I was talking to someone recently using a service that generated Twitter updates by automating creating links to content. Rather than manually tweeting links to interesting online articles or blog posts, this service generated links on Twitter by tapping into a group of pre-configured RSS feeds.
This isn’t to suggest that the automated tweets had no value but it did get me thinking about how much social media activity can be automated to drive productivity and efficiency and, as important, allow individuals and companies to scale their social media activity.
In some respects, automation runs counter to the pillars of social media – sincerity and authenticity. If social media is about engagement and conversations, can technology be part of the mix? When I tweet about interesting content, it’s content I’ve read and want to share – as opposed to tweets from a service built to constantly pump out links.
That said, there is social media activity in which automation can be effectively used. A good example is Ping.fm, which lets you simultaneously update a wide variety of social media services (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, et al). It’s automated but the activity is driven by something created by a person.
Twitterfeed is another good automated service for people looking to automatically post links to new blog posts on Twitter. Again, it’s something that drives activity by a person.
So, what’s your take on social media automation? And what services do you use to improve your social media productivity?
4 Comments
Automation in social media is a tricky subject. My recommendation is to ask this question when automating a process, "Will this automation be valuable to my audience?"
Our company auto-tweets new posts on our blog, but like you mentioned, we are tweeting them to save us time and ultimately bring people to the blog to discuss the topic. However, accounts that plug an RSS feed into Twitterfeed with little to attention to the output are quite frustrating to users.
One technique I'm not fond of is broadcasting one update across multiple networks simultaneously. This tactic teeters to close to traditional broadcasting for my tastes. If you are shouting the same message everywhere, how does that make your audience feel? If they are following you on multiple platforms, is it frustrating to see the same message everywhere?
As long as companies can easily answer that first question about value to their audience, then I think automation is fine. It's the disregard for that question that leads so many people astray.
I've seen Wayne Sutton use automation quite well with his @wayneshares Twitter account, which auto-tweets the articles he shares on Google Reader. In my opinion this is valuable because it takes content from one place and makes it available in another. For me that means I can see everything Wayne is sharing right inside Twitter instead of having to check two places.
If you're going to automate tweets or follows then it's best to let people know. For example, I follow @thisissethsblog because I know I'll receive a tweet when there's a new blog post. But when people start mixing in personal tweets and automated tweets (especially lots of them) it drives me nuts and usually results in an unfollow.
It seems that automation puts one of the key elements of social media at stake – credibility or reputation. Personally, I would be nervous about allowing an automated process to generate content attributed to me because the content I push is building my reputation. I don't push content randomly. Sure I have particularly blogs that I subscribe to and link to frequently, but this doesn't mean that I like everything I read. Additionally, I value my ability to add my "headlines" to the content. It seems that the risk in automation is in the difficulty it poses for the process of accreditation that is so important in social media networks.
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