Drawing a line in social media automation

Instagress lets you automate everything on Instagram. That’s something to think about.

Automation is like nuclear fission. Immensely helpful and horrendously bad at the same time. What it is depends on how it’s used.

I’m not sure if Instagress “truly” automates commenting on Instagram but there are enough sorry examples of companies doing this. Comments, likes, tags, favs. Everything is automate-able. No wonder we see so many look-alike robot comments on millions of Instagram posts. “beautiful! ❤”. “Amazing pic!”. “Fantastic!”. “So pretty!”…

The problem with automation is that almost everything can be automated because man’s reach exceeds his imagination. And most people that rely on automation don’t know where to draw the line.

In the domain of social media automation, there are like 100k+ players. There’s always a new startup.io that will save you time and build your social presence like no one else will, through automation. And it’s leading to a disastrous trend.

All it takes to decide if you need to automate a process in your social media marketing workflow is this thought: as a customer, if you knew something was automated, would you feel good about it? Customers look at automation as robotic and therefore not genuine. And that’s all matters.

We can automate following and unfollowing people on Twitter and commenting on specific Instagram accounts’ photos and videos. Heck. We can even automate customer replies using smart, advanced Messenger bots these days. The question is, should we.

And it’s always about feeling. Emotion. What will the customer feel at this point of interaction.

Things you should automate: posting on social media.

Things okay to automate: curating content (but you should always do a manual check before the curation is finalized).

Things you shouldn’t automate: engaging with other people. Interactions with people.