4 Great Social Media Automation Tools: It's Time for Small Business Owners to Save Time and Money!

After watching Beate Chelette's online course, Turn Your Talent into A Business in 12 Steps, on Creative Live, I've learnt a new phrase, social media automation. At the first thought, I would associate this phrase with something created by a robot, reminding me of the experience with the automated online chat with every customer representative. I wouldn't let my audience and customers feel the same way as I did. However, social media automation could be really useful in terms of time-saving after I've also learnt when and how to automate my social media accounts. From a small business owner perspective, we really do not have the money to hire a marketing consultant (and I really doubt the actual return of it since the how-to resources are so approachable nowadays) plus we do not have the energy to worry about the social media posting all the time while shipping our products personally. 

The 2.0 world is telling us that social media is so critical for scaling your business and I would have been swallowed by the massive professional marketing suggestions if I didn't launch a social media campaign. I have a Twitter, a Facebook Page, a Pinterest, an Instagram, a blogger, a Google+, a LinkedIn, a Tumblr, a Flickr, and a Wanelo to manage on a daily basis and feel like I'm posting almost the same thing on every and each account and I was so exhausted. Thanks to the next five social media automation tools, my time literally has been saved. I found those tool easy to use and, mostly, free. Before you apply any of it, please take a deep look at some articles like The Social Media Automation Strategy Every Marketer Needs , or How to Use Social Media Automation to Enhance Your Marketing Strategy to truly understand what you are going to do.

• Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media dashboard that can manage most of your social media accounts and schedule the post ahead of time. You also get the easy-to-read data report, which is the main reason I recommend it to you. Now you can manage your social profiles on one dashboard. Same thing as Tweetdeck, a platform breaks down your Twitter activities, searches and lists into one interface.

Hootsuite Interface

• Dlvr.it

Dlvr.it makes sharing content super easy and it monitors your news feeds and RSS of your blog and automates them to all of your social channels. You specify source where you want to pick the content from and the destination where you want to put it. I like the fresh interface it has. Same thing as IFTTT, since a lot people have known it, I think you already figured it out!

• Aweber

Aweber is a email marketing tool with automation built-in. Your subscriber will get your autoresponders and email newsletters when somebody subscribes. It provides you all the templets you need. Technically it is not a social media automation on the whole, but from what I've found out, a lot successful small business owners are using it.

• Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is an advanced social media automation tool, which helps you mange your overall marketing automation. I suggest that very-early-staged small business has no need to apply it unless your budget allows you to do so. Same thing as ontraport, they both have certain fees and require you to have business plans in head already.

To sum up, social media tools are just the bridge to connect you with your audience. What truly matters is whether you're providing what your customers need and solving their problems. Don't get addicted to social media automation. :D