1. Gary Evans

URL: https://feedalpha.com Social Media: https://twitter.com/Gary3vans

They may have spent years building up a list of contacts and now boom it’s gone because of a badly timed mass email out to all their contacts¦

Seriously I gave up clicking after about 10 of them.

How many did you click on?

This is where Social Media comes back into play.

A well timed post or tweet really is the best way to hit your target audience right when you need them. But like everything else this takes time.

And time is something we do not have enough of..

That’s where Social Media automation comes into play.

Let me paint a quick picture for you:

How many times have you gone onto Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to do something and ended up in a loop of videos that ‘deliberately’ go on forever and by the time you realise you are still watching them you either:

a) forgot what you were supposed to be doing or b) have run out of time and have to get back to your endless list of jobs

That’s where automation tools come into play and why they are so important in todays digital world.

My ideal scenario goes something like this:

• I log into an automation tool where I already have all my accounts connected.
• I view topical relevant content delivered daily that I know resonates with my target audience.
• I fill up a schedule with posts that hits all or any of my accounts
• I log out and go do something else

Total time for all of this is about 5 mins and I’m done.

That is the power of Social Media Automation.

The power to give me back time that I don’t have in the first place.

2. Jagdish Kashyap

URL: https://www.50shadesofblogging.com Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/Jagdish1O1

Social media is becomes so important in passing years, and we all need to keep updating our social media profiles to engage with our audience. Our customs, our Target audience, our clients all are on social media and SEO is becoming harder day by day so we need focus on building social media profiles more powerful.

But in this busy world it’s hard to keep updating our profiles, due to over load of work. So why not use automation tools?

Yes, Social Media Automation tools are handy way to keep updating our profiles and engaging with our audience.

It takes only few minutes to setup and it’s very easy to use. There are lots of options too, Free and paid both.

We never know when Google’s next update is coming and we’ll get hit from it. So this is the high time to make your profile more engaging via using social media automation tools.

3. Sathish Arumugam

URL: http://trafficcrow.com/ Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/trafficcrow

In recent days, social media automation is getting more significant. Bots are well trained to like, follow, comment, tweet and more. Many celebrities and popular names use such social media automation strategy to improve their social presence. It can be also be monetized by those who advertise through sponsors.

Obviously, using bots will results in getting more social engagements. However, any social media profile will have to follow certain bot guidelines. There are bots with less risk factors that can get through to survive and performs tasks like likes, follows, tweets, etc. Still, such robots can communicate with other harmful robots spreading fake news and malfunctioning. Have to be more cautious.

On the other hand, we have to admit that bots are manipulating stock markets, ruining medical industries by spreading false information, and notably, manipulating elections. Any technology or advancements is to help human community reducing their workloads and inserting smartness. Staying in line with the guidelines and properly using any innovations has its importance ever.

4. Adarsh M

URL: http://adarshm.com Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/AdarshMOfficial/

1 second late is an opportunity missed!

If you have ever run behind page speed optimization of your website, you know how important a second is in the Digital world.

Let me give you an example, during the last week. I have met an old client whom I helped to set up a facebook chatbot on his site. He’s running a business nearby and has a medium competition. So, when I designed a site for him, he was against using a bot but I insisted him to use one. And he has got 4x leads last month.

Social media automation is not just about chatbots and I knew it.

Do you know that if you’re following a proper schedule on posting updates on your social media you can double your reach in no cost. If you see Mr. A everyday in the morning and see Mr.B in random, whom will you trust more (conditions apply)?

I will trust Mr.A more than Mr.B. So, this is exactly what happens when people see your updates every day or on a specific schedule. They will remember you and trust you more than some random guys.

And this is where Social Media bots are used for automation. And in 2018 the bots are going to be important in all business planning to increase the ROI.

You can plan ahead of time and schedule the posts to reach your customers on time using Social media automation bots.

So, it’s time for you to plan ahead of your competition and use the power of Bots to collect more leads in 2018 for you.

5. Yash Bhardwaj

URL: http://www.yashbhardwaj.com Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/theyashbhardwaj

I have these 4 thoughts on Social Media Automation & Bots.

1. Post Scheduling & Content Automation. Twenty Eighteen is the age of social media algorithms. They constantly measure your reach and discoverabillity based on the amount of consistent quality content you post. So if you you have 4-5 posts that do well on your Instagram, naturally instagram will distibute the 6th post on the explore feed to even more potenial audience. Speaking of it’s father Facebook which follows similar traits, say you post really quality content twice, you are expected to see a gradual increase in your reach of the next post.

In short, if you consistently post quality content on social media, your chances of growth and distribution increase exponentially. So scheduling tools like Later.com & Buffer are a real life saver when it comes to content automation. You can schedule months of content in a couple of hours and thereby making sure that you never fail to please the facebook algorithm.

1. Chat-bots & Marketing Automation. Artificial Intelligence has been one of the most trendy topics of 2018 and all the tech giants are betting huge on it. But that shouldn’t stop you from deploying chat bots in your facebook messenger. Here are a few reasons why.

a) They can effortlessly reduce your support. So let’s say your customers 80% of the time have similar doubts before making purchase decsions. It’s not possible to deploy humans 24/7 unless you’ve got a good budget also it makes the task extremely mundane for the person. But if you deploy a chatbot it can efficeintly clear most of the basic doubts and then transfer it a person only when it’s help is need. This saves times and humans can work on more important tasks.

b) The lesser the friction of marketing funnels, the higher the convert.It means that if your funnel has too many steps, the chances of a person going through all of them are very low. But with the advent of chatbots you can seamlessly walk through a person till the buying decision through conversation and when they are ready to buy, only then you send them to your sales page. c) Conversations are easier than reading. I know what you might be thinking reading is easier??? Conventionally yes but in terms of marketing, let’s just say that nobody wants to read your landing page just because they aren’t aware of you and they have a choice of declining. But when it comes to conversational marketing it’s almost imposible to reply to something asked. The proof of this is the high 80% plus open rates in Facebook Messenger.

Another reason being people spend most of their times on the chat apps. So why miss an incredible opportunity to use this habit in a marketing sense? Like I mentioned in point b) why make the person come to you when you can go to him? It’s like the person is more comfortable talking to a salesman than actually visiting the shop.

1. Viral Marketing Through Bots. People these days find the idea of a bot crazy and if your bot idea is slightly unique it will spread like wildfire among their friends and other news media outlets. The other day I saw a cat account on twitter which is basically a bot that instantly replies cute cat pictures to you. I know this isn’t too genius but this account @catsu has gained over 620K followers and easily monetizes by selling cat niche or affiliate stuff.

Similarly a bot sent travel destinations to people and later got acquired by a huge travel company that used it monetize their tickets. The point is people are crazy about AI and even the simplest ideas could mean a lot of engagement.

1. Social Media Bots As Distrubution Platforms. Messenger Bots are the new email lists. A lot of people subscribe to exclusively get your content in their inboxes through a bot. Considering the incredible open rates your chance to get some free targeted traffic just increased a lot.

In the end I’d like to say that automation & bots in 2018 are one of the crucial steps you can take to grow and scale your business. Some places the bots will help you attract new customers and some places they will reduce your recurring efforts. We’ve got so many different social media platforms in 2018 it’s difficult to keep up with all of them and grow them simultaneously, so if that sounds like you, let the bots take over.

6. Rg Enzon

URL: https://rgenzon.com Social Media: https://facebook.com/rgenzon

Time is money. Anytime you’re trading time for money, it makes you lose time. Crazy, but true.

Nowadays, picking a social media automation tool isn’t that hard to do anymore. Pick one, add your account and then start scheduling posts.

The more posts you can add onto your automated sequence means more free time you’ll get on your hands.

This helps you focus on your business, family and your hobbies.

Here are some of the benefits of using social media automation tools:

1. Increase customer engagement Ever wonder how you can speak with your subscribers but didn’t want to take too much time doing so? Well, you’re in luck. Social media automation can do this for you.

2. Brand visibility Did you know that you have to have multiple touch points before a buyer decides to buy from you? It’s true, however you do not need to spend a lot of time doing so the entire day. You can simply schedule ahead of time posts that you can leverage to increase brand visibility.

3. Reduce overhead Instead of hiring VA to post content for you, why not hire VAs to schedule content to post on your social media accounts? It will be more efficient and you can delegate other things instead.

Isn’t that awesome? Just by using social media automation tools, you’re not only freeing up your own time, but you are also benefiting from it.

7. Chiranshu Monga

URL: http://www.bornblogger.net Social Media: http://www.facebook.com/chiranshu98

Maintain consistent content because Consistency is key to building a strong following on social media. Get control over your strategy because automation tool give more control to social media accounts. Give Back your time because the biggest incentive of using SMA is the amount of time it helps you free up

8. Waqar Azeem

URL: https://contentstudio.io Social Media: https://twitter.com/waq_azeem

Social media is one of the key marketing channels for any kind of business in this day and age. And it’s all about being quick and responsive while maintaining the human touch. However, if you want to scale your social media campaigns, you simply can’t do without using marketing automation tools.

To create effective social media campaigns, you need to stay on top of what’s happening in your industry. Keeping an eye on your competitor’s strategy is also something that you cannot ignore for long. So, that’s where social media automation tools come into play to help you effectively discover better and engaging content to share, schedule your posts efficiently, measure and analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns, and use those insights to improve your campaigns.

So, if you are still doing it all manually, you need to rethink and bring automation into the play!

9. Tarun Dumra

URL: AdmitCardIND.IN Social Media: https://m.facebook.com/tarundumra

Social Media Automation is extremely important for an Internet Marketer/Blogger/Social Media Advertiser…It just not helps us maintaining consistent content for our audience but also helps to build a strong following on social media. Automation tools available in the Internet Market are the best way to get control over to our strategies and planning.The Biggest advantage of using social media automation is the amount of time it helps you free up. Instead of spending hours on trying to search content that might just get shared and bring your blog a few visitors, you should use SMAT (Social Media Automation Tools) to identify trending topics and discover the relevant content.

Three things to keep in mind while using Social Media Automation:

1. KEEP YOUR SCHEDULE FLEXIBLE
2. DO IT AT THE RIGHT TIME
3. USE ANALYTICS

10. Daniel Stanica

URL: https://mediadigi.ro/en Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-stanica/

Social Media is a very important source of traffic, leads and most important, relations if you’re running a business or you’re on your own. Even tho I’m not a big fan of social media tools, preferring to interact personally with my connections I’m still using several tools that helps me to maximize my reach.

Here there are:

BuzzSumo will help you know what is trending related to your niche and how you can make the most of it. All you need to do is provide relevant keywords to automate your research.It also tracks different platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and more to quantify the overall reach of content. Besides content, you can also look for influencers and focus on building your relationships with them.

Missinglettr creates 12 strategic, automated social media campaigns that drive traffic for an entire year. This way you can setup the campaigns right after you published a post and this tool will automatically send to all your Twitter, Google+, Facebook social accounts. You can track the clicks and improve your campaigns on the spot (change publishing days and hours, add or remove tags etc)

IFTTT (short for if this then that) is a free service that allows all of your most-used tools, apps, and platforms talk to each other automatically. Once all of your services are linked, IFTTT allows you to create a recipe to create a chain of linked reaction once one action is taken. You can send your posts automatically to Facebook, Twitter or other accounts instantly.

ManageFlitter is one of my favorite social media tool I use for Twitter management. Btw, It’s not a secret that Twitter is my favorite social media network, especially for the fact that all the big guns in the digital marketing area are already there. ManageFlitter provides you with a set of easy to use tools to empower you to work smarter and faster with Twitter: You can sort your followers/following lists by a range of criteria, find new people to follow with our comprehensive search facility, track who unfollowed you and easily manage multiple Twitter accounts.

In the end you should keep in mind that social media is about people and you should interact personally ask much as you can.

11. Abhishek Jain

URL: https://rustyblogger.com Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/RustyBlogger/

Social Media has become the biggest medium of communication as well as influencing people. With social media we can create the need of the product, educate people and get more sales. The biggest challenge that a business face is social media management as it is a very time clumsy process. With the advent of Social Media Automation tools this problem can be solved to a great extent. With social media automation, you can:

1. Save your time
2. Increase your audience size
3. Save resources and ultimately money
4. Create a buzz for your upcoming services
5. Create a launch pad for for launching new products This is why social media automation is necessary in today’s world. Spending a little on social media automation you can save huge and make huge.

12. Azman Nabi

URL: https://webisoft.com Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azmannabi

I will only talk in perspective of small businesses here.

Most of the businesses, especially the local and small businesses lack in utilizing social media, maybe they underestimate its power and reach. Or they think social media isn’t meant for their business. But let me tell you if your potential customer does hangout on social media, then your business should be in front of their eyes there as well.

Where most of the small business owners don’t have time to manage their business’ social profiles or don’t want to hire a dedicated employee just to handle their social media.

That’s where the social media automation comes to the rescue.

Automating any task that consumes your energy, time, and money feels interesting. And when it comes to bringing you more business, you should take it seriously.

And to back what I’m saying here is: As per a survey that was done in 2015, 32% businesses who have utilized social media automation in some way or another have reported their ROI increased in 12 months. https://www.b2bmarketing.net/member-resources/marketing-automation-benchmarking-report-2015

13. Ronak Thakkar

URL: http://moredigital.in Social Media: http://facebook.com/ronakvthakkar

Social media is all about being responsive, if you’re not quick enough or responsive, you’ve lost half the battle. There is no space for human error, and in the day and age of massive autocorrect fails, the brands can’t take a chance for another faux pas. I feel automation for social media is going to take a huge leap this year, specially for response management and ORM.

Chatbots, scheduling tools, analytic tools etc. are the topic of focus which will help save time, cost and effort.

14. Yash Dodeja

URL: https://www.bloggerscloud.com Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/yash.dodeja1

Social Media is a huge pool to be honest. You cannot overlook it at any cost.

If you are a building a brand that is going to be alive for decades you need to be active on all major social media platforms. Well, automation helps you achieve that in a blink of an eye.

Honestly, in my opinion, you cannot waste your precious time posting 5 photos on Instagram and retweeting your evergreen article on Twitter daily (you have a lot more to manage). Where everyone is taking the full advantage of automation why should you be carried away?

Instead use tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and build a full-proof social media strategy. Plan your content advance. Build a social media calendar and schedule everything inside the tool. Automate as much as you can and see your brand grow on autopilot.

Let’s take my example: I’m a full-time blogger and I use Promorepublic to schedule content consistently on all my social channels. I even use Awario for brand monitoring and Crowdfire to follow and unfollow people on Twitter.

Automation is the future if you are not mastering this skill in 2018 you are missing out big time and will only regret in future.

15. Akshay Hallur

URL: https://www.gobloggingtips.com/ Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/akshayhallur

Social Media Automation, especially in the form of Messenger Chatbots continue to grow. And, social media posting automation will also continue to grow, as more and more businesses are realizing the importance of social media for their business.

According to many case studies, chatbot marketing is more effective than email marketing in terms of open rates and engagement.

In my workflow, I use Manychat on the frontend to collect the Messenger leads, and convert them to my email subscribers eventually by asking their email and importing it to my autoresponder using Zapier. According to me, many people start implementing this strategy.

Even many brands are pivoting from building their FB page to building Messenger leads due to the recent decline in organic reach for pages. Many are even building communities over FB page marketing.

So, yes many tools that help you to automate chatbot marketing and FB group management will pop up.

Apart from FB, other social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and especially Quora (Hybrid social media site) marketing will grow. There’s a massive market in here to automate things. So, that could be the direction automation could be heading.

16. Steve Ward

URL: https://CloutSEO.com Social Media: https://twitter.com/StevenWard

I view social media automation tools like an arms race. The social media companies are scared of them, and working hard to minimize their impact.

On the other hand, marketers see their power and are working equally hard to create more powerful tools. There are even automation apps using artificial intelligence on the market already.

However, we are in the very early stages of AI algorithms and figuring out how best to apply them. Although new AI-integrated automation tools seem to be coming out every day, a lot of them are not quite ready for prime time.

In my opinion, 2018 is the time to be studying and experimenting with these apps. Coming up with innovative new uses for them and learning how best to apply them will make you an industry leader going into 2019, 2020, and beyond.

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