How to get started with Social Media automation?

What can you automate?

There are things you should never automate. The added value of your Social Media Manager is his empathy, his ability to understand what people want and provide them with it.

Reading others content, evaluating what the competition does, defining the delivery schedule, responding to comments, engaging the audience, all these tasks must be performed manually, because these tasks make a real difference.

But there are other tasks that can be partially automated.

Posting for instance: you don't need to be in front of your screen and manually post each piece of content. There is no added value.

Similarly, some content creation can, or should, be automated. The problem is that quality is essential: you can't sacrifice quality for quantity. So how do you automate content creation without losing quality?

Automating content series

Sometimes you are incredibly productive, inventive, full of ideas, and other times you feel drained of your creativity. A Social Media Manager's job is difficult because you are required to be constantly creative, even when you lack time to think and find inspiration.

Lucky for you, there is a type of content that's easy to produce and that people are craving for: series.

Social Media content could be divided in two categories: time-sensitive content and intemporal content. Time sensitive content only makes sense for a limited amount of time and must be always fresh. Intemporal content however can be extremely valuable too but keeps its value for a longer period of time. This is what you should automate to give yourself more time to prepare time-sensitive content.

Content series are lists of content that can be prepared in batches to be distributed over time. It could be things like:

• Best restaurants in town
• Quote of the day
• Marketing tips
• Product spotlight
• Holiday destinations
• etc.

So how do you get your series of content automated? Just follow the steps:

Step 1. Prepare your content

Open an excel sheet.

In the first column, put all your potential "titles" ("Quote of the day", "[DAY] quote", "What the expert say:", etc.). Each automatic post will randomly select one of these titles.

In the second column, type your actual content. It could be quotes, tips, ideas, suggestions, bestofs, etc. One piece per row.

In the third column, type your "suffix": that will be the final line of your post. It could be hashtags, mentions, handles, links, etc.

Step 2. Upload your content

You can now copy/paste everything in the Social Unicorn. Select the first column and paste it in the Prefix section. Do the same thing with the second column and the Base section, then the third one with the Suffix section.

Once you're done, visit the Images page to upload some visual assets. These elements will then be available in the Image section of each series.

You can now save to see a preview of the result. Click on the "New Preview" button to test a few potential combinations.

Note that you will need at least 50 combinations before you could schedule this series. We have set this minimum to make sure we do not feed your social accounts with redundant low-value content that could harm your online reputation.

If you have not reached 50 combinations yet, add a few more images, suffix, prefix or bases and you should quickly reach that benchmark.

Step 3. Schedule your series

There's nothing easier than that!

Select your Social account, the series you wish to schedule, the day (or days) you wish to publish it then the time.

Once confirmed, one random post from this series will be published on your behalf each and every week!

Congrats, you've automated part of your Social Media posting!