Automated social media fail

Automation and Social Media are generally not good bedfellows. Combining the two can often lead to duplicated content across a number of channels. For example, vacancy ads from a recruitment consultants website being published to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This can irritate users who see the same content pushed at them in multiple locations.

You should aim to have a clear purpose for each of your Social Networks. For example, you might use your Facebook Page for competitions and offers and Twitter to provide news, hints and tips. Automation also prevents you from customising content for each channel eg hashtags work on Twitter but don’t on websites or Faceebook (although they are coming soon).

Automation lacks personalisation and in the case of automated feeds from one channel to another can lead to inappropriate content. This can be seen in the example below from the Forest of Dean News Facebook Page – thanks to @SueKelsoRyan for spotting it.

I’m not sure that fans of the Page, or Twitter followers for that matter, would be interested in the Forest of Dean News’ Twitter stats and do they really want to broadcast that they’ve lost 291 followers in a day?

What appears to have happened here is a case of ‘double automation’ with the Unfollowers.me tool auto-posting the stats to Twitter and then the Forest of Dean News’ Twitter account auto-posting from their Twitter account to Facebook.

Whist it’s tempting to take short cuts with automation, this approach carries risks as can be seen above. Doing Social Media properly takes time and if you make the effort your business is likely to really benefit in many ways. Give me a call on 01242 639023 to find out how YOUR business can benefit from Social Media.

Think personalisation not automation.

What do you think? Let me know in the Comments below.

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