Today, there are all different kinds of bots on multiple social media platforms. These bots are generally designed to increase engagement on social media by interacting with hundreds, if not thousands, of accounts throughout the day.
Different social media channels often yield different results depending on how open the platform is with their governing policies for bots.
Platforms like LinkedIn generally have a looser grip on social media bots than other social media accounts like Facebook or Twitter.
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Social media Bots Examples
There are many different kinds of social media bots actively working today. Some examples of social media bots include
Engagement bots
Sales bots
Group bots
Messenger bots
Brand Representatives
& more
Each one of these bots serves a different purpose for a business, organization, or person. Overall they are all trying to do the same thing, grow your online presence and increase your reach.
The main difference boils down to the bot's exact purpose when utilizing social media automation. For example, some businesses may want their bots to serve an engagement-only purpose.
Engagement Bots
Engagement bots a simply designed to interact with a targeted niche or community. Just like any other bot, they can be programmed to engage with particular audiences if needed to help grow a social media following.
Sales Bots
Sales bots are designed simply to drive sales; instead of growing an audience, sales bots are programmed to get in front of people actively looking to purchase your products or services.
Too often, this is where we see many of the problems that come with running social media bots. When users set up sales bots and push their actions too hard, the social media platform will recognize this and shut down the account.
Group Bots
Group bots are an interesting niche because their main focus is to drive people to join groups and communities on different media sites. Whether that's on the social platform or not, the goal is to grow a following of people not directly on that account but yet another entity.
Generally, the conversion rates for this task are lower, but we have found that the people who follow through with the call to action are more engaged.
Messenger Bots
As mentioned in the name, messenger bots are designed for messaging specific users directly. Different tools allow you to filter those social media accounts actively, but these bots' goal is to communicate directly with the targeted account.
Brand Representatives
Brand representative bots are a unique niche of social media bots designed to actively promote your brand on the social platform. The goal is to get people talking about your business or company.
With so many different kinds of social bots, all focused on various tasks and engagement techniques, creating a complete list of the functionality available is not easy, and it often relies heavily on the accounts social media platform.
As technology changes and social platforms are updated, the functionality of these social bots is affected; sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst.
How Do Social Media Bots Work?
Social bots work by signing onto your account and performing actions that are typically completed by a human. For example, a Twitter bot could tweet out links to your website or blog at regular intervals.
In order to avoid being discovered as a bot, some bots will follow other Twitter users and retweet their tweets. While this is a perfectly legitimate form of marketing, it can quickly become a nuisance if the bot tweets too often or if it is constantly tweeting the same thing.
One of the most common ways social bots are used is to write comments on other social media posts.
Acting As a Human
An excellent social media bot will be programmed to act as a human on each platform. The bot will be specifically scheduled to align with a typical user's behavior.
One example of this would be not running a bot account at 3:30 in the morning, as typically, most people are asleep.
Another great way to do this is by setting limits to the number of actions within a specific timeframe. For a human to like 100 pictures within a minute would be nearly impossible, and it would definitely raise some red flags on that social media platform.
Bots are used across social media platforms to complete many different tasks, as mentioned above but how they work depends on the specific tool or program you are using.
The primary tool we use at Slaterock is called Jarvee. This is a social media automation platform that allows the customization of many different social media bots all in one central hub.
Before beginning using a tool like Jarvee, be careful because there is a significant learning curve and lots of customization that may get your account in trouble if not used correctly.
The social bots created on Jarvee allow our team to manage all different kinds of social media channels, including:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter
Youtube
Quora
Pinterest
& More
Slaterock has found the best account bot that can be used for B2B businesses is certainly LinkedIn; for two reasons.
One, LinkedIn has a loose grip on social media bots and won't flag your account unless you are super active, basically causing a scene online.
Two, the kind of people that many of our clients are looking to get in front of are actively using LinkedIn already for business purposes.
What are Bad Bots?
Currently, there is no specific definition of "bad bots," but we often refer to these as accounts that are clearly being run by a bot.
Bad bots will typically spam the same accounts over and over again with the same messages or information; this raises a red flag for both that user and the social media platforms.
The best way to avoid becoming, or running, a bad bot is by ensuring you configure your bots social to act as if it were a human.
Should You Use a Social Media Bot?
In our opinion, we think it's a great tool when used correctly and integrated with the existing marketing strategy for the business or organization. It's also a great way to further grow your company's social media presence.
It's extremely important to have a social media presence for your business or organization today as customers will be researching your company before buying; one of the first places they go is social media.
A social media bot can, and most likely will, increase your sales indirectly. There is a lot more that goes into creating a great social media campaign that will have a much bigger effect on your sales growth.
Social bots are simply designed to help you get in front of those that are interested in your business's products or services.
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