Managing your social media accounts can be time-consuming and daunting, especially if you have multiple accounts to manage.
That's where social media automation comes in.
By automating repetitive tasks such as posting content, scheduling posts, engaging with followers and analyzing social media metrics, businesses can save time, increase efficiency and focus on other important tasks. They’ll have more time to create high-quality content, boost engagement and build their brand.
This article explains social media automation, its benefits and some of the best social media automation tools available in the market.
Table of Contents
What Is Social Media Automation?
Social media automation refers to the use of automation software to reduce the manual management of social media accounts.
Social media management requires constant manual input, which takes time and effort. Social media managers can free their time and streamline their workflow by automating redundant tasks, like scheduling posts, publishing content, responding to customer messages, and creating performance reports.
This enables them to focus on more profitable tasks, such as lead generation and conversion, to help them achieve their social media marketing goals and drive business growth.
Social Marketing Automation Do’s and Don'ts
Repetitive social media marketing tasks that can be automated include:
- Content scheduling to ensure posts are published at specific times or dates.
- Messaging and follower interactions to generate leads and improve engagement.
- Moderating spam comments and removing trolls to maintain a positive brand image.
- Monitoring trending hashtags to optimize social media strategy and increase reach.
- Analyzing and reporting important social media metrics to measure performance
- Ad campaign management to directly promote ads, reach new audiences and grow brand awareness.
Avoid social marketing automation practices that could harm the performance of your campaigns or your reputation:
- Don't use bots that spam your audience with generic comments; they can damage your reputation, make your brand look generic and send wrong signals to social media algorithms.
- Don't post the same content on every social media platform; adjust it to meet each platform's unique requirements and use an automated tool to publish them.
- Don’t forget to keep an eye on your social media scheduling in case it needs adjustment due to unexpected events.
7 Benefits of Social Media Automation
If implemented correctly, social media automation streamlines managing a brand’s online presence. The benefits it provides include:
- Time to focus on core business activities. By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, social media automation allows social media managers to focus on more critical tasks that require creative thinking and human personalization.
- Improved consistency. Social media automation can help maintain a consistent posting schedule across different social media platforms, which is important for building a strong brand identity and increasing engagement with followers.
- Enhanced accuracy. By reducing the risk of errors and inconsistencies occuring when tasks are performed manually, automation can improve the quality of content and prevent mistakes that could damage the brand's reputation.
- Increased reach and engagement. Social media automation can help increase reach and engagement by using trending hashtags, generating leads through messaging and follower interactions and running targeted ad campaigns. 80% of marketers saw a substantial increase in lead generation as a result of automation.
- Stronger online presence. Automation boosts consistency and improves visibility and engagement—all factors that social media algorithms consider when determining the frequency of showing your content to the targeted audience.
- Data-driven decision-making. Social media automation can provide detailed analytics and reports, allowing managers to make data-driven decisions and optimize their social media strategy for the best results.
- Reduced costs. By automating social media tasks, businesses can reduce the need for additional staff or outsourcing, save money and increase their ROI. After adopting automation, 76% of marketers saw a positive ROI within a year.
Tip: Although social media automation can streamline certain tasks, overreliance can harm follower interaction and make your account seem too robotic and impersonal. Therefore, finding a balance between automation and genuine interaction with followers is important. If you find it difficult, let the top social media marketing consulting services advise you on how to do it.
Types of Social Media Automation Tools
- Social Media Scheduling Tools
- Social Listening Tools
- Social Media Monitoring Tools
- Social Media Analytics Tools
- Social Media Management Tools
Social media automation tools are software that automate social media marketing management. Based on their function, they can be divided into the following categories:
1. Social Media Scheduling Tools
These tools allow users to schedule posts and updates in advance for different social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Scheduling tools provide a content calendar that allows users to create, edit and publish content at specific times based on predetermined schedules.
2. Social Listening Tools
Tools for social media listening help users monitor and track social media activity related to their brand, industry or specific keywords.
They analyze conversations, brand mentions and interactions across various social media platforms, providing insights that can help businesses improve their social media strategies.
3. Social Media Monitoring Tools
While social listening tools provide insights into brand mentions on a macro scale, monitoring tools do the similar, but on a micro scale.
These tools help users monitor social media activity related to their brand, products or services. Monitoring tools track mentions, hashtags and brand sentiment and provide insights into how users engage with a brand on social media.
4. Social Media Analytics Tools
Analytics and reporting tools help users analyze social media data and track metrics that show their social media performance.
They provide insights into engagement rates, reach, impressions, audience demographics and other important key performance indicators (KPIs), helping businesses make data-driven decisions and improve their marketing strategies.
5. Social Media Management Tools
Social media management tools are comprehensive solutions, each with a unique set of features that help users manage all aspects of their social media presence. They combine scheduling, social listening and monitoring, analytics and reporting in a single platform.
Marketers can use social media management tools to manage multiple social media accounts, collaborate with team members, and automate routine tasks to save time and improve their productivity and efficiency.
Top 7 Social Media Automation Tools
We explored the features of various social media automation tools and identified the top ten:
1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media automation tool that can improve every aspect of your social media marketing strategy.
The Social Management feature enables you to publish, schedule and report content across all social media networks and automate message responses.
The Customer Care feature improves customer experience with your brand through chatbots, social CRM and review management.
The Data and Intelligence feature provides deep insights into your brand's reputation by comparing metrics with competitors and analyzing paid performance reports.
2. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a comprehensive social media automation tool that allows you to organize all your marketing efforts in one place.
It works with all major social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. It also integrates with many other tools—email marketing platforms, CRM software, analytics tools and content management systems.
Its unique feature is ReQueue, which automatically fills gaps in your schedule with evergreen content, ensuring that your social media accounts are always active and engaging.
CoSchedule also provides detailed analytics and reports on your social media performance, allowing you to track engagement rates, follower growth and click-through rates, so you can optimize your SMM strategy and improve your results.
3. Sendible
Sendible is a social media automation tool that covers all your daily activities, from scheduling posts to monitoring and analyzing results.
It allows you to schedule posts individually or in bulk, resize images, collaborate with team members and generate reports for your clients. The social listening feature lets you check industry keywords, hashtags and trends, helping you stay updated with your industry and engage with your audience more effectively.
The tool provides detailed analytics and reports to track your social media performance and identify areas for improvement. You can use this data to optimize your social media strategy and improve your results.
4. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is an all-in-one tool for social media management with features designed to make social media marketing more efficient and effective.
Hootsuite Publisher allows users to schedule up to 350 posts at once; the "Best Time to Publish" feature suggests the best time to post for your audience.
Hootsuite Analyze offers automated, customized social media reporting, allowing users to measure content performance as often as they like with real-time updates and high-level overviews.
Hootsuite Inbox manages conversations and mentions across all social platforms from one dashboard and uses the “Saved Replies” feature to automatically address frequent interactions.
Hootsuite Insights, powered by Brandwatch, automates social listening, providing instant analysis of social conversations in real-time with alerts for spikes in social conversation or sentiment.
Hootsuite Social Advertising enables testing of hundreds of Facebook and Instagram ads and automatically reallocates the budget to the best-performing ones for maximum ROI.
Thanks to the versatility of its features, Hootsuite is considered one of the best social media management tools.
5. Later
Later is a social media management tool that allows users to plan, analyze and publish content in advance.
It is compatible with all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok and LinkedIn, but it is particularly suited to Instagram due to its highly visual nature.
Visual content scheduling and auto-publishing features allow automated posting of visual content on Instagram in advance. The scheduling feature is suitable for Instagram Stories and includes links and hashtags.
Later’s distinct features include a Linkin.bio—allowing users to create a fully customizable link in a bio of a web page. This feature helps drive traffic from Instagram & TikTok, track clicks and convert followers into customers.
Other Later’s features include content discovery, automated analytics reports and hashtag suggestions.
6. Oktopost
Oktopost offers B2B companies an easy way to manage their social media accounts. Its main features are social publishing, social analytics, AI-powered social listening, employee advocacy and community management.
The Social Publishing feature allows users to create multiple social media posts in seconds, which can be approved or rejected using workflows with tier permissions.
The Social Analytics feature measures the impact of every post, campaign and network with powerful analytics.
AI-powered Social Listening monitors brand mentions across major social media networks and websites. It also provides information about influential profiles that address relevant topics.
The Employee Advocacy feature generates a leaderboard to track team performance metrics and filter posts by topics so employees can share content they care about on their social media.
The Community Management feature allows you to engage with your audience and deliver better customer experiences.
7. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is an excellent social media automation tool that simplifies social media management for beginners in social media marketing. The platform is known for its superb customer service, with a maximum 30-minute response time.
Its main features include:
- Social media inbox allows users to manage and organize their messages. The Inbox Assistant feature helps users create canned responses to frequently asked questions.
- Social media publishing enables users to optimize, schedule and approve content with their team and clients. It provides a beautiful content calendar that will keep you organized.
- Social media monitoring allows users to focus on conversations about their brand and competitors using specific parameters. Users can get custom reports on their social media interactions, including gained or lost followers.
- Social media reporting provides insights into content performance, so users can make necessary adjustments and improve their marketing strategy.
- Social media ROI integrates with Google Analytics showing which posts and conversations drive sales, leads and traffic.
With its easy-to-use features and excellent customer support, Agorapulse is a great option for those looking to streamline their social media management efforts. The tool also provides a mobile app for users who need to publish on the go.
Social Media Automation: Final Thoughts
By automating repetitive tasks and gaining insights into the performance of your social media marketing efforts, you can focus on creating high-quality content and engaging with your audience. This will bring you closer to achieving your business goals.
There are numerous social media automation tools on the market, including the ones discussed in this article. Each has distinct features that may improve your workflow, but before you choose one, consider your specific needs, budget, team size and the social media platforms you use.
By selecting the right tool and knowing how to use it, you can streamline your social media marketing efforts and achieve greater success. If you have any concerns or questions, reach out to the top social media marketing agencies to help achieve your social media goals.
