More and more social media strategies are employing auto-response, auto-retweet, auto-content generation, auto-whatever-possible tools. This goes against the grain of social media and is a recipe for getting out of touch with your constituents.
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The tension of automating some of your content but not all of it is a challenge. Scheduling posts, auto-tweets and auto-posting to Facebook are the three that we see most used with clients… and, there are other automated actions that do marvellous things and make your life easier online.
But if we automate everything then we can get lazy. We won’t engage with people, we will miss the behaviour patterns of real people… we will rely on the automation. Doing things manually and giving full attention to your audience takes time and effort and is often sacrificed but, real engagement is what social media is about and it’s where the value really is.
Don’t automate, find patterns.
Don’t get out of touch!
The above post was originally published here.
Find Patterns
We’ve been thinking some more on the idea that looking for patterns should be an everyday part of your business.
Your customers have habits and preferences. You should get to know what they are if you are engaging with them regularly. A personal knowledgable service is valuable and rewarding for you and your customers no matter what your business is. You can automate some things, but why would you want to lose the genuine interactions with real people.
Maybe you don’t care enough
If you automate your Twitter or Facebook updates, you could miss valuable interactions. If you take little responsibility for what is being said to your customers you might have missed the point. If your communication is an afterthought and given no value then maybe you don’t care enough about your business.
Take some responsibility for your business and/or organisation.
Don’t automate, find patterns.
