If only Facebook didn’t take up so much time…
Phew. All this status updating and relationship building on Facebook takes time, doesn’t it? If only there was some quick way of automatically exporting my updates from other networks. Oh, there is you say? Great!

Social Media Marketing is not free…
Wrong! Facebook is ‘free’, but if you want to take social media marketing seriously you need to invest the most valuable commodity you can give – your time.

Social Media Marketing is about building relationships. No one ever became friends with someone by listening to their voicemail. Brands need to find out what their fans want, to communicate with them. Engagement – dialogue with their fans – is essential. Automation will not achieve this.

When apps go wrong…
More importantly your automated updates to Facebook may not be seen. And with the importance of Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, which determines how much visibility your updates receive, it may undermine your entire Facebook strategy.

Take a look at these examples below, taken from my own News Feeds. If you’re using an app to automate your updates to Facebook, they may well be aggregated like these. This means:

– they are less likely to be seen by fans, which means…
– lower impressions and lower interaction, which means…
– a lower EdgeRank, which means…
– they are less likely to be seen by fans, which means…
well, you should get the picture by now

So, if you’re using an app to automate your posts to Facebook, have a rethink. Invest the time and you’ll reap rewards. Be wary of short cuts – in the long run they’ll save you time, but gain you nothing.