Social Media Management Tips – What You Can Automate on Your Social Networks to Save Time Online

Social Media is taking the world by the storm and studies now show it is becoming one of the best ways to market your products and services online. This is because it is based on Word of Mouth Marketing. Statistics show that people prefer to do business with other people they know, like and trust and Social Media allows you the opportunity to build those relationships.

The only real downside of Social Media Marketing is it can take a lot of time so this post will help you automate as much as possible so you can spend your time on the most important part of Social Media which is conversations, engagement and building relationships.

When you add these automation tips to your Social Media Marketing plan  you will get the largest return for the amount of time you are able to invest online.

For the purposes of this post I am going to assume you already have accounts on the 4 biggest networks which right now are Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube.

Twitter

• Automatically Tweet when you post to your WordPress blog using the pluggin Twitter Tools
• Automatically follow back everyone who follows you using http://SocialToo.com
• Automatically add your Tweets to Facebook using facebook.com/twitter – You need to be careful with this one though. If you Tweet a lot it will fill up your steam with too many weird looking updates and this may annoy your friends.
• Automatically send a Direct Message to everyone who follows you using Socialoomph.com . Be careful this is not a sale type message or it will annoy your new peeps. It should be something useful and relationship building

Facebook

• Pull your Blog posts (or any blog of your choice) into your Fanpage stream using the Networked Blogs App
• Pull your blog or any RSS feed into your Fanpage stream using the Notes App
• Connect Twitter to your Facebook account using facebook.com/twitter

Linkedin

• Attach your Twitter stream to your Linkedin Profile so your latest tweets show up in the sidebar
• Attach your WordPress blogs posts so they show up in your profile

• Attach your Amazon.com account and pull in all the books you have read and any reviews you may have written. This will allow people to get to know you better.

WordPress.org Blog

• Twitter Tools plugin Tweets each blog post automatically
• Facebook Connect widget in the sidebar allow people to see and join your Fanpage right from you blog.
• The http://Ezinearticles.com widget in the sidebar shows your most recent articles and allows people to click through to read them
• Google Connect allows people to connect with you using your Google Profile
• The Tweetmeme plugin allows others to Tweet about a post with 1 click
• Install the Facebook Like plugin so people can “Like” a post right from your site
• The Sexy Bookmarks plugin allows people to add your blog post to over 30 different social networking sites with 1 click

YouTube

• Make sure you allow embedding in your settings so people can grab the code and put your videos on their sites
• Make sure your videos are set to public not private
• Make sure you allow comments so you encourage conversations about your videos
• Make sure you allow notifications so there is a Tweet generated automatically every time you subscribe to a channel or comment on a video

Ezinearticles.com

• Enable automatic Tweets for every article that you publish in your settings
• Connect your WordPress.org blog to create an article from every blog post
• Make sure to add the links to all your Social Networks so they show up in your bio

Posterious.com

• You can email a post to your account and it will update all the social networks you have set up access to such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. It is also a great way to add picture from your iPhone to your social networks.

Gravatar.com

• Create an account with your profile picture so it automatically shows up when you comment on blogs that have gravatar enabled. Good for your visibility.

WordPress.com – the free WordPress blog site (I don’t recommend using this for your business blog but I do recommend you have an account here for the visibility)

• Create an account so your profile information will automatically show up whenever you comment on another wordpress.com blog. Good for your Visibility.