4 Tips to Automate Your Social Media Efforts

Being active on social media is vital to the success of your business, but, let’s face it: content curation can be tedious and time consuming. If you spend a ton of time focusing on your social media efforts, productivity with other tasks can drop pretty quickly.
Although having a social media presence is a necessity, you need to find a balance if your business is going to be successful.
That is where social media automation comes into play.
You can use automation to be more efficient with social media, and here are a couple of strategies to help maximize your efforts.

1. Connect accounts

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Connecting your accounts across different social media platforms can be a great way to increase productivity, especially if you are just starting out.
This is the most basic type of automation and involves syncing one account with another to seamlessly publish the same content to both.
For example, you can connect your Twitter account to your Facebook page, and have tweets automatically published on Facebook. The same can be done if you want to connect your Instagram account with the Facebook page you manage.
If you’re looking for something with more extensive options, you could check out Zapier, a great tool that lets you automate all sorts of tasks, including social media automation. Some of the automation tasks include:

• Posting from one Facebook page to another
• Posting YouTube videos to Facebook
• Cross-posting tweets to LinkedIn
• Tweeting new RSS feed items

Word to the wise, use this strategy in moderation. It can save a ton of time, but you don’t want to alienate anyone who follows you on multiple platforms. No one wants to see the same image or post over and over and over.

2. Sync your blog

Another easy way to automate your social media activity is to sync your blog. As it turns out, this is actually the first thing you should do to help get the word out about new posts.
Syncing allows you to automatically post updates on social media, once you publish new content. Here are a couple of plug-ins that could help with syncing your blog and social media accounts:

• WP to Twitter – It allows you to automatically send a tweet when you update your WordPress blog.
• WP to Buffer – This plug-in sends updates to your Buffer account for scheduling updates on different social media accounts.
• Social Media Auto Publish – A plug-in that allows publishing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, using customizable messages and filters.

If you want a tool that will help schedule and plan your blog posts, as well as sync them to social media, you should check out CoSchedule, a paid tool for managing editorial calendars and auto posting.
No matter how you implement it, this strategy is great for saving time, as one click is all you need to publish both on your blog and social media. Keep in mind this tactic can lack a personal touch so make sure to combine it with other automation strategies for the best results.

3. Reshare content

Another useful strategy is to reshare content from others. Resharing is an effective way to build your social media following plus, it also counts as a form of engagement since you’re supporting the efforts of whoever posted the content in the first place!
As you scroll through your newsfeed and engage with followers, you could either click share/retweet on the spot, or load the content into a curation platform such as ScoopIt, Feedly, or Curata.
Or, you could automate the whole process with a tool like Octosuite, which scans trending posts and viral content for you to find the best re-shareable content out there.

Once the system has found the content, you can reshare immediately or schedule the post for later, which makes it really easy to fill up your social media calendar. Octosuite is a super helpful automation tool, especially if you’re a heavy Facebook user.
Being active on social media is very important if you plan on building a reputation and gaining authority, even if you’re too busy to create original content. A lack of original content can also be a drawback, so be sure to use this strategy in moderation.

4. Use a curation tool

Basic tips like connecting and syncing accounts definitely help get the ball rolling, but you’ll need to delve into some higher level stuff if you want to really kick it up a notch.
As the need for efficiency in social media grows, new companies have emerged with more complex functional solutions. There are a ton of curation tools out there now – HootSuite, Buffer, and SproutSocial are some names you might recognize, and an all-in-one tool like SociHub is also a good option.
These tools allow you to create custom, personalized messages and publish them across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. Calendars and pre-scheduling help you get ahead of the game while analytics and monitoring allow you to keep track of overall performance.
With different tools offering different options and integrations for marketers, you’ll be able to find one that works with your strategy. Chris Makara surveyed over 100 experts to discover their favorite social media management tools if you’re interested in learning more.

Automate Your Social Media Now

Automation is a very useful tool to implement within your social media accounts and can greatly increase productivity.
Always keep your intended audience in the forefront of your mind and combine different approaches for the best results to be sure your social media doesn’t feel automated. The goal is to be active and increase engagement with social media automation becoming an assistant when you’re swamped with other tasks.
Grab a helpful tool, implement these tips and get started! Once you master these strategies, you’ll be on your way to get the most out of social media in the least amount of time.

Which of these strategies do you use to save time you spend on social media? Please leave a comment if you have some other tricks up your sleeve! And share if you know someone who would enjoy learning about these strategies as well!

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