4 Reasons NOT to Use Automated Posting Tools

By MSW -
Today's business world can be extremely busy.  For many business owners, automated posts may seem like a great way to get your information out to your customers on social meda.  It would save you time and that's one less thing to have on your plate each day. Unfortunately, there is a downside to this seemingly efficient marketing solution. MSW Interactive Designs has put together this list of 4 important reasons why you should post your own content instead of using a platform such as Hootsuite to auto post.

1. Your rankings and reach will be lower. 


Social media networks such as Facebook can tell when a real person is posting or if an app or other third party tool is doing the posting for you and will penalize you.  Through research, TheSocialBusiness.com concludes, "Using scheduling services such as Hootsuite, Viral Heat, or Sprout Social to schedule your Facebook posts will gain you only one thing: an even lower reach."  Facebook gives these automated posts less credibility than those made directly through Facebook.  This will happen for those of you that have your Twitter automatically posting to your Facebook as well.  


2. People can tell when a post is automated. 



Not only can Facebook tell when a post is automated, your followers can too.  Sites such as Hootsuite force you to use a custom url when posting from their site. When you see the ow.ly in the url of a post, you know that its been auto posted from Hootsuite.  This may not be as big of an issue as Facebook knowing its automated, but its something to think about.




3. You may experience tracking issues. 


When posting via Hootsuite, those Facebook posts are not tracked in the Facebook's Insights section. Although you can still see number of "likes" and "comments" on your timeline or newsfeed, Facebook doesn't track these and you don't get "credit" for that engagement.  Although Facebook's organic reach is gradually diminishing, the more engagement you have, the more likely people are to see your content.

4. Spamming issues could come up. 


Facebook and Twitter, although similiar in the fact that they are both social media networking sites that can be great for businesses, have their differences. Twitter is a platform where you can pump out a bunch of tweets and retweet stuff all day long.  If you have that much activity on your business Facebook page, some people could consider it spam.  By linking your Facebook and Twitter, allowing Twitter to publish tweets on your Facebook timeline, you could end up annoying your Facebook fans with too much content. Facebook will also notice the abundance of hashtags and can penalize you for this as well.  Even vice versa, publishing Facebook posts to Twitter, is also not a good idea.  First off, the post is probably too long for a tweet and will be cut off, forcing Facebook to create a url to the post. Second, if you have a nice picture in your Facebook post, it isn't going to show up on Twitter.

One way to combat these auto posting problems is to use Facebook's own scheduling tool.  Business pages have the ability to schedule posts for the future directly within Facebook.  There's no need to use one of these outside companies.  Twitter also has this capability if you log in to Twitter Ads.  You will still have to log into both accounts separately rather than logging in to one dashboard, but look at what that one extra step can do for your business.  If you don't have time to post directly for your business, consider hiring a social media company.  MSW Interactive Designs offers social media engagement packages, where we (real people) can actually go in and do the posting for you.  Give us a call at 573-552-8403 to learn more about our social media services today!

~ Erin Burdette, Social Media Coordinator 

Sources:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/hike-those-likes-market-place/10-practices-to-avoid-that-facebook-will-penalize-your-business-page-for/602406719808660
http://iag.me/socialmedia/reviews/7-reasons-not-to-use-hootsuite/
http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/disadvantages-linking-facebook-twitter-30823.html

MSW Interactive Designs ~ We Put the Web to Work for You! 




www.MSWInteractiveDesigns.com
Phone: 877-211-5492
Info@MSWInteractiveDesigns.com 
Location: Lake Ozark, MO 65049, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blogs versus Websites

By MSW -
I recently had a client ask me if they should have a blog instead of a website. In formulating my answer to that question, it occurred to me that other clients may be interested in the answer, as well ... hence my decision to add it to my blog. Every small business should have a website . It's simply expected by your existing customers and potential customers. Every business should have a blog, as well ... perhaps there are a few exceptions. The blog and the website complement each other. The anwer is ... BOTH! Your website is your rock - it's the foundation of your presence online. It can be as simple as an online sales brochure or as complex as a full eCommerce storefront. Your customers will ask you for your website address, not your blog address. Your business should definitely have a website. Your blog enhances your website. It is a tool (like a journal) that you contribute to on a regular basis - daily, weekly, whatever works best for you. When you contribute to your blog
Read more

4 Sources for Finding What's Trending

By MSW -
Image
Finding relevant content that your audience will want to read can be challenging for any marketer.  How do you know what people are interested at this point in time?  How do you get them to read your blogs or engage with your posts? One way is by finding what's trending.  Those of you that use Twitter for your business have probably seen the little box on the lefthand side of your Twitter home page that shows current Trends. These are topics that Twitter users are currently interested in and they change all the time. In addition to Twitter, there are other ways to find trending topics that you can use in your online marketing campaigns .  Check out a few of our favorites below: 1. Buzzfeed   BuzzFeed has the hottest, most social content on the web. They're redefining online advertising with their social, content-driven publishing technology. BuzzFeed provides the most shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment and video across the social web.  They featur
Read more

Internet Marketing Trends for 2016

By MSW -
Image
Another year has passed and the team at MSW Interactive Designs has identified some trends you should keep an eye on for your business internet marketing . As we said in our previous blog, your website is no longer enough for you to stay on top and these trends seem to back up our thinking! 1) Mobile will dominate the market and your desktop.  Google is paying much more attention to mobile searches than it ever has. In fact, according to Google, a mobile version of your website is “perfectly acceptable” and an optimized desktop website may not be needed. We still think a great looking, properly optimized desktop website is needed, but you can’t ignore the direction Google is giving us. Get a mobile optimized site for 2016 if you don’t already have one. 2) Facebook is still the King of Social Media . According to Statista.com , Facebook users will rise to 161 MILLION in 2016 and continue to rise to 172 Million by 2019. That’s a lot of potential customers. Facebook
Read more