Comments on: Social Media: How Much Should Be Automated?

By: My Twitter Just Grew to 10,000 Followers in the Last Week. | Marketing Tips That Work … From My Kitchen Table

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:12:54 +0000

[...] Social Media: How Much Should Be Automated? (markevanstech.com) About The AuthorCarol Hansen, a Twitter specialist focusing on building and monetizing your network. You can connect with Carol on Twitter or Facebook and follow her latest projects, blog posts and cool tips on building and monetizing your Twitter following. [...]

By: Hilary Topper Blog - HJMT Communications, LLC - Public Relations, Marketing, New Media, Advertising, Special Event Planning and Graphic Production and Design

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:11:02 +0000

[...] Social Media: How Much Should Be Automated? (markevanstech.com) [...]

By: eseongj

eseongj — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:47:20 +0000

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.

By: Chris_Schmitt

Chris_Schmitt — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:46:51 +0000

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.

By: Mike Templeton

Mike Templeton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:41:31 +0000

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.

By: Mike Templeton

Mike Templeton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:44:27 +0000

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.