How To Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy | Is Social Media Automation Worth It?

Ty Smith0:00

What is up guys? Welcome to another episode of the crypto marketing podcast. I'm Ty Smith, with me is Liz. Today we are going into automation software for social media. We are going to touch on what is social media automation software, the pros and cons of using it, the best platforms that we find helpful, and where we think the future of social media automation is going. So, Liz, why don't you kick it off? What is automation software for social media?

Liz0:15

Yeah, so automation software, a little bit of a tongue twister, is when, it's a little bit in the name, you automate your social media scheduling. And so if you want to get posts planned out ahead of time, get captions together, say, 'Okay, we're going to be putting out...' A ton of people, I'm sure, have holiday posts scheduled for Christmas and New Year's and Hanukkah and other holidays people celebrate because they're going to be off. So, that is what an automation tool is. It helps you, quite literally, automate your posts that go out on social media platforms.

Ty Smith1:05

Cool. And what are some of the pros and cons of using social media automation software?

Liz1:08

So, there's a few. There's definitely pros in the fact that you can get your content scheduled out ahead of time. I mean, especially if you have editorial or shoots, you can do months down the road and make sure that you have a really strong content strategy scheduled out way in advance. It also allows you to share that calendar with your team and be able to look at what's coming out in the next few months. It allows for multiple people to come together and work on content. So, there's a little bit more to automation software, especially in today's age. There's tons of data you can find from automation software. There's a lot of collaborative things you can do. There's social listening that you can do. There's tons of other tools that have been put with automation software, free and paid, that are really, really helpful to especially large teams. And even if you're a solo entrepreneur and have a bunch of clients that you're working with, it really helps in sharing with your clients what you're working on and giving that higher level visibility to the content that you're putting out and when it's going out. It also allows you to work around those schedules. So, if you know a post is going up at a certain time, you can help other people guide their own content, whether you have partnerships or something going on. It just gives everyone a higher level overview of what's happening, whether you're on a team or working on your own and having to communicate that to clients.

Ty Smith2:31

Yeah, awesome. What do you think as far as cons or drawbacks for social media software?

Liz2:34

There are definitely some drawbacks. There's a lot of stuff that you can't automate. And let's be real, a ton of stuff on social media moves really quickly, especially Twitter. So, when you're automating things on Twitter, I really say, go not every post as a scheduled post because people can tell. You don't see it as much on mobile, but on desktop, you can see that it was sent from whatever automated service that was. And it just looks a little... The audience, even if they don't realize they're catching it, they definitely are, and it definitely affects some content's performance, as I've seen. And a lot of things, especially on Twitter, happen in real time. There's conversations that you want to engage with. There's quote tweets you want to make, which you can do in some automation software, it's just not always the most user-friendly thing to do. For me, just going through the app is really the fastest way to be able to use Twitter specifically. Things that are a bit more visual and not as conversational, like on Instagram or Facebook, that can all be... I would rather use those scheduling tools and then make sure you're engaging though, because the thing is, when people start to really rely on automation software, it's automated, and you yourself are not actually engaging. And now that people have really cracked down on bots to engage with other accounts, it's super, super noticeable at this point. It's really important to show up on social media for your audience. The whole point is to be social. And so if your entire strategy is automated content, that kind of takes away from the entire purpose of being on social media. So, have a mix. If you know certain things are coming up and can be scheduled and are good pieces of content anyway, go for it. Use automation software, especially to give people that higher level overview of what's happening over the next few weeks. But if you can do things more in real time, especially when you reply to comments, do threads, polls... This is all more geared toward Twitter, but you can't do a lot of that in a lot of the automation software. So, it really also limits the type of content you're posting if you're relying entirely on that.

Ty Smith5:18

Yeah, I have found social media automation software to be totally indispensable when it comes to reporting, when it comes to scheduling evergreen content. But when it comes to real-time work, real-time tweets or posts going out, it is a little bit more clunky, I have found, than just opening up Twitter and tweeting. But pros and cons to everything. So, what would you say are the best platforms out there right now?

Liz5:33

Well, I have to, of course, talk about the ones that I use myself. Sprout Social is really, really good. They have great tools. Like I said, it's so much more beyond automation software. They have social listening and other keyword tracking tools. You can narrow people down by geography. Super cool things that can be done in there to really hone in on your audience. Like, that's the biggest thing with this software today is being able to find your audience faster so that you can initiate those conversations or join those conversations that are already happening to bring more attention to yourself or your brand or whatever your purpose is on social media. So, that's a huge one. Tweepsmap for Twitter is also great. It's harder to find demographic information for specifically Twitter, especially through their own analytics, as well as Sprout Social. I really like to know, especially in crypto, crypto is global. Who are you talking to? You could be talking to literally anyone in any reach of the Earth. And so, I love to know who is the majority of who we're speaking to. A lot of people will be really, really surprised by the results. There's so many clients that we've even had that I'm like, 'Hey, did you realize that a third of your audience is based actually in the US, and we've been mostly targeting European time zones?' So, even really small... I wouldn't even call that a small detail, but details like that can really help engage the right users at the right times to the content that you want them to see. So, it's utilizing these tools in a way that really helps you find the information you're looking for because there's a billion different tools out there. They almost all do the same things at this point, to be honest. Sprout Social and Tweepsmap, those are paid. But I did want to also note that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, they all have their own suites, too, for analytics, scheduling. You can use TweetDeck for free. Tweepsmap does actually have a free trial or something. I always tap into that with a different email. Sorry. But, whatever, it is what it is. I hope they don't kick me off for that.

Liz8:17

But, a lot of these platforms, they know that people want this information. They know they want that data. They know that they want scheduling capability. And so, a lot of them are bringing that in-house. Facebook now, in their Business Suite, you can schedule out all of your Facebook posts, all of your Instagram posts, and a lot of your stories. Now, again, some of your capacity there is a little bit limited, like you can't do polls in stories, you can't do certain stickers, but you can do some, which is really crazy. And I mean, I've been doing social media, been using social media, as have you, for what, like over a decade now. So, which is wild to think about. Can you imagine even having Instagram stories? That's still a little bit newer. And then being able to have the capacity to schedule that through an Instagram app? I don't want to sound dated, but the kids these days really have just a plethora of tools at their disposal. It's crazy. But there's a ton of different free and paid tools that are really, really helpful in your strategy. And those are definitely the ones that I personally use myself. There's also Hootsuite, which I've used before. There's also Later, which is really good. I like their UX is really, really clean. Like, I would ultimately love if Later's UX was with Sprout Social's powerhouse of tools. Like, that would be the ultimate toolbox for a social media manager, just to put that out there as a suggestion.

Liz10:09

Yeah, just for whoever is listening. So, there's tons of other tools out there. I'm sure that in the comments, someone could be like, 'Oh, well, I use these other things,' and it's a whole suite of other products. Again, there's just, there's not a lot of differentiation at this point with what you're going to get on a lot of these platforms. So, know what you need first, and then find the tools that fit that. Because you'll get lost in all of it. You really will. And it's really important to know why you're using these tools, especially if you're paying for them, because Sprout Social isn't super cheap. I think Later, they have decent pricing. But Tweepsmap, they get really expensive. So, just know why you're using certain tools because that cost will definitely run up by the end of the year, and you'll want to make sure that you're getting your full usage of that suite. Otherwise, you can utilize and find that data elsewhere, especially within Twitter or Facebook and Instagram. They're really giving the power to their users with the amount of data that they're letting us know just through their own platforms and their own analytics.

Ty Smith11:24

Yeah, I mean, you touched on this already a little bit, but as far as where we see the future of social media automation software going, it does seem like there's quite a bit of vertical integration going on between these existing social medias launching their own essentially suites of tools. Is that something you see continuing to happen?

Liz11:37

Absolutely. And I didn't even touch on it. YouTube, within YouTube, you can schedule your own stuff there, too. It's not like you need another automation app for that. We use other tools to analyze data from YouTube, but YouTube itself has a plethora of data and knowledge to give its users right out the gate, right in their own platform. I think that these platforms have been around for over a decade now, or most of them have, and they've seen that people want automation, they want the data. A lot of these marketers, whenever they come in to use Facebook, it's for advertising. And so, especially, you have to think, follow the money. A lot of Facebook's ads is going to be extraordinarily affected by all the different changes that are coming to user privacy between their whole feud with Apple. This goes way, way back. But you can see these decisions being made in what tools are given to the users. None of this is by accident or just for fun. It's because they're looking to give people more information, maybe for ads and targeting and finding the right audience. These platforms want you to stay in the platforms. And if that even means going as far as keeping the marketers there, too, to give them that data, to give them those analytics, to allow them to have content scheduling in their back end, I don't ever have to leave Facebook. I don't ever have to leave Instagram. I don't ever have to leave YouTube or Twitter. It's all right there. And that is user time. And so, they want to keep you there. They're not trying to let you leave. They don't want you using automation software. They don't want you using other third-party tools. They want you using theirs. And so, I really do think there's going to be tons of new build-out within these product suites.

Liz13:33

I could even see Facebook eventually, not to give them a new revenue model, but I could see them eventually selling back that service and data to people after they see what that usage is like for a freebie. You never know, especially with the amount of play-to-play there is with social media and the ad stipulations that are coming. So, I definitely see way more vertical integration happening. You can see it even with TikTok, too, and what they're doing with their creators. I really can't say this enough, but these platforms don't want you to leave. That's why also seeing that social media conversion even to your own website is sometimes really abysmal in Google Analytics. Because they don't want you going there. They want you staying and looking at the content on their own platform. It's why TikTok is also more of genre-focused than it is creator-focused. They want you to stay and look at the same kind of content, even if it means it's not the same creator. You can see it in how these algorithms are being shaped, and you can see it in the tools that are being used.

Ty Smith14:41

Yeah, it really wouldn't surprise me at all to see because clearly there's a market for agencies like us who pay thousands of dollars a month in social media automation software tools, as well as smaller companies do the same thing. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Facebook or Twitter was to launch a paid service that allowed those kind of tools to be accessed. And I think the future is also going to go, it already is going this route of, like, for example, I don't think you can schedule polls ahead of time on Twitter or on Instagram, things like that. I'm sure we'll start to see that.

Liz15:42

Yeah, at least not with any tools that I currently use now. I haven't seen that functionality yet.

Ty Smith15:50

Yeah, so as they continue to add features to the site, I mean, Twitter just launched Twitter Blue, which allows you to undo tweets and do threads and things like that. I am going to bet that in the next 10 years, they add tools for digital marketers to use their platform more effectively, and it'll be a paid service.

Liz16:43

100%. I mean, look at small... Like, this is a little tangential, but I don't know if you ever go to smaller towns in your area, but whenever I come home, I go to a smaller town, and I went to go try and get my hair cut. Every single business was a Facebook page. They didn't even have a website. I was losing my mind. I was like, 'Why am I going to a freaking Facebook page to get my hair cut?' Like, this is crazy. This just feels so ass-backward of what a user experience should be. But the thing is, is that they don't need a website. Facebook is their website. How mind-blowing is that? And so, I think a lot of people, especially with this younger and newer generation, they use social media like their own website. Like, an Instagram is your website, or their TikTok is their website. When you look, again, at the conversions, especially TikTok is horrible for conversion unless you are really viral, like really, really viral. You look at a TikTok page, and then you look at their Instagram page, and a lot of them, they'll have 30,000 followers on TikTok and a thousand on Instagram. Or their page traffic, if you can try and assess that, isn't very good. Or if they're a musician and trying to get people to their Spotify or their YouTube, their plays are really low, their subscribers are really low. But TikTok, they're like, 'We'll keep feeding this out. We'll keep pushing your numbers.' And so, again, that was a little tangential, but it really feeds into this idea that these platforms don't want you leaving. And so, if they can keep the people who are in it the most, who are scheduling the posts, who are looking at the data, who are looking at other people's posts, if they can keep people like us in the app longer, that's a huge win.

Ty Smith18:31

Yeah, absolutely. So, just to wrap up everything, social media automation tools are awesome for scheduling out content, seeing reporting, collaborating with a team. Drawbacks could be just the smoothness of real-time content and just some clunkiness here and there with certain features not being available. But the future is bright for social media automation. I mean, there's clearly a huge market for it. Some of these companies are billion-dollar companies, and they're either going to be bought up by these social media platforms and vertically integrated or developed on their own by, say, Facebook. But I think let's leave it on that note. Listeners, if you found this episode helpful, please review, rate, and recommend us to a friend, and subscribe on YouTube. And on that note, we will catch you on the next one. Bye, guys.

Liz18:44

Bye.