It's safe to say that the way we use social media is constantly changing in both our personal and professional lives, thanks to changes to platforms and our shifting way of communications.
We are constantly adapting the way we communicate online and no business can afford to use the same old social media strategy and methods to connect with their customers and potential customers.
Why not?
Using 'outdated' techniques can only have a negative impact on your online reputation - you don't want to look like somebody that isn't paying attention and not updating their strategy. That's not a good look for your company as a whole!
Plus, people are now more accepting of social media as a prominent business tool for businesses looking to attract more customers and interact with existing ones. It's time to think about what impact some forms of free social media software can have, the good and the bad...!
Automated messages take out the social of social media...
Some free software can offer you figures and stats that can help you with your social media efforts and offer insight into how you are progressing when it comes to 'retweets', 'followers' and 'favourites' statistics. Some software can also make it easier to follow people back who have followed you earlier.
Other free software enables you to set up automated private messages that are sent to anyone who follows you, or send a public message to your latest five followers.
It's brilliant to appear friendly and willing to introduce yourself to followers, but automated messages fly in the face of 'social' media, it's robotic! Perhaps it's time for businesses to rethink the automated vs real time strategy for social media.
If you really want to be friendly, pick a few recent followers and send a more personal tweet to them - just spend 10 minutes a day on the task rather than half of the day!
- Extra reading: Find out more about permission marketing, automation marketing and real time marketing in our most recent blog post.
Be more socially active and less robotic with your social media messages...
Sending people Twitter validation direct messages automated via Twitter validation software can also give off a more negative vibe than you'd like. Automated direct messaging is not a sociable way of engaging with users and it will not increase the likeliness of getting a response or interaction from other tweeters.
On the Internet you can also find free platforms that collate information into 'newsletters' and similar, which is great for you to use personally. Finding information that could be good to share as status updates or produce blog posts from is fantastic. Do that, rather than posting out these unengaging pieces of content that are, quite obviously, just another automated tool.
Remember that when it comes to social media, size doesn't matter!
Don't get too hung up on the stats and scores you get from some free tools. As helpful as they can be when it comes to analysing what works and what doesn't, when it comes to social media. Having a lower rank on these tools and platforms doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong and having a high score doesn't necessarily mean you're a social media whizz kid.
Spend your time making your social media feeds and strategies more natural and engaging, rather than worrying about the automated scores from a piece of software that only analyses certain elements of your social media messages.
What's next?
We should add, quite strongly, that not all free tools are bad (equally, not all paid tools are great either), so don't be afraid to use free software. Just be aware of what impact it has on your social media feed - having tags on tweets from other companies isn't often a good thing. Focusing on the wrong elements of your social media is also a bad thing - ask us what metrics matter and which don't!
Read our blog, No Sales From Social Media? Here Are The Insightful Reasons Why You're Not Getting Sales, so you know what you should be expecting from your social media efforts too!
Overall, when it comes to social media efforts what works for one business might not work for another, it's all about trying new things and analysing your efforts and improving on what you have done in the past and looking at old methods and asking yourself whether they still work.
