When B2B Social Media Marketing Isn’t Social Anymore

As is typical Sunday morning routine around my house, we tuned into CBS Sunday Morning. This particular Sunday contributor Luke Burbank presented his commentary on “How Smart Technology is Making us Dumb.” Luke proposes that “every week seems to bring some new gizmo or gadget aimed at making our lives easier and all this “convenience” is having some unintended consequences.”

Likewise social media outlets and the tools that help us optimize our efforts in B2B social media marketing are constantly updating. I am not sure who these “updates” are truly benefitting.

I worry, is all this automation removing the social from social media? A key ingredient to any B2B inbound marketing strategy is customer engagement thereby building brand loyalty. Inbound marketing isn’t about reducing marketing costs. It’s about building a connection with influencers and with your customers. It’s about building a culture around your brand.

The “set it and forget it” ease of using these automation tools is supposed to help make us more productive and I guess they do, but do they leave us less engaged? It sure makes it easy to go into autopilot mode.The benefit of social media marketing is to make it easier for us to connect to people and businesses far and wide; to increase our brand’s reach. But by using too much automation are we truly connected, or are we too busy scheduling a bot to be present in our place?