Automation vs. Personal Touch

I know that marketing online is a lot of work, and therefore you don't always have enough time to personally respond to everything in one day. I'm just wondering how much emphasis people put on giving each person who comments on your blog or re-tweets a tweet of yours, a personal message or thank you.

Obviously you won't always have enough time to do this, but I've always tried my hardest to tweet them back personally, or thank them for the comment on my blog, or really anything.

What do you think?

 

I think people know when it's a person or a bot who's tweeting/messaging them back.

I'm very big into using the internet to network, not to spam so for me personal touches as you call them are essential to the welfare of my biz

 

Thanks Kawn. I agree, and it's also very easy for me to tell when it's just an automated response. I've always appreciated personal responses, so I try to offer them as well.

 

Personal Touch...

... is preferred! I even like it better, the more personal insights and experience I learn from this person, especially business-wise.

For example I adore Ben Mack for sharing business experiences with his fiancé (and also he engages for ecologic matters like clean water worldwide). Another example is Rob Toth, who gives detailed insight how he build up his business step by step (including his earnings).

And then: I don't care for quantity, but for QUALITY

 

Another great benefit of personal touch, what chance is there for people to share useful information with each other if we only communicate through bots and automated responses. I suppose there is some, but not nearly as much as a good old fashioned person to person conversation.

 

Automation is nice, but easily flawed if not upkept frequently. I suggest going for the personal touch, until you can automate just about every aspect of it.

 

Automation can make all of our lives easier, and it does play a role in social media. Blogging software can allow you to create blog posts for the entire week and publish them on a schedule. Marketing Automation software allows you to send email based on consumer action.

If you have regularly scheduled announcements/posts/etc. then it makes perfect sense to automate. You can’t always be at your computer when it is time for the push, so this can keep you on schedule.

While personal touch can make you stand out. It really pisses me off whenever I get automated responses from companies on which I sent email regarding my concern.

Think about this next time you want to add more automation to your process. Yes, it plays a big role in making us more efficient, but if you are trying to build relationships or enhance customer service, it can be your downfall.

 

automation work well for me....

 

I use a tool that responds to my twitter followers with a customized message and i feel automation is the best way at a time when you do not have time to personally respond them.

 

I think Automation is best when it comes to posting articles or Tweets, because you can write them, and then set a time when they can be published. That type of automation is perfectly fine, and it really just saves time.

When it comes to communication with people and responding to comments and such, I try to stay away from any automation at all. For example I could have had just an automated response to this thread "Thanks guys for commenting" but instead I took the 30 seconds it takes to write a real response. As far as communication goes, putting in the time to actually say something to your customers really doesn't take up much time at all.

 

Automation tools:

Tweet Spinner
TwitterFeed

I'm sure there are many more, but that's just off the top of my head.

 

Are those for posting Tweets, or are those for auto-response?

 

But aren't most of the people got pissed off with automation? Maybe it is better to try adding personal touch to stand out among others right?

 

I know that I don't like it when I receive an automated message from someone. It is so easy to tell in my opinion, and it just makes me feel like the person "doesn't have time for me"

 

I agree with you Brice. Adding personal touch maybe "time consuming" but it will make you stand out since the person will feel your sincerity on listening to them and you are sending out this message that you care for them

 

Personal touch is always good if you want to develop relation with users and you will understand what they want from you so you can update according to them but if you have big traffic then its not possible personal touch and now you need to automated.

 

Personal touch for sure. I think people often forget about the "Social" side of social networks. Don't get me wrong, I like automation as much as the next person but the only way to build relationships and get & give the most to and from those relationships, is to add the human element.

 

Anthony you hit the nail on the head, all these sites are SOCIAL networks. Some people are just a little to timid to be social with their customers sometimes.

As far as communication goes, I think the whole "time consuming" argument doesn't hold any water. I just took the time to respond to comments on here, and it took me a minute at most. I don't know how busy everyone is with their work, but I am confident most of us could find the time to actually respond to our customers if we wanted to.

 

While it's important to keep a semblance of personal touch, it is also necessary to multiply our efforts, or else we won't be able to grow enormous followings on the major networks. After a while, the people that follow you, or liked your pages will engage with one another so you won't have to engage them each and every time. It takes quite a big following to pull this off, so at first you will need a lot of human intervention.

 

Thank you Captain, let me know when we're ready for takeoff.