7 Tips to Automate Social Media Marketing Like a Boss - CoSchedule Blog

7 Tips to Automate Social Media Marketing Like a Boss Blog I saw a speaker at a big conference tell thousands of marketers  that automating social media posting  is evil. This was my first thought: Uh. What? That is TERRIBLE advice. ^  Thats all caps, bold, italics, and underline. Because its really stupid advice. Heres why. In general, automating your social media posts  can help you: Schedule  once and reap long-term benefits. Get more results with less effort. Communicate consistently and intelligently with your following. Of course, there are automation fails you should probably avoid like automatically replying to mentions that contain positive words. Because you might just end up looking like this: Image curated from this post from Spokal. So  what should you automate? Automate the social media posts that share your content and curated content. Its that simple. Your other option is to take that speakers advice and: Sit in front of your computer all day long. Memorize the best times + days to post on every social network. Set up reminders on your Google Calendar to help you post at those times. Write messages and design graphics on the fly when its time to post. Log in and out of every social network account you manage. Try to multi-task (even though its been proven that multi-tasking decreases your productivity). Feel stressed out all day long. ^ That sounds terrible, doesnt it? ;) Automation Youre Already Super Comfortable With Let me compare automatically posting your social media content to something youre already super  comfortable with scheduling. You aim to have several blog posts complete for at least a couple weeks from now. That way, you dont have to stress at the last second, and post content that might not be up to your standards of performance. You schedule those blog posts. Thats a form of automation. With automatic social media posting, you write and design your content, then simply schedule it to share at a later date. This automation helps you complete  and schedule your work at one time to eliminate the tedious, manual busywork that would otherwise force you to multitask and dramatically decrease your productivity. Social media automation eliminates tedious, manual busywork.3 Social Media Automation Myths So lets look at  some of the illogic against automatically sharing your social media content. Here are some things people say: 1. Automated Social Media Posts Are Penalized Buffer compiled original research comparing organically posted Facebook messages against messages posted  from a third-party tool. The findings? Posts from third-party tools, like (and Buffer, which  nicely integrates with), do not receive less engagement than  natively posted Facebook messages. 2. Automated Social Marketing  Is Impersonal You still need to write  your messages and design the  visuals youll share. ^ This takes a personal touch. If anything, dedicating time to write and design your content ahead of schedule should help you create better content. You wont be creating on the fly and posting instantly, which gives you the opportunity to strategize rather than react. With automation, you simply decide to share that content at a later time. 3. Automatic Social Media Posting Strips Engagement You still need to plan time to respond + engage with your audience when they share your content, reply to your social shares, and reach out to you. ^ This is not something to automate. 7 Tips  To  Automate Social Media Posts Like A Boss 1.  Plan A Variety Of Messages  For  Each Newsfeed Sure, you can share content  headlines. But  as your audience looks at your newsfeed on any social network, youll want a variety of message types that tend to work extremely well. Think about: Pro Tip: Use the Headline Analyzer built into  your marketing calendar to brainstorm many versions of your headlines for social shares. This practice allows you to share the same piece of content across multiple networks multiple times without making it feel like youre just sharing the same thing over and over when you automate. 2. Write For Each Network While advice on writing for social media generally spans all networks, there are mechanics to consider with your text. You will want to write multiple  messages for each network, especially if you plan to recycle those in your social media automation. 3. Design For Each Network Like the actual text in your social media messages,  optimize your visuals for each network. 4. Create A Posting Schedule For Every Piece Of Content You Publish + Curate By this point, youve written multiple engaging social media messages for each network. Youve also designed and optimized your visuals for each network. Now its time to think about scheduling and automating those social media messages.   helps you organize a posting schedule you can reuse again and again. Its called Social Templates. That feature helps you create a social media campaign template once, then reuse it later to save you from the  tedious, manual busywork of social media scheduling. In your calendar, open the piece of content you want to share. Then add the Social Campaign. Click on the Social Templates icon, and + Create New Template. Name your Social Template, then use Social Helpers to create placeholders where youll later place your actual social media message content. I think of Social Helpers like form fields: You are creating the template youll fill in and reuse again and again later on. So Social Helpers are reminders of what you want to include  in your posting schedule. You can use Social Helpers tons of different ways but if you took my advice and wrote and designed engaging messages for each network, Id label your text helpers and image helpers to complement one another. Let me show you by example. Lets say you wrote and designed three Facebook messages. In your Social Template, create Social Helpers for each of the three messages with a Text Helper and Image Helper to complement each other. This will ensure you match up your content the way youd expect: Text Helper: {facebook1} Image Helper: {facebook1} Text Helper: {facebook2} Image Helper: {facebook2} Text Helper: {facebook2} Image Helper: {facebook2} You get the idea. Now you can flesh out a posting schedule for every network in one place. After  youve created your Social Template,  apply it to your content and fill in the Social Helpers with the messages youve created. Now youll automatically share engaging content well beyond the moment you wrote your social media messages. Social Templates are available in all new marketing calendars! 5. Automatically Share At The Best Times For Each Social Network As you create your  posting schedule, its helpful to know the best times to post  on each network. Youre more likely to get the engagement, shares, and traffic you deserve by automatically sharing your content when each specific networks audience is most active: Luckily for you, this data is  built right into . As you set up your Social Template and schedule your messages, you can leave your default schedule setting on Best Time. will automatically share your message on the day you schedule at the best time to increase your engagement. Its a nifty feature we call Best Time Scheduling, and its available in  all new marketing calendars. That means you get all the benefits of reaching your audience without having to remember all the tedious data  about when each networks  users are typically active. 6. Share The Perfect Amount On  Each Network Even when you set up campaigns for each piece of content you publish and curate, there will be times when youre missing  engagement opportunities: So how can you fill in the gaps in your posting schedule to  share the perfect amount to every social network, every day?