We talk a lot about how scheduling some of your messages can save you a lot of time and can also help you control the "beast" that social media can be on your time. What I don't like is when people confuse scheduling with automation—or maybe they don't confuse the two and just want to spread the same message to everyone time and again.

You see... there is a big difference between scheduling and automation. 

Scheduling:

Scheduling is when you have more content than time, or you're going to be away from the office and want to be sure that your social media doesn't go completely dark. I am a big fan of scheduling and use Hootsuite frequently to schedule content that I find interesting... just not all at the same time. I also blog a lot at night and schedule my posts and the email that goes with it for the next day. I wish that I were the kind of person who could get up at 5 a.m. to write an article and post it then, but with 3 kids? No way that's happening.

While you don't want to only push content out this way, using scheduling tools to drip out fresh, new, relevant content is a great way to maintain your branding.

Which leads me to automation... 

Automation:

Automation is when you use sites like IFTTT (which stands for If This, Then That) or SocialOomph to create triggers when something happens.

While all of these seem quite friendly and logical actions, the problem with them is that when these actions happen, they're using the exact same wording on every single one. The average person may not see it, but people notice, believe me, and suddenly your tweets and check-ins and your messages don't seem quite as genuine. And who needs that??

Another way to automate posts is to cross-post. This is when you do something on one site and it posts on that site and another. Instagram is a good example of that—but, even then, you can choose whether or not to cross-post, so it's semi-automated if you will!

Knowing the right time and place to let these third-party sites help you is an important part of getting social media to work for you and not against you.