This post won’t mean much to those of you who’s knowledge of social media is limited to, “You know, Facebook and Twitter etc”. But the rest of us are trying to get good at it without feeling like it consumes all our time.
Anyway, I’ve just been asked my opinions about automation and social media. It’s something I feel strongly about, and my advice is to “approach with caution”. Here’s why.
1. We’re in the ‘intimacy business’, and automation is usually the the enemy of intimacy. If I skype my wife, “Hi darling – love you!”, we both feel good about it. It was impulsive and heartfelt. Automate it and I turn it into marketing. I lose trust instead of gaining it.
2. Social media is about “making connections”. That could mean making friendships or simply “getting noticed” (what Seth Godin calls “interrupting people”). Automating tweets to re-syndicate old posts is just advertising. It may have some value, but let’s call it what it is. You don’t see Seth recycling his old content, and he posts every day. We don’t recycle either.
3. I don’t want to see the same tweet from you multiple times a day just to “make sure I see it”. As soon as I pay you the compliment of adding you to my insider list (instead of reading your posts in my timeline) I’ll see the game you’re playing. A big turnoff. You’re no longer authentic and I will probably “unfollow”. Especially if you’re pumping out a constant stream of stuff.
4. Who am I following? Three times in the last week people have asked me, “Who d’you think is behind Jasmine Star?” (on Facebook). Their point was, it feels automated because there’s no dialogue with readers. Don’t get me wrong: I admire her, and what’s she’s done, and I’m jealous of her following. But you don’t want people wondering if you’re for real, and automation makes this much more likely. Compare Jasmine with @garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk). Not saying his is the only way to do things, but there is no doubt he’s real. Check out “The Thank You Economy.”
5. There is a slap (cost) to automation. Facebook especially makes your content lower priority if you automate it. We used to do this with blog posts but not any more. Now that we handcraft the posts, they get much more traffic and interaction. There is plenty of content on the web about this – this, for example.
As I said we’re in the intimacy business. Most photographers need about 30-50 weddings a year. That’s 50 odd relationships to be treasured, talked about and shared. The real key to success is not for you to jump up and down more, but for your fans to spread the word. It’s not the size of the audience but the degree of engagement that counts.
Having said all that, we do use automation, Tweetdeck in my case. It makes life so much easier. Give it a try, but please please please don’t turn your tweets into spam.
Love to all, and have fun.
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