line with their colleagues’. Or, if they are in sole charge of the firm’s social media campaign, that their posts are in keeping with previously published posts.
Ensures regularity of content
We might not agree with it, but social media tends to get put on the backburner when things get hectic. Businesses know that they shouldn’t say “I’ll do it later” (then “later” never comes), but they can’t help themselves because social media doesn’t often present any tangible and immediate gains.
It’s entirely understandable why firms might think like this, but in doing so they are undoing all the good work they have achieved on social media up to that point. If you go as long as a week without posting, engagement will sink to zero, which will subsequently make life online much more difficult for yourself as you’re essentially going from a standing start.
Enter social media automation tools: they allow you to get some control over your strategy, meaning you’ll never need to say “it can wait” ever again. You can line posts up at the start of the day, so if 10am comes and you’re out of the office, it doesn’t matter; content will be ready and waiting to go.
So, what tools and apps should you be investing in?
- Hootsuite: Hootsuite provides you with a social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks. It allows you to manage multiple social networks, schedule tweets and messages, track brand mentions, and analyse social media traffic.
- Buffer: Buffer is similar to Hootsuite in that it helps you manage multiple social media accounts at once. It also gives you the ability to schedule content from anywhere on the web, collaborate with team members, and provides you with a rich set of statistics on how your posts perform.
- Pagemodo: Pagemodo is specifically designed with small business marketers in mind – allowing them to easily share and schedule content without it impacting on their busy working day. The addition of the Discover content tab means you can quickly find articles that are relevant to you, your business category, or the topic you’re interested in posting about.
- Sprout Social: Sprout Social, with its easy-to-navigate user interface, makes it the go-to automation resource for those businesses lacking in technical expertise. Users state that with Sprout you can “get things done in so many fewer clicks than on other platforms”, making it good value for money.
We’ll keep the number of tools at four for the time being, as to not bombard you with choice before you’ve even got going. We leave with Hootsuite’s ‘dos and don’ts’ of social media automation, which act as very good advice indeed:
DON’Ts
- DON’T send out automated direct messages to your followers. This will just be read as spam.
- DON’T take a one-size-fits-all approach. Your followers will know if you’re just going through the motions.
- DON’T forget to analyse your scheduled posts. Metrics breed improvement.
- DON’T forget to read the articles you’re sending out. Don’t just assume that it’s relevant to your audience from the title.
DOs
- DO schedule your posts before you jet away on holiday. Remember, a week away from social media is as bad as having a month off.
- DO use social media automation to fill the gaps in your content calendar. Content curation – sharing other people’s content – is an important part of any social media strategy.
- DO use social media automation tools to find out the best time to post. The tools will provide you with analytics which will reveal when your customers’ engagement rates are at their highest.
- DO add a personal touch to your scheduled posts. You still want your posts to read like they’ve come from you.
Here’s an extra one from us:
- DO seek advice if you want to make the most of social media automation tools but don’t feel confident in going it alone. Get in touch with us for a chat on 01202 788333 or marketing@lexisclick.com.
