Social Media Automation in 2024

Blair Williams is the founder of the WordPress membership plugin MemberPress and affiliate program plugin Easy Affiliate.

With over 5 billion active social media users worldwide, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X offer unparalleled opportunities for brands to engage with their target audience.

However, just being present on these platforms isn't enough. You must manage your content and engagement efforts effectively to stand out and connect meaningfully with customers.

When you multiply the number of posts you have to make daily with the number of platforms out there and factor in responses and upkeep - social media is a mammoth of a task for most business owners. There's a reason why big brands either outsource social media to agencies or have a large in-house team. 

So, what can small business owners or individuals do to thrive on social media in 2024? The answer is to lean on automation. 

Automating various social media marketing tasks through AI and software can help brands you be more efficient, consistent, and strategic. So, lets look at what's new in social media automation and how you can use it to stay ahead in social media marketing.

AI and Automation Capabilities for Social Media

We'll start with the most obvious capability which is content creation and break down more complex activities like workflows in social media. You'll learn just how to use social media to manage repetitive tasks easily. 

Content Creation

AI-based automation platforms can help you reduce one time consuming task: text-based content creation. 

It's possible to 'train' AI to create brand-specific content that matches your business tone and approach for social media. You could easily create a month's worth of strategic posts in a few minutes. This handles the text part of social media content creation. 

However, social media needs more than text content. It needs imagery, videos, and interactive tools like polls. And yes, you can use AI to generate images and videos from text prompts. You can use Midjourney, Dall-E, Jasper and several others to simply describe the type of content you need and get AI-generated visuals. However, you have to practice caution as people have a negative view of AI-generated imagery. 

You should also know that there are tools out there like Taplio for LinkedIn, which handles end-to-end social media automation and can pick trending topics, build LinkedIn-friendly posts and publish them too. A lot depends on what tools you use and the processes you develop to use them. 

Automated Workflows

Automated workflows are the future of social media marketing. AI allows you to create end-to-end workflows that automate the entire process from ideation to publishing and analytics.

Through workflows, you can:

• Create and schedule posts in advance
• Automatically publish posts at specific times
• Repurpose content across different platforms
• Analyze performance and adjust strategies accordingly
• Respond to comments and messages
• Enrich your CRMs (customer relationship management tools) and other third-party content.

Depending on the tools you use, you have to add the right parameters and instructions and test your workflows. AI will manage everything else. Workflows can take some time and testing to set up but once you build them, you can set your social media strategy on autopilot. Again, a lot depends on the tools you use. Platforms like Copy.ai are game changers in this aspect. 

Posting and Scheduling

One of the most tedious aspects of social media marketing is posting consistently at optimal times. AI automation can help by automatically scheduling posts for you.

Tools like Buffer, Later, HootSuite and others can analyze your audience and determine the best times to post when engagement is highest. The AI learns from data and adjusts posting times and frequency as needed.

It can then randomly schedule content throughout the day and week during those high traffic windows.

The AI posting speed is also optimized - fast enough to keep your audience engaged but slow enough to avoid spamming your followers.

Automated posting takes the guesswork out of when to post and how often. This ensures you have a consistent, optimized stream of content tailored to your audience. But note that you will need to invest in expensive subscriptions to make this happen. 

Audience Engagement

One powerful aspect of AI and automation for social media is its ability to engage your audience and respond to comments and messages automatically.

With sentiment analysis ability, AI can understand the tone and meaning behind comments and determine whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. Based on this, your AI assistant can auto-respond to comments with appropriate messages to continue positive conversations or diffuse negative ones.

This saves time while adding a human touch. Your AI assistant learns from conversations and feedback, getting better at natural discussions over time.

This advancement in automated audience engagement and management revolutionizes brands' social media presence, facilitating more meaningful interactions at a larger scale.

Analytics and Optimization

Social media analytics provide invaluable insights that can help optimize your strategy.

How you manage this will depend on the tools you use. I know that Copy.ai can connect with third-party tools via Zapier and help you get analytics information. It can also recommend steps, responses, and uncover insights to help you know what to improve or remove. 

Another tool that combines AI with testing is PickFu which generates AI highlights after polls and other tests. This is a simple way to leverage AI for analytics and optimization and help you manage social media effectively. There are also other tools with great analytics abilities. However, you will need to do your research and take out your wallet to access interesting tools and capabilities. This isn't easy for many businesses and you have to decide if it's worthwhile for you to invest in AI. 

Conclusion

The goal of social media automation is NOT to ignore it completely and focus on other tools. The goal is to manage repetitive tasks so you can be creative. So, give automation a try and unlock new growth for your business.