Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

A traditional social media marketer might cringe at the mere mention of social media automation, while a few others are on the fence, unable to pick a side. But once you realize the full potential of what social media automation can help you achieve, you might decide to leap over the fence.

Content marketers usually like to stick to a content calendar. It helps them plan blog posts and other content months ahead of posting them. Similarly, with social media automation you can plan ahead, and schedule your content to go out at the desired time without having to worry about making time to do it post by post. There is a wide array of perfectly good reasons to incorporate social media automation in your strategy. Here are a few reasons that might help change your mind if you are unsure about automation, or they might just strengthen your opinion about automation being a necessity....

I had just stepped off the stage at Dreamforce 2013 when I was asked by an audience member, "Who are other thought leaders I should follow in the marketing automation industry?"

...To help better answer this question in the future, and make it easier for people to find the thought leaders they are seeking, I have broken down marketing automation into its underlying elements: Content Creation, User Experience, Search Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Marketing, and Sales/Marketing Alignment. Let's take a look at some of the thought leaders that you should be following within each category....

Marketing to consumers at the local level has always been challenging for large national brands — or for any organization — with multiple locations. Corporate managers want centralized control while combining brand consistency with geo-specific local messaging. Imagine being the brand manager, checking addresses and phone numbers for hundreds of retail stores or monitoring social media comments at the local level. Each location is its own business, but it’s not.

Thankfully, there is software that can automate many of the tasks involved in marketing at the local level....