Top 5 Social media automation tools you need to know in 2024

Social Media Automation tools for 2024

Marketers have come a long way from relying on manual effort to carry out repetitive tasks. As far as completing these tasks on time, tools that help can never be enough!

The social media automation ecosystem is growing. So does the number of tools used to let marketers automate almost any marketing platform. Recent research conducted revealed that over the last few years, more than 7000 tools were rolled out to eliminate repetitive manual tasks, some think the best is yet to come.

Table of contents

1. What is social media automation?

2. Top 5 reasons for automation

3. Benefits of Social media automation

4. How to choose the right social media automation software 5 tips

5. Reaching your goals with social media automation

6. 5 Social Media automation tools you can use in 2024

What is social media automation?

Social media automation is the use of software on a device that helps to streamline otherwise manual and repetitive tasks such as :

• Scheduling posts ahead of time

• Tracking and optimizing user engagement

• Curating content for republishing

• Resolving routine customer comments

• Analytics and Reporting

Recent research with more than 1000 marketers, revealed that more than 96% of digital marketers have used some automation platform for social media in their business. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Tiktok can be easily automated with a social media automation tool

Top 5 reasons for automation in 2024

According to research conducted by a leading advertising agency, these are the top 5 reasons for social media automation in 2024,

• Save time

• Keep audience engaged

• Maintain an online presence in multiple time zones

• Consistency in posting

• Improving multi-channel touch

Social media management tools integrates with multiple social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin. You can schedule content, curate it, and save it in a Content Library. Each published post gives you analytics of views, shares and how many followers you’ve gained each week. The only way to know if your content reaches a specific audience is to measure your social reach, impressions, and total clicks. You can use this information to adjust your content strategy and repost content that resonates.

Benefits of social media automation

In 2021, social media was the second most automated channel with 47% of marketers using some sort of automation tool to manage social media. Research showed that companies can save more than 6 hours a week by automating social media content and ads. And for 64% of marketers, managing social media also requires a heavy load of analytics and reporting data such as performance, ROI and CPA.

• Improved user experience

• Lead generation

• Reduced marketing costs

• Shorter Sales cycles

• Increased user retention

With multiple social media scheduling and automation tools being introduced almost every month, a marketing-driven organization’s challenge is choosing the right software that achieves your business goals.

How to choose the right software, 5 tips

1. Features and native integrations

Not all tools will have all the functions you wish to work with. And some tools will have more that you need and not willing to pay for. Before committing to one tool, consider testing multiple platforms with different features, sign up for demos and keep in touch with customer support. It could be something not directly relevant, but it could come with the flexibility of being able to automate your tasks without having to pay for additional features or integrations.

2. User interface

The ease of navigation in the software is important. Even though there are thousands of apps and software being released, the most successful ones are the easiest to use with shorter learning curves. It’s known as an intuitive interface. if your team consists of external links such as clients and designers, they should be able to easily navigate within the platform.

3. Customer support.

As with any new introductions, your team will need support from a dedicated person who knows your business and the tool very well. The level of contribution might vary depending on the plan you are on at times, nevertheless, it’s important to know of support is friendly, knowledgable and ready to serve.

4. Resources

While still evaluating you would have ideally come across resources. Webinars, blogs, forms, guides and templates are a few to name. Are they helpful? have they been repeated or are they updated content?

5. Pricing

While considering features and everything else, keep an eye out for hidden charges or features. Although during demo sessions there could be many functions that you might like, once you settle on a subscription, most of those features may not be included. Look for companies that are transparent about pricing and features available for each package. Your ability to pay should also be consistent. Automation will be little help if it cannot be afforded or used for a shorter time.

Reaching your goals with social media automation

Companies have made significant achievements through marketing automation. The least mentioned benefits of marketing automation are shorter sales cycles 22%, and improving department alignment 21%. But more than 60% of companies have reported improving conversion rates, reducing costs, and improving user experience.

You can make the social media automation process less hassle and more meaningful with the right balance and consistency. Try using the free social media automation tool MeetEdgar which is an excellent platform where you can automate, schedule, publish and report.

5 Social Media automation tools you can use in 2024

1. Sprout Social

Sprout's social media scheduling tool allows marketers to do social media automation. It also offers in-depth analytics besides social media engagement, publishing and automation, social listening, and collaboration options with many other tools and apps. Having a great product, Sprout Social is ideal for large companies with larger cross-functional teams. However, its high cost makes it affordable only to the most profitable businesses.

2. HootSuit

With an extensive list of +150 apps that can be integrated with, it's key features are Scheduling, Content curation, Team management, App and integrations library. Hootsuit also allows users to create support tickets from within the UI and enables social commerce and social selling.

3. Social Pilot

Social Pilot integrates with all the main social media platforms and enables automation for most except Instagram. This would be a good choice for a solo-preneur digital marketer as it does the bulk of the heavy lifting on social media automation

4. Agorapulse

Agorapulse has an interesting combination of social media automation features that includes keyword filtering apart from the usual scheduling and publication features. It also allows contact management, customer segmentation and conversion tracking, making it ideal for marketers looking to start CRM or email management. Find out how to automate social media content on Agorapulse on my You Tube channel here.

5. Buffer

What makes buffer stand out from many other social media automation tools is the ability to schedule posts for one social account for free. Apart from the other automation, scheduling and publication features, Buffer reaches out to many segments including publishers, mid-stage startup teams, non-profits, and e-commerce. Might have to watch out for the post-update glitches. Check out the Buffer proeudct review on You Tube.

Conclusion

Now that you understand how social media automation can help marketers, it’s time to put these tips into practice. Social media automation will give you multiple benefits starting from improved customer experience to shortening the sales cycle. Furthermore, it will help you create a content strategy that stands out from the rest of the competition given the fact that you could track the performance of each post through analytics and reporting. Finally, seek always to stick to the tool that best serves your business objectives in terms of user experience, conversion rates, and cost.