Content automation tools are now available for social media. These solutions provide the ability to automate or semi-automate posting to social media channels.
The software available can schedule, optimize and publish posts. It can also interact with your audience, curate content from other sites you love, and even write some content.
By using content automation technology, you can set an entire week or month’s worth of content in just a few hours. This will boost your productivity by freeing you up to work on other parts of your business.
Content Scheduling and Curation
Consistently posting content is one of the most time-consuming aspects of managing social media.
Whether you’re posting original content to your social platforms or sharing content from other sites, your social media channels need to be constantly updated if you want to remain relevant.
The content automation tools available today can keep your updates going with the press of a button.
Programs like Buffer, Sprout Social and HootSuite provide tools to schedule posts ahead of time. They can also re-share posts that have gotten a lot of traffic, taking into account when your followers are most active, and then posting at the ideal time.
In addition to the content you have written or planned yourself, automation software follows significant topics, hashtags and posts in your market. This software will then curate that same content and share to your own social profiles.
Although these tools take the majority of the work out of the scheduling and curating pieces of social media management, you can’t completely “set it and forget it.” Sometimes, posts need to be spruced up a bit to grab your target audience’s attention.
Every once in a while, it is prudent to switch up the headings, hashtags and descriptions of content before you share it. Adding a personal touch to curated or re-shared content can make a world of difference in the success of your posts.
Chatbots for Customer Interaction
A big part of automated social media management, especially for businesses, is the technology’s ability to respond to customer feedback.
It can respond to customer comments, tweets, hashtags or mentions with responses that have been created for common customer queries, whether they are questions or complaints.
Some programs even use natural language processing to create custom, logic-based responses.
Chatbots embedded in the automation technology free up time for human employees, and provide customers and followers with prompt, attentive responses.
Tech CEO and thought leader, Mark Hurd stated that: “when you automate something, the service gets better while things get done faster.” Through the use of self-operating social media management, users get exactly that.
Within minutes, chatbots can respond to hundreds of comments and ensure each user gets the assistance they require.
However, it is imperative to ensure the given responses are appropriate for the interaction.
For example, American Airlines began using automation software for customer responses but did not differentiate between auto-replies. Unfortunately, they ended up thanking a customer who was not exactly a happy flyer.
It is important to specify which kinds of queries warrant which responses to minimize mistakes.
AI-Written Content
Automated content creation is one of the most exciting advancements in artificial intelligence, especially for social media purposes.
In the last year, AI has accomplished a number of creative tasks. For example, we have seen AI do things such as composing its own classical music and creating art that’s indistinguishable from that created by human artists.
The next major endeavor comes in the form of fully automated content writing. This technology uses natural language processing (NLP) to create coherent text. Some of this content is so advanced that it passes for human-written text. This is a huge feat for AI!
However, the current content creation tools have limited capabilities. They work with pre-existing templates and messages, and then fill in the blanks.
Platforms like Quill and Wordsmith already have fully integrated AI-writing tools. These tools are advanced enough to develop informational text such as product descriptions or news stories.
And this isn’t limited to the content generation space either. Google recently invested $800,000 in Press Association’s initiative to generate news stories solely through AI.
Though these tools are adept at assessing and writing about the basic story elements, they still lack the ability to generate creative concepts.
Content automation tools can prove to be invaluable for other types of writing. They can be used to draft declarative writing such as news-based stories, earnings reports and various business content.
These same tools could save massive amounts of time by helping people manage social media. As the technology continues to progress, the offerings will become even more comprehensive.
The hope is that AI will be able to think creatively, and maybe even be the sole author of those funny tweets we love so much.
In fact, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicts computers will be able to do anything a human can do by 2030-to-2040.
Takeaway
Using automated content tools for social media saves time and money. And even more importantly, it frees you up to spend your valuable hours focusing on other important aspects of your business.
With AI technology, your social media feeds will be kept up to date, and it will also be optimized for the best interactions with and visibility to your followers.
Feature Image Credit: CC 0; Public Domain, sourced from Flickr.com.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
Amanda Peterson
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- What Can Automated Content for Social Media Do for Your Business? - April 16, 2019
