Automation can be great for business, as long as it’s used in moderation.
Obviously you don’t want to become an impersonal social media robot, but finding the right mix of automation and personal interaction can really improve your productivity and sales.
Even though I don’t do a ton of automation myself, I realize it has its place. So I thought I’d make a list of some handy social media automation tools:
Social Oomph
This tool is for the serious Twitter and FaceBook automation junky. You can schedule tweets, automatically follow your followers, automatically send DMs (direct messages) to new followers, track keywords, re-use drafts and more.
This tool takes social media automation to another level. And even though I’m not a fan of “auto following everyone” and sending auto DM’s, this tool is definitely worth a mention.
There are free and premium services available.
TwitterFeed
This is a free service that automatically announces your latest blog post to Twitter, Facebook and more. I really like TwitterFeed because you can “set it and forget it.” The only time you need to login to TwitterFeed is if you are changing any settings.
As soon as you hit “Publish”, your blog post is queued up to be announced on the sites you specify.
Selective Tweets
If you only want certain tweets to post to your FaceBook account, you’ll love this FaceBook app. Simply type #fb at the end of tweet and it will post to your FaceBook account and/or fan page.
TweetDeck
This is the official social media desktop browser. TweetDeck is a free app that allows you to connect and post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Google Buzz and more.
For the record, this is my favorite Twitter app. I use it on my desktop, laptops (Mac/Windows) and iPhone.
I also love that you can create columns for all your accounts. It makes for easy viewing and access.
Tweet Old Post
Old posts aren’t necessarily irrelevant. This WordPress plug-in randomly selects an old post and tweets it on the interval you specify.
It’s a fabulous way to promote those juicy, archived posts that may have gotten buried.
Ping.fm
Post to numerous social networking sites all at once — even AOL Instant Messenger, Skype and more! This is one of the most comprehensive submission tools for social media.
HootSuite
The self-proclaimed social media dashboard that allows you to post to multiple sites with scheduling and tracking capabilities.
Warning About Automation
I touched on this briefly in another post, but I want to emphasize this point again. Automation is great, but don’t forget that people still want genuine personal interaction from time to time. Finding the right mix is key when using social media.
So tell me. What are some of your favorite social media automation tools?
by this article really i mgeting something new very useful post thx for it going to use.
I do not like receiving automated tweets. Many people prefer automation since it saves time but it doesn’t make sense. The same information going out to millions is not something I’d want to receive, it looks so much machine/computer operated.
I do use automation when it comes to my blog post, most of the time my blogs post are tweeted out automatic and also sent out to facebook.
Excellent post! I learned a lot and I hope that you will get to publish more relevant post like this.
woahh! thanks for sharing bro 🙂 love you blog.. ;0
I follow ok
Thanks for the helpful info once again Lisa!!! I started using the “Tweet Old Post” and I love it b/c I have so many old post that people new to my site may have never seen so it has definitely helped my traffic increase. Thanks again!!!
Lisa,
Thanks for posting your thoughts about automation for our social media promotions. I’m all for getting more work done in a shorter amount of time. Writing and scheduling tweets is an excellent way to utilize those 5 to 10 spare minutes that appear in your life throughout the day.
To your continued success in 2011.
Candace
Lisa, another great post with very useful information. Although I have been doing local SEO for over 2 years now, the day I found you on YouTube I spent over 3 hours reading your blogs and watching your videos. You are a real contribution to all.
I don’t like automated publish feature because in blogger if you create any post then you will see date format in blog url and then some part of your title so firstly I create my post with different title with targeted keywords and then change it to by a sequence you can look at my blog. just see my url and my title is it same?
pingoat and ping.fm have worked well. facebook and twitter also have inherent tools to link your blog rss so it is tweeted and posted to your facebook fan page
These are really great tools. Personally, I use hootsuite and socialoomph. It’s in socialoomph that I schedule tweets. I do it weekly and schedule it to post during peek hours where probably my twitter followers are online.
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Honestly, I have automated once and I don’t like it. Businesses need to have their own personal touch. It takes less then a minute to change your status on Twitter or Facebook. So this is something that should be done personally. No automation should be used for this.
Hi Nick,
I respectfully disagree with you here. If you write your blog post but want to also announce it on Facebook and Twitter there’s nothing wrong with automating these kinds of tasks. Now I do have a problem with people automating every single thing they do so they appear robotic. I think automation has its place and can actually save time, but you have to know how and when to use it.
Yeah, I completely understand what you mean. I used to automate my posts. But now I update my Twitter with my new blog post. Now I can add whatever I want to it. Instead of an ugly looking title and link with “via (insert automation service here)” I mean it doesn’t matter too much but I feel the personal touch is better, when you can.
I have used tweetdeck when I was Tweeting. I have not tweeted for a while because I was not sure it was worth it. However, I read you other post so I am going to try it again.
I like ping.fm also.
So far I’ve been using Twitterfeed and now I’m considering TweetDeck too.
I’m so out of touch with half of these, though I do not like the sound of Automation tweets, sounds to robotic and annoying. I will look in to it though, come up with the times.
Thanks for the post Lisa, great stuff again.
I use Feedburner to retweet my posts and the Simple Facebook Connector plugin for WordPress to send my posts to Facebook.
Has anyone used Tube Mogul? I was told it can send uploaded videos to multiple services in one shot. Heard about but haven’t tried it yet.
FeedBurner*
Hey Michael, I use TubeMogul for video distribution to certain sites. It saves time on the upload, but I find that later on I need to go back to each site to make sure the videos are characterized and tagged properly. For example, on one site you can use commas to separate tags but on other sites you can’t.
I don’t autopost to Twitter or Facebook from TubeMogul because that would be overkill!
I also use Blip.tv to submit to the iTunes library. You can use TubeMogul for this also, but you have more control over the look of your podcast in iTunes if you do it with blip.
Hope that helps.
Thanks, Ileane! Yes, that helps a lot. I’m hoping to do more video blogging in the coming months and (of course) I’m looking for ways to get the most leverage. Cheers!
I find a lot of problems with Twitterfeed, so switched to Feedburner for posting to Twitter, and RSS-Graffitti for posting to Facebook. No problems, and RSS-Graffitti will also include a picture preview of the post in Facebook.
Great tools for automation here. Ping.fm is a godsend when you’re working with multiple social media outlets. 🙂
I use RSS Graffiti to autopost blog posts to facebook. It reads your RSS feed to post. It’s worked great for me so far.
I LOVE TweetDeck. It makes both reading and posting so easy. I really love that it auto-shortens URLs.
I use Tweetdeck and I didn’t start using it until, some time back, I saw your tweets were coming from it. So I was interested, I installed it and now I love it.
I don’t use much automation just because I don’t like seeing with other users. I use Tweetdeck just because it is easier to handle multiple accounts and I can create lists of people I really wanna follow and who’s tweets I don’t want to miss.
I’ve found LaterBro works good for me to schedule tweets. It has a few quirks but it’s good to simply schedule tweets. It can also schedule posts on Facebook. And it’s free.
Hi Lisa, I use Feedburner to auto-tweet new posts I publish and Amplify helps me with scheduling and retweets and Facebook shares for other interesting posts I find. In the grand scheme of things, most of my tweeting is done manually in real-time. I’m really grateful to about a dozen other bloggers that are using Twitterfeed to auto-tweet my new posts and I think that’s an awesome way to network.
I didn’t even know you could use Feedburner to tweet. Where have I been? Guess I need to login to my account once in a while huh? 😉
LOL! When you login go to the Publicize tab and select Socialize, then add your Twitter account. Your link will have the Goo.gl shortened URL. 🙂
Btw – Congrats on being listed on Kristie’s 125 Fearless Female Bloggers list. I bet this is the first time we were listed together, hopefully it won’t be the last. I love that word “Fearless”.
Have a great week Lisa.
Oh OK, thanks Ileane! 🙂 I don’t click that tab very often. I guess I’m not very “social.” he he 🙂
So far I think Ping.fm is the most powerful tool for automating the promotion of new ideas and articles across the social network.
However, we need to be very careful when using it and try to remain human and truly social. Social networks are not solely for self promotion but for sharing and making new connections as well.
I tried twitterfeed, and it never worked right. I use the “Add this” plug-in from WordPress to tweet my posts and to post them on facebook. It really takes only thirty seconds.
Too much automation can make people forget they are subscribed to you. I post lots of spoken-word mp3s of my posts and pages, but I have yet to automate them as feeds or anything. You have to click the link to listen and right click to save it to your computer. I like making people take that step on their own, as if they own the file they clicked instead of just receiving it and forgetting it.
I recently started using Tweet Deck, and I love it! For me, it gives me just the right mix of automation and control.
I have tried ping.fm. I will also be trying one of the twiter feeds. Will let you know my feelings about it after using it for a while. Great information here.
I do use automation when it comes to my blog post, most of the time my blogs post are tweeted out automatic and also sent out to facebook.
Just this alone..saves time running from site to site.
“TrafficColeman “Signing Off”
what is this automation…… can u tell me in brief
Hello Lisa,
i like this list, especially as you mentioned twitterfeed. I’ve use it and think it’s great. i’ve tried several others, and some even made twitter suspend my account. i think we shouldn’t misuse these automation softwares, it can turn around for our destruction.
What i really need now is a way i could automate my facebook fan post. do you know any other method other than social Oomph?
I actually stop following people who send me an automated “Thanks for following tweet”. I just hate it for some reason. Time releasing blog posts is cool and useful but that’s as far as I go.
I’ve been using twitterfeed for the last week for my blog, and I love it. It’s just eliminates that step of making a bit.ly link, posting it to twitter and facebook and then waiting to see if people click on it. I feel like I can just shut my laptop when I’m done writing, and it saves a lot of time!