Automate Your Social Media in 4 Steps.

Are you willing to automate your social media during the holiday seasons? No one can deny that in the middle of family gatherings, holiday parties and gift shopping social media marketing can be easy to neglect, however it is also a great opportunity to invest in existing customers, acquire new ones and drive sales over the holidays. Take advantage of this opportunity without compromising your own holiday fun by automating your social media.

Before going deeper in this topic let's look at some facts. Recent statistics show that Americans spend 23% of their time on Facebook and other social media websites, averaging 7.8 hours a month on Facebook's mobile site alone. Over the holidays, social habits change and, with more time off from work, users spend even more hours on social media. This creates the perfect opportunity for you to grab your customer's attention and keep them engaged.

However, this doesn't mean that you have to spend your own holiday season posting and tweeting. Here are four easy steps for automating your holiday social media marketing.

1) What to post?

Before you begin, take a few minutes to analyze your audience, set the goals you're hoping to accomplish and decide the relevant information your audience will find attractive in order to accomplish these goals. Then, start planning your content.

First, I encourage you to apply the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should be fun, entertaining and non-intrusive, and 20% of your content can ask for something in return, like a sale or a visit to your website. Engaging holiday content might include sharing the best Black Friday deals, or the gifts you received on the New Year Eve or any other social activity.

Second, remember that a picture is worth a thousand words, and even more likes. Images not only make up the majority of Facebook content (nearly 75%), but they are also the most engaging form of content, sparking an 87% interaction rate. Take some time at the beginning of the holiday season to plan out when and where you will take pictures, like as you're preparing your Thanksgiving meal or going Christmas tree shopping, and set calendar reminders to share these moments with your audience.

Third, vary your types of content. While pictures are important, be sure to mix things up by including other interactive media tools like blogs, videos, infographics and more. For example, post an infographic about Black Friday vs. Cyber Monday.

2) When to post?

The day and time you post to social media will have a definite impact on the amount of impressions and engagements that your content receives. Generally, you should post to Facebook on weekday afternoons between 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., tweet to Twitter around lunchtime and publish on LinkedIn during the midweek, around noon or 5 p.m.

Choosing the best time to post during the holidays can take a bit more effort. While you definitely want to be present on high traffic days, you'll want to carefully choose post times. For example, make sure you schedule a Thanksgiving Day post, but choose the morning instead of early evening when most families will be eating dinner and are not likely to be social surfing.

Once you feel comfortable automating your social media, keep a careful eye on your analytics to see if your audience's habits change over the holidays, and adjust your scheduling accordingly.

3) How to post, and still have a life?

Automating a posting schedule is just one way that a social media management system like Buffer or Hootsuite can help you stay socially active while also freeing up your time to focus on more important stuff. Buffer lets you set your own posting schedule, and the tool will automatically add posts to your queue accordingly. With Hootsuite, you can manually choose post times or use the auto-scheduling feature to allocate optimal times based on your audience.

Both of these tools allow you to manage multiple social streams (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) in one convenient location. Moreover they each have their own Google Chrome extension that helps you to schedule and share content without leaving your current browsing tab.

4) Keep it human.

Automating your social posts doesn't mean losing the personal touch. Keep things human by prioritizing certain interactions during the holidays that are worth your direct, real-time involvement.

Monitoring engagements from your audience via comments or mentions is a great opportunity to directly connect with and provide excellent customer service to your customers. Pay attention to your notifications and respond in real-time to your followers when they interact with your brand.

A useful trick is to create calendar alerts or reminders; these will help you remember when to incorporate real-time posts into your holiday social media strategy. Don't miss the opportunity to share a photo of your Christmas tree with a message of warm wishes or a video of fireworks on New Year's Eve.

Downloading the mobile apps for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages will make it extremely easy for you to post real-time content from your mobile device across several platforms. To catch your engagements as soon as possible, make sure each app's mobile notifications are on and highly visible to you.

Conclusion:

Okay now let's recap. Ignoring your social media during the holiday season is a missed opportunity to connect with your customers during peak vacation times. Avoid this mistake by making a plan for your holiday social media strategy and by automating the majority of your posts.

Automate your social media ahead of time by taking advantage of free tools, but remember that this is social media, so be sure to add your own real-time touches to keep your accounts personal and inviting. Take advantage of calendar alerts or reminder apps to prompt you to share in the moment.

Follow these four steps to automate your holiday social media and you will have peace of mind that your social networks are making the most out of increased internet traffic, while still freeing up your own holiday time for the more important holiday's stuff.