Social Media Marketing Automation for Beginners

Use these seven guiding principles to help you select the social media automation tools best suited to meet your needs.

It’s no longer a question whether businesses should be active on social media. Today’s consumers habitually consult platforms like Facebook to read customer reviews, peruse content, and generally assess the companies and professionals they’re considering working with. Consequently, a poor or nonexistent presence means lost business.

But finding the time to routinely post and engage with an audience can be a significant challenge, particularly for small businesses owners consumed with the day-to-day operations of their companies and serving their customers. That’s why automated social posting and other means of streamlining your online activity are necessary for managing your limited time, energy, and other resources effectively.

In this Silver Dollar episode, we suggest seven principles to help guide your strategy for social automation and decide which tools are best for you.

1. Identify the tasks most appropriate to automate. You can’t automate everything, so we offer ideas for what you can take off your plate.

2. Develop a content calendar. There are template options available for posting automated social media content, but you can also create your own. In addition to advising that your content be timely and relevant, we share the best days and times to post to encourage maximum engagement.

3. Use social listening tools. You’ll want to keep abreast of what people are posting about your brand so you can respond appropriately. Social media listening tools like the ones we note monitor sites for mentions of your selected keywords and provide you with reports of what they find.

4. Implement chatbots. Chatbots are now routinely familiar to consumers, and they can easily handle some of the basic administrative functions that, in the past, could drain hours of your time.

5. Automate your analytics reporting. A tool that reports in an easy-to-understand fashion how your content is performing will guide you toward what needs to be changed.

6. Increase the efficiency of your authentic engagement. As we mentioned, you can’t automate everything, and there will be times when you’ll need to personally engage with visitors and followers. The Dollar Eighty Chrome extension can help keep you on track, ensuring you add your two cents in the form of a comment on nine posts across ten different hashtags each day.

7. Choose the right automated social media management tool for your needs. There are many to choose from, including Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social, but we think ours—with its automated features, ease of use, and exceptional benefits others simply don’t offer—is the best. Give us a chance to tell you why.

We hope you enjoy this episode and act on the advice Luke offers at the end. We’d also appreciate it if you took a moment to leave us a 5-star review and comment on Apple Podcasts. (We read them on air!) Thanks for listening!

Connect | Resources

• Visit staypaidpodcast.com/digital for a special discount and discover how easy social automation can be.
• FREE Social Media Bundle: Motivational Quotes – Use this package of social media graphics to up your game and encourage engagement! Download the .zip file to get started.

You can get more free resources, including e-books, printables, and lead magnets to attract new leads, by visiting our Resource Library.

Are you interested in working with Luke and Josh to improve your marketing, get more referrals, enjoy more repeat business, and begin living the life of freedom you deserve? CLICK HERE and get a special offer just for Stay Paid listeners!