Social Media Management: beware of over-automation
"Social networking is great (because it's 'free'), but it's time-consuming and I want my teams to spend as little time on it as possible": Let's face it, we've all heard it before in one form or another.
Develop your reputation, generate leads, get closer to your communities... From the outset, the promise of social media platforms to businesses is seductive. A great deal of added value for a minimum amount of money invested. The only catch is that it all takes time, and time, as you know, is money.
Producing content, interacting with your communities and supporting your customers all require human resources. The temptation to give in to the siren calls of automation is great - who hasn't dreamt of getting rid of certain tasks to save time? EXCEPT... in social networking there's the word social, because it 's the human element that makes social networking so valuable! You think you're saving resources when you're actually sawing off the branch you're sitting on. By automating too much, your posts will lack context, your engagement will drop, and so will the satisfaction and quality of the experience offered to your customers.
What is automation?
It can take many forms! For starters, there are programming tools. Companies like Buffer, Hootsuite or Agorapulse allow you to schedule your content in advance on your various social networks. The easy solution is to programme your content from one social network to another and from one week or month to the next. Note that the Facebook group has recently started offering such a feature via its Creator Studio, but only for its own networks, namely Facebook and Instagram.
Another example is chatbots, which are used excessively and for any purpose: there's nothing more irritating than talking to a robot that doesn't understand your problem and offers no solution. You get annoyed, leave the conversation and leave with a more than passable brand experience.
Finally, saved answers. Here again, what could be more frustrating than seeing the same response to a tweet or Facebook comment displayed over and over again? The user doesn't feel considered or even heard and is likely to abandon your product or service.
To sum up, the least we can say is that for the moment the experiments have not been very conclusive! But who knows, with the right mix of human touch and a dash of artificial intelligence, automation tools and technologies may well revolutionise digital marketing in the future.
Death to automation, long live optimisation!
Ultimately, what I want you to hear is that automation in every sense of the word, without any thought, makes no sense. The real question to ask yourself is what added value you want to derive from these techniques. Of course, automation is not the problem, but it does need to be thought through!
Scheduling posts over a long period saves an enormous amount of time. On the other hand, you need someone to be in charge of programming them at the right time, with wordings and codes appropriate to each platform, to engage with your community and not just repeat the same message over and over again.
Reasoned automation would also mean scheduling your 'cold' content, but leaving room in your various editorial calendars for hotter content or to bounce off current events. A promotion? An update on your product or service? Communicate on the spot and in the right format: I'm thinking of Stories and Tweets, which are more conducive to instant communication.
The same goes for saved replies. They can be very useful in certain cases. Use them wisely and, above all, personalise them! Add your contact's first name and a nice message to end the conversation. Your customer or prospect will feel valued and unique. Not just a number on a list. Once again, it's up to the person in charge of community management to engage with their audience. Let them express their personality and that of your brand, even when it comes to automated responses.
What about chatbots? We've all had a bad experience with them! There's no point in asking too much of it, you'll lose the person you're talking to. Use them to qualify a request, answer simple questions about your product or service (delivery costs, VAT, payment methods, etc.) or identify a problem. Once that's done, it's up to a human to take over and provide a clear answer to the customer's request. Above all, don't pass your robot off as human. Tell your customer that your bot is used to qualify their request and that once that's done, it's one of your staff in the flesh who will take over to provide the added value: an appropriate sales response or a solution to their problem.
To conclude
Automation tools are a very good way of helping you or your teams to scale your efforts and your presence on social networks. You'll save time and money, and you'll see the first results fairly quickly. Bear in mind that before iterating on methods, you need to test and measure. Don't just focus on "basic" indicators such as the size of your communities, but look at the concepts of engagement and clicks on your posts.
Finally, don't lose sight of the fact that it's your teams who have the knowledge of the specific characteristics of each social network, your communities and your product or company. It is on them and them alone that most of your added value on the social networks rests. So think carefully before you take the plunge, and put your trust in the best resource of all: human resources!
Sponsored article. The expert contributors are authors who are independent of the appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.
Article translated from French