Time – we all wish to have more time and trust me, 24 hours isn’t enough when it comes to marketing. Let alone, social media marketing.
In most cases, social media marketing could take up a huge chunk of your daily time and for smaller businesses, business owners or small marketing team, it could be extremely frustrating. You just have so much ground to cover in such a short time period.
Coming from several businesses collaboration and entrepreneurship, I can totally relate that!
IMPORTANT: If you want to hire a dedicated person (Social Media Manager) to manage your Social Media Presence we highly recommend: Social Media Marketing Services.
However, the job needs to be completed one way or another. There is no point (or reason) for you to ignore social media marketing just because you do not have the time or pleasure doing it.
And that’s where social media automation tools come into play.
In this article, you will discover quick fixes and tools that can save you more time on social media as well as market your social media marketing life easier.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Consider Using Social Media Automation Tools
1. Pocket
Pocket is one of the best tools I ever use in social media marketing. Yes, Pocket is an article (or link) saving app that allows me to save thousands of interesting articles under one roof but it isn’t exactly a social media tool.
Let’s take this article for example. Two days back, I knew that I will be writing something about social media automation and I scout through my list in Pocket (using since 2 years back, I had over 5,000 articles saved in it). With Pocket’s tagging feature, I could easily skim through the articles which I need to complete this post.
Pocket works in a very simple way. You can add anything directly to Pocket and save it for later use. Imagine the ‘read later’ feature.
It doesn’t matter if you love reading or found an awesome article, keeping them on Pocket allows you to curate them down the road.
Furthermore, Pocket is super effective since you can easily share content directly from Pocket to your social media account. Yes, you can save a lot of time instead of trying to search for the same article on the net.
2. Feedly
Feedly is another underused social media automation tool. Feedly allows you to keep a library of constantly updated content. Adding an RSS link to Feedly and that’s literally what you need to kick-start a powerful content library.
Compared to Pocket, the content on Feedly is constantly updated while Pocket works by saving only the best.
Now, take a moment to think about this: Integrating Feedly with Pocket.
Yes, I do that and you will be amazed on the overall effect. Don’t take my word for it, try it yourself now!
Of course, Feedly does the pretty common stuff which allows you share it off to various social media platforms with just a few clicks. Alternatively, fire it up directly to your Hootsuite or Buffer queue and you are golden.
See also: 30 Top Social Media Management Tools
3. Post Planner
Apart from saving time, do you log for engagement? If you do, Post Planner is definitely your tool of choice.
Post Planner allows you to curate already (or once) popular social media posts. Basically, you are recreating it and using it for your own gain. For example, post A was popular two days back and you could easily reshare it on your social media accounts.
Since post A had been a huge hit, chances are that your post will gain positive engagement.
Now, why should you use Post Planner?
Comparing to Feedly and Pocket where you need to do ‘the job’ yourself, Post Planner does that for you! Sure, you need to spend a few minutes trying to find good social updates but once that is done, you all literally, golden!
You can use Post Planner to connect to dozens of Facebook and Twitter accounts and schedule the posts at the time of your choice.
Tip: I usually schedule all my posts on Post Planner on weekends for the whole week. This means that my content curation strategy is covered throughout the week thanks to the power of Post Planner.
Post Planner is the only paid tool in this article and it is really affordable. For the smallest plan, Post Planner costs $7 per month and if you need more firepower or managing multiple accounts, there are bigger plans such as $15 or $39 which caters larger organization (or requirements).
4. IFTTT
IFTTT is the short name for If This Then That. IFTTT is a trigger based tool that is powerful if used correctly. IFTTT may first sound very confusing and complicated but do not worry. It is extremely easy to use. As a matter of fact, it is pretty much a fool’s proof one.
To start using IFTTT as a social media automation, you need to select a trigger. A trigger can be an action which is important to you. For example, a trigger can be a mention that you receive on Twitter.
Now that it is done, the next step is to select an action to follow after the trigger. This means that it is the goal you want to achieve when the trigger is set. In this case, an action could easily be an automated reply such as “thank you for the mention” or “thanks for that” type of reply.
The above is just an extremely simple example. You can even link up your RSS feed to IFTTT and once a new post is published, it will automatically publish it to multiple social media accounts of your choice. Powerful, don’t you think so?
Another great thing about IFTTT is that it is absolutely free to use. You do not need to pay a dime for the service and until date, IFTTT allows you to connect to dozens of applications; from home appliances to shopping, social media to news alerts.
The sky is really the only limit you need and when you use IFTTT, allow your mind to do the unthinkable!
Conclusion
If you want to save more time and be more effective in what you are doing, these four social media automation tools are going to drive your productivity level to a whole new level. At the same time, you do not need to worry if the cost of the tools will skyrocket as these tools are mostly free or have plans which are under $50 per month.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and let’s discuss!
See also: 9 Best Social Media Automation Tools
