Hello guys. The question before us today, to automate or not to automate. That is the question. Sorry, I couldn't resist. I had to go there. So, there are definite benefits to automating your social media updates, but there are definite downsides as well. And I'm a bad news first kind of person, so I'm gonna start with the downsides. One of the big benefits of social media is that it has enabled a sense of personal connection between, people to people or between people and companies. It can be amazing to have exchanges on social media with people who share you're discipline or you're interests, who live across the world from you. Likewise, it is extremely satisfying to have a customer service issue and reach out to a company or organization via social media and have an [SOUND] almost immediate response to your question or problem. And I think that when you automate, oftentimes it's obvious that it is automated. Whether it comes across as being done by a bot, or something that was set up in advance, it can be very obvious, and that can destroy that sense of personal connection and community. So that's a downside, in my opinion. Another downside when automating, it can be very tempting to set your updates, and then forget about social media and say, well, I've sent my social media updates for the week or the month or whatever, and then just kind of check out of social media and not bother to be involved in any conversations that might come up. And that can be a huge mistake, because I know that for me If I go a couple of hours without checking Twitter, I have missed entire conversations and decision-making has been done. And so, lesson learned, it's not a good idea to be away from Twitter for more than an hour, I guess. But, seriously, it can lead you to sort of check out of social media, and that is not a good thing. Because it is a good way to keep your pulse on your customers or people who you hope will be your customers. So that is another downside. Another one that I think you have to be careful of, and I think this kind of goes back to the first one, in that it has the sense of a bot. Is that if people follow you across social media platforms, remember I said please choose no more than three. At least two, but no more than three. If they follow you across all of the social media platforms that you're on and you have automatic posting set, to go across all three or two of those, that can get old really fast, if you're sharing the same content to the same people across platforms. Now, sometimes it's appropriate to share certain things across disparate platforms. Say you're on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or whatever your country's versions of those things are. And sometimes, it might be a great photo. And all three of those platforms are fantastic for photo sharing. Nothing in the world wrong with that. But what really gets me is when I see an update from an institution or a person. And I do follow them across different social media, and I see the exact same verbage that trails off into an ellipses across all three platforms and you know it was a bot. You know they automated it and they aren't thinking about it. Your brand, it hello everybody. This class is called personal branding, emphasis on the personal. So you never want people to get the sense from you that you aren't invested in every aspect of your branding. Because if you just want something that you can set up and forget, that sounds like you aren't very invested in your own brand, in your own life, and that is not a good message to send. So, enough with the downsides. I'm gonna be positive now, okay? Some benefits. There is no doubt but that automating stuff is a timesaver for sure. I have to update one of my organization's social media very early in the morning because we found that this particular group is up super early in the morning. And they're just like us. Just like everybody else. Soon as they wake up, they roll over, they grab that smartphone, they go to Facebook. So I do not want to be waking up at 4:30 in the morning to update social media for this group of people. And so I love Facebook's scheduling feature which lets me find great content and set it to post at 4:30, 5 o'clock in the morning. Another great use of automation is when you're gonna be on vacation. Especially if you're the only person who handles social media for your brand, which makes sense if you're doing all that work, it's nice if you don't want to leave your followers without fresh content. Remember we've talked about how you don't want people to find stale content. You can, before you go on vacation, set aside some time, find some great articles, and release them at certain times. That is certainly a huge benefit, and I think that's a great use of it. The other thing that I really like about automating and scheduling updates is that when you are setting up updates for a week, two weeks, a month, whatever it is that you choose to do. It gives you a clearer idea of what your brand's output looks like for that time period. So, for instance, when you are scheduling, it's a little bit more deliberate. You're more likely to say, oh, wait, gosh, I've got four posts about 3D printing of something, or four posts about reputation management. Maybe that's too many. Maybe I should take out this one and maybe I should substitute something else in. So it gives you a clearer overall picture of what your doing with your brand activity. And also I think your more likely to carefully proofread if your doing that, as opposed to, you've got five minutes to find an article and post it, because you need to get something out there. And you do tend to make more mistakes when you do that. So, I hope this was helpful. Please do get in touch, let me know your experience with automation and any experiences good and bad you've had on social media with automation. I would love to hear them, I'm sure the community would as well. So I hope this was helpful.
