A few days ago I felt my jaw drop and a pang of annoyance run through my veins and professional being. One of the biggest problems I have with some people and companies in this world is dishonesty for the sake of getting your money in their pocket. Telling half the story or giving out a "rule" to follow that suites them and their services. There is no doubt about it, we promote our own business and we do believe our products are superior in certain ways to our competition. Likewise, we also know and admit to things we need to improve on, that's business, that's growth, and at the end of the day we happily work with clients who use alternative systems as well, including some that we've used prior to having our own social media management platform!
Products aside, and back to the topic here, I was annoyed at a twist, at a lie, being used in trying to sell to small business owners who are looking for and deserve real and truthful advice.
So what exactly was this twisted truth about? I'd read an article from a social media "expert" whom had a lovely set of "rules" you need to follow for successful social media, another post, another list type article. The 3rd item on the list was "don't use automation". Now we've seen this statement before, and occasionaly even seen it properly explained. This author failed in their exlanation and follow up and was, to put it in the nicest of terms, totally uneducated and misleading, moreso in the end selling their services to be paid to do your social media for you. THis is all well and good to a point, we all have a service to sell, but as social media and online "experts" one of our key roles is to educate and guide with truth and integrity, at least that's our opinion.
The "education" this self proclaiming "expert" should have been giving was : Learn how to use automation wisely to maximise your engagement opportunities.
Time is everything, not telling you anything new there right? Creating time for real engagement opportunities such as replying to comments, answering questions and replying to messages is what matters for sales and building business, having time to create and develop relationships with customers. THis is where automation comes in and is essential. You don't want to be manually doing a timeline post at 10pm when you know your target audience is online, or at 10am when the phone is ringing or you're in the middle of a real paying job.
When self managing your social media as a business, regardless of what platform you are on, automation and scheduling of posts allows you to both be better organised and save time to concentrate on the relationship building.
So when should you use automation?
- Posts. Go ahead, use it for as many initial posts as you want. Set aside an hour a week and use what ever scheduling tool you prefer. Naturally we recommend our own NRSSocial.com, the Visual Composer has a massive graphic librray and templates ready to be customised quickly with your own text and logos making the job very easy, however there are others. Put your writing hat on and get posts planned, written and all scheduled at once, distributing them throughout the week or months ahead. Sign up for a FREE account to find out more at http://social.nrssocial.com/signup
- Private Messaging. Letting the customer know you'll get back to them or auto responders on "tell me more" type information requests are fine. An instant reply, all customisable on Facebook Messenger, thanking them for their enquiry and letting them know exactly when they will have their question answered is often appreciated. Visit https://www.facebook.com/help/1615627532020480/ to find out more on enabling Facebook auto repies.
In summary, anyone who says "don't use automation" as a rule is only telling you half the story, and the truth is they are probably using it themselves in one way or another. By telling you this, they are not helping your workload in the ongoing battle to balance posting and real engagement, rather more likely hoping you'll give them the business of doing your posts (which they'll most likely automate) so you can find time to do the replies and comments each day. That is a choice and an option, however don't be sucked in straight away. Automation is easy, IS of great benefit, and systems such as NRSSocial and others have been developed to help consolidate your businesses social media and give you back the time for the important things.
If your ever in the situation where you can't work out whether a so called guru is up to scratch, look at their Facebook banner from both desktop and mobile/app versions of Facebook. Is text cut off each side? Does the artwork look like it came come MS Paint? If they can't get that right, what can they really do for you?
