Question: Our small marketing team has so little time so we love the idea of automating as much of the marketing process as possible. We have already done so for content and now we are thinking of doing it for engagement. What are your thoughts on this?
The first thing that comes to my mind is STOP!
As a small business owner I completely understand the urgency to find things that can be automated and do so. The return is obvious. Time! There is one small problem, however. Real, meaningful relationships aren’t built via automation, they are built through real human contact or a word that social business people like to use, engagement.
A great example of this is the Twitter Direct Message. This platform allows you to send messages to followers that are much like emails. A decent idea from Twitter’s end because it allowed people to communicate in a somewhat more private area on the site than just tweeting or mentioning someone. The problem is that once marketers began to figure out how to automate direct messages to new followers the entire thing became a massive junk mail box.
I’ll be the first to say that I love social automation as a tool for sharing and showing thought leadership. There is a great need for businesses to use tools to find, vet and share the right type of content for their audience. However, once you have attracted the readers and drawn their interest the approach needs to change from distribution to 1:1 communication.
It is for this reason that I strongly suggest taking engagement on social media as a high touch, highly customized activity. While the cost of doing so may be higher than automation, it is important to consider conversion and relationships as many businesses will benefit more from a few highly meaningful new relationships than a plethora of low impact transactional ones.
What is your company’s engagement strategy? Is it time to go from spray and prey to a customized 1:1 approach?
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