Are you a robot on social media?

Several days ago, I followed back on Twitter an account that was posting articles about Social Media topics. It sent an automatic tweet including its latest followers to say hi and to suggest them to download a free gift.
The reaction of one follower was to ask if the other followers were fake accounts, funny that he did not question if the sender was real too (maybe saying hi was enough of a proof of being human).

Engage with your audience

That made me look more into details at the timeline of the social media account: all the posts were only tweets to their blog, no retweet, no answer to people who sent a question. There was no sign that a person had ever engaged with the followers or other Twitter accounts.
Don’t get me wrong: I think that automation is a great tool. It works well for that twitter account as it indeed has thousands of followers.
I don’t mind so much that an account is soulless if the content is valuable. However in that case, all the links were leading to articles with ads mixed with the text. It did not offer a great reading experience either to its visitors.

Your automation strategy

If you would like to learn how to use automation with Social Media, Buffer posted an excellent article that you can read here.

[Tweet “Use automation to grow your audience, engage with people to keep your fans”]

Automation should be used to help you grow your audience and be more efficient on Social Media. However, quantity is not the only quality that your fans are looking for. If you would like to keep them, show them that you are human too and that you know how to use the Social part of Social Media.

Here is also a graphic that explains how I view Social Media.

What about you? How do you use Social Media?

Don’t forget to also engage with the audience that is on your list, they are precious and don’t let them wonder if you are human or an automated system. If you don’t have a website and haven’t started building your list yet, you can download my free checklist here to learn how to start engaging with your ideal customers.