Didn’t you always say automation is good?
Yes. Yes I did say automation is good. But I’ve also said that social media is a digital human interaction thing. Judgement is key here.
I admit, automation is awesome, but…
It really depends what you’re using it for:
- Collecting content to curate on your social media channels.
- Posting content automatically around the clock.
- Producing statistics and analytics.
- Getting notifications for interactions and new content instead of going looking for it.
Everything that is behind the scenes, preparation, and basically the reconnaissance for your social media strategy.
But using all these automation tricks will get you lazy and numb unless you keep some work to be done manually.
1. Never, ever (ever) automate audience building
i.e. buying followers.
Don’t. Just don’t. It’s just wrong on so many levels:
- Your engagement rate will drop cos bought followers don’t really care about your content.
- Your CTR will drop, cos again, they just don’t care about your content.
- Your analytics will get effed up cos you’ll have followers from click-farms and not realistic numbers from real people to analyse and plan your strategy on.
Getting comments, shares and likes from real people will simply get you better organic reach and higher quality insights.
2. Automated responses show your followers you don’t really care about them
And no, that’s not a good thing. The whole social media shindig is supposed to show your followers you’re interested in them and what they have to say, in order to create relationships with them.
- Replying automatically to every new follower, thanking him for following.
- Automated replies to messages saying you will get back to them soon.
- Following people randomly to get them to follow you back, then unfollowing them 3 days afterwards.
People are not stupid, and these methods will get you ignored fast.
3. Badly trained Customer Service or Social Media Monitoring personnel
Think getting an automated response computer on the phone is annoying?
How about a human being who has been told to give automated responses without listening or without giving him the possibility to be human?
Logic and judgement is what separates us form animals and computers. Try to allow these traits to come through your CX peeps so that your customers won’t get frustrated trying to get help with a product or service received from you.
CX is perhaps the most important aspect of your business today
Make sure you know that and your workers now that, and show your clients that you know that.
All banks have the exact same product. The service you receive from them is what differentiates the one you choose to give your money to, from the others.
- Don’t buy fake followers; earn them.
- Don’t automate conversations, show interest.
- Don’t automate responses, try to really help.
Got any bad automation habits you’d like to abolish? Share them with us in the comments section.
Need tips on how better your automation strategies? Contact me!
