Social Media Marketing Automation: Top 5 Tools and 7 Free Checklists

Social Media Marketing Automation: Top 5 Tools and 7 Free Checklists process.st/social-media-marketing-automation July 16, 2020

Jane Courtnell July 16, 2020 Marketing, Social Media, Technology

This is a guest post by Tom Siani, an online marketing expert with up to 4 years of experience in the digital industry. He is also collaborating with some well-known brands to generate traffic, create a sales funnel, and increase online sales. He has written a considerable number of articles about marketing via social media, brand marketing, blogging, and search visibility.

With over 50% of the world’s population using social media, a number that is only increasing, you can see how social media marketing is critical for reaching potential customers and driving sales.

With this in mind, in this Process Street article we look at how you can improve your social media marketing strategy to get ahead of the game. Specifically, we turn our attention to social media marketing automation.

We’ll explain the advantages of using social media marketing automation as part of your social media marketing strategy, in addition to presenting you with our top 5 social media marketing automation tools you can sign up and use today. Sound good?

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But wait there is more!

To kick-off this article, I present Process Street as your critical social media marketing accomplice.

At Process Street, we have been working hard to provide you with practical template tools to assist you in delivering an optimal social media marketing strategy.

These template resources are listed below. Click on the links provided to jump straight in. Alternatively, scroll down to find out more.

If you want to jump to a specific section in this article, click on the relevant subheader below. If not, continue scrolling!

Let’s get started!

Use a social media marketing checklist A social media marketing checklist is a set of documented steps designed to assist you as part of your social media marketing strategy.

If you are new to Process Street and a little unsure about what it is we offer, watch our below webinar: An Introduction to Process Street.

How can you use Process Street as part of your social media marketing strategy?

You can document any process as a checklist, for free, using Process Street. Each checklist details every step telling how the given marketing process needs to be carried out to deliver the standards required and capture the attention of potential leads.

For more information on how to create and edit templates with Process Street, watch the below video: Basics of Creating and Editing Templates.

Luckily for you, we already have a wealth of template resources designed to help you deliver a world-class social media marketing strategy. Below I have listed our top 6 social media marketing checklists, ready for you to jump in and use – for free – right away.

As you navigate through these checklists, you will come across the following features: Stop tasks to ensure task order, Dynamic due dates, so no deadline is missed, Conditional logic, creating a dynamic template that caters to your needs, Role assignments, to ease task delegation within your team, Approvals, allowing decision-makers to give the go-ahead (or rejection) on important items. Also, the necessary comments can be provided.

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With these features, our checklists are dynamic, social media marketing checklist machines.

What are you waiting for!

Sign up to Process Street for free and get started today!

Social media marketing checklist: Buffer’s Social Media Etiquette Checklist Before you hit the publish button or send an update to the queue, what do you do? The team from Buffer suggests running this checklist before publishing on social media.

Click here to access this Buffer’s Social Media Etiquette Checklist!

Social media marketing checklilst: Social Listening Strategy Process Checklist Social media has made it possible for the entire world to share an opinion about you.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, Snapchat.. an endless list of social media platforms. You, as a business, need to be listening for any comments made about your business on these platforms and respond to each one.

Use this template to create a strategy to monitor and respond to all mentions of your business on social media.

Click here to access our Social Listening Strategy Process Checklist!

Social media marketing checklist: Social Media Image Design Designing images for social media platforms is a minefield for potential errors. Even experienced designers will have trouble remembering the various best practices for each platform, and a single mistake can make all of the work behind the image useless.

This social media image design checklist solves that problem. Run this checklist to design your social media images.

Click here to access this Social Media Image Design checklist!

Social Media Influencer Outreach Checklist Run this checklist monthly, or at the start of a new campaign to make sure you’re doing everything you can to maximize the impact of your social media influencer outreach.

Click here to access this Social Media Influencer Outreach Checklist!

Social Media Manager Daily Checklist 3/13

Social media managers have a lot on their plate – and when you’re doing any kind of regular social media marketing, which can be busy work, you need to make sure you’re covering all your bases and balancing your time in the best way possible.

Run this checklist daily to keep on top of all of your tasks as a social media manager.

Click here to access this Social Media Manager Daily Checklist

Social Media SLA Management Checklist Template A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a document that creates trust, enforces reliability, and keeps both the supplier and the customer on the same page.

Follow this process to create a SLA between you (the supplier) and a customer.

Click here to access this Social Media SLA Management Checklist Template

Social Media SLA Metrics Tracking Process Template Expanding on the general Social Media SLA Management Checklist Template presented above, run this Social Media SLA Metrics Tracking Process Template to periodically review performance and ensure the requirements of a social media services SLA are being met.

Click here to access this Social Media SLA Metrics Tracking Process Template!

Social media marketing automation: What it is, and the benefits of automation Social media automation optimizes interactions on social media sites. This could include scheduling posts ahead of time, republishing popular articles, and automatically liking, commenting, and following potential lead profiles.

Social media has an unparalleled audience reach and so could be considered the number 1 means of building brand awareness and boosting sales. If you want to get ahead of the competition, I would recommend you broadcast your message on as many social services as you can.

Building a brand identity on social media and keeping users following your accounts requires a lot of time and effort. Being quick, creative, and up to date in content generation and engagement is key to winning marketing competition.

In other words, you need to be efficient in terms of time, money, and social presence, using the easiest ways to post high-quality content.

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Fortunately, there is a tool or app for everything, and social media management isn’t an exception. There are numerous social media automation tools you can use in this regard.

Many companies are using automation tools to boost their marketing efforts and outcompete their rivals. You can also increase your social presence on different networks and keep your ROI high.

But the benefits of social media automation don’t stop there. Below are 5 top benefits worth expanding on: 1.

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Saving time and money, Targeting the right audience, Scheduling your posts and engagement, Reaching out to niche influencers, Analyzing your performance

Let’s take a look at these benefits in more detail.

Benefits of automation: Benefit #1, saving time and money

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Social media automation tools can save you time. Think about it, you need to create compelling content and post them fast and errorlessly to get ahead of your competition.

With each platform having different templates and styles, posting on several platforms may lead to mistakes and inconsistency. Automation tools can completely eliminate these mistakes, ensuring your job will be finished on time and without any error.

In addition, automation on social media will decrease marketing costs via increasing productivity and reducing the necessary manpower.

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Expanding on the last point, Content Generator and Creative Copywriter are among the top searched jobs on the internet and social media platforms.

Companies spend masses on recruiting numerous employees to perform marketing tasks. If you want to save money in this labor-consuming section, you should utilize automation tools on social media.

Although tools can’t generate compelling content at the moment, they can reduce the time needed to manage your accounts and previously generated content. By using social media automation tools, you’ll be able to republish content on all your social media accounts from a single dashboard. More amazingly, you can keep your social presence active, even when you’re not working with your accounts.

Keep in mind that repeating your brand’s message in different formats can cause difficulties in maintaining consistency. Luckily, automation tools can help. If you generate evergreen content, social media automation tools can repost such content based on a concrete time plan.

Benefits of automation: Benefit #2, targeting the right audience It’s clear that you can’t reach all 3 billion social users around the world and convert them to your customers. If you’re going to increase your brand awareness, you should target the most relevant audience to your niche.

Identifying potential customers, finding them on social media, reaching out, generating leads, and finally converting leads to sales is not an easy task. So, many beginners are inclined to use social escrow services to acquire and customize existing social media accounts. However, automation tools can significantly simplify this process and increase the efficiency of your efforts.

Using tools you can categorize target audiences in terms of age, gender, location, and position. In addition, targeting the right audience and getting more followers is easier using social media tools. These tools work based on finding profiles similar to yours, auto-engaging followers of these profiles, and finally obtaining follow-back.

To carry out such a process manually would demand hours or even days of finding, researching, and reaching out to niche relevant audiences.

Analytical tools can provide you with insightful data on the demographics and behavior of your followers. However, you will have to pay for these features.

Benefits of automation: Benefit #3, scheduling your posts and engagement

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Remember that consistency is paramount in content marketing. In other words, if you post infrequently, you will face follower loses as they forget your brand style. On the other hand, if you post too frequently, engagement rates could decrease as your followers start to become annoyed with your posting.

With that said, you need a consistent social presence, putting your brand in the public eye without bothering them. Finding the best times for posting and the effective number of posts in a day is an important factor in marketing these days.

With a reasonable posting schedule, you keep in touch with your audience and expand the circle of your customers. Through this approach, followers will not forget you because you are always active on different platforms.

Although there isn’t a certain formula to determine an efficient posting time, social media automation tools can simplify your job. They will provide you with a posting schedule based on your follower’s social presence and other factors.

Repurposing evergreen posts is an easy task using automation tools.

Apart from a timely social presence, efficient engagement is a crucial factor for your marketing strategy. If you want to gain your followers’ trust, you need to interact with them regularly and at a personal level.

Audience engagement brings credibility to your business and encourages your previous customers to continuously buy from you. In fact, social media is the best way to strengthen your relationships with people by liking, commenting, replying, etc.

Automation can help you to reach maximum engagement and interaction with minimum effort. You can automate your comments, likes, etc. using these tools and gain the trust of your customers.

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Automating likes is a safe action on social media, especially Instagram.

Also, automation tools usually allow businesses to automatically follow back those users who follow them. This can bring about an intimate relationship between you and your audience. In addition to this, some automation tools also offer social media groups for you to join according to their niche.

Of course, if you want to handle all these actions by yourself or assign them to employees, you can’t expect a high ROI. But using automation, you can follow a lot of people and groups instantly.

Benefits of automation: Benefit #4, reaching out to niche influencers Influencer marketing has become an effective means of building brand awareness. The majority of marketers believe that the ROI of influencer marketing is way better than that of other marketing strategies.

Brand spending on influencers is increasing creating a lucrative market from which influencers are divided into four categories: Mega-influencers: Usually celebrities with more than 1 million followers, Macro-influencers: Accounts with less than 1 million followers who have gained followers through social media activities, Micro-influencers: Niche experts with less than 100,000 followers, Nano-influencers: Common users who are highly-engaged with less than 5,000 followers.

Depending on your budget and niche, you have to find the right influencer to collaborate with. The first 2 categories are too costly, especially for more local businesses and startups. So, if you own a small business without a considerable marketing budget, we recommend Micro/Nano-influencers.

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Unfortunately, numerous accounts on social media have gained their followers via black methods. Crowdfire reports that many influencers on Instagram are looking to sell Instagram accounts.

You need to make sure that you’re talking to a trustworthy influencer. Social media automation tools can help you find the right influencer and contact them. Awario, BuzzSumo, and Klear are some of the most trusted tools in this regard.

Benefits of automation: Benefit #5, analyzing your performance Along with a consistent posting schedule, make sure the content you share is of high quality. This means posting the right content. Social media marketing is an everchanging world where new trends are emerging each day.

Social media tools help you post content on trending subjects. You can analyze data on different keywords and topics to post about them and increase your followers. Adding visual items to maximize the quality of your content is also a must, and is easy using these tools.

Data analysis of your performance on social media is another excellent advantage that automation tools offer. Instead of spending tons of dollars analyzing statistics and preparing reports for your digital marketing activities, you can use automation tools.

The majority of automation tools provide you with a user-friendly interface you can use to monitor the number of followers, likes, comments, shares, and other useful data.

With this information, you can optimize your strategy and make decisions accordingly.

Find your best performing posts and recognize their bold features for regular repurposing and reposting. Thanks to automation tools, you can easily perform these tasks and increase your ROI.

5 Top social media marketing tools

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Social media marketing tools are uniquely designed applications that provide assistance, targeting social networks with the purpose of spreading brand awareness or promoting a particular service or product.

Moving on from explaining the benefits social media automation tools bring, we list the top 5 social media automation tools you should consider using and their capabilities.

Social media marketing tool #1: Agora Pulse

Agora Pulse is 1 of the most featured social media automation tools within which you can schedule content on 6 different social networks.

With Agora Pulse you can easily analyze and track your performance, set up an optimum sharing schedule, and repurpose/repost content.

Click here to sign up and start using Agora Pulse today!

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Social media marketing tool #2: Kicksta

If Instagram is your digital marketing core platform, Kicksta is the best social media automation tool you can use. It’s created particularly for Instagram and increases your engagement rates, followers, and ROI. Automating the liking and commenting on specific posts is an effective task, helping you reach out to relevant users, making them your followers in an organic way.

Click here to sign up and start using Kicksta today!

Social media marketing tool #3: Hootsuite

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Hootsuite can be considered as 1 of the most famous social tools in the world. You can track various social media platforms simultaneously using this tool.

Hootsuite provides you with brand monitoring in real-time. If you know your brand’s mentions immediately after writing, you can reach out to writers for user-generated content or other collaborations.

Fortunately, Hootsuite supports all top social media platforms for post scheduling. Its analytics feature is also an advanced 1 providing insightful reports.

Click here to sign up and start using Hootsuite today!

Social media marketing tool #4: Buffer

Buffer provides you with the ability to schedule your posts in an organized and userfriendly queue. It can support different networks.

In addition to the automation on your posts, Buffer advises on the best time to post and provides a perfect analytics feature.

Click here to sign up and start using Buffer today!

Social media marketing tool #5: Crowdfire

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Crowdfire is a useful tool you can use to find insightful data regarding your social presence on Twitter. The application informs you of less engaged followers so that you can unfollow them.

In addition, Crowdfire provides performance analytics such as followers gained, likes, mentions, and retweets during a given time span. The app also has a scheduling tool which is a very useful feature.

Click here to sign up and start using Crowdfire today!

Optimize your social media marketing strategy In this article, you have learnt the importance of automating social activities as well as introducing top automation tools.

With these top social media marketing tools, your performance on social media will be both fast and accurate.

Keep in mind that there are many tools out there for you to consider. Play around with the different social media marketing tools, and their associated social media automated processes, to find the ideal tool for you and your business targets.

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