To automate some of your content or not to automate?

I’ve stumbled across a few blogs recently which suggests that automating content on Twitter and other social networking sites is just bad. I have to disagree on this pooint, I don’t disagree completely because complete automation will definitely have a negative impact on your online presence because people don’t want to speak to robots or machines they want human interaction.  However, there are some very positive sides to automating some of your content and here is why:

For starters  –  Time Factor

Not all of us have alot of time on our hands if you are a solo entrepreneur or one man business owner.  A start up may not have a budget to employ someone full or even part time and so you are busy juggling all the balls to save costs but actually you are costing yourself billable hours but I’m not going to get into that right now.

Secondly  –  Life Happens (as my colleague Carol Gerber would say)

There are times in your life where things happen and you don’t have the energy or strength to face people even in social media where you can easily hide behind your computer and to make matters worse you hit writers block because emotionally and phsyically you just have no interest in writing anything, yet alone think of anything of value.   So which is worse, being out of sight and out of mind or using automation and reminding people you exist because believe me it’s far harder to start over than to in a way pick up on an already continue a presence.

Personally and from experience I’m very grateful for automation tools because it’s kept me going through the rough times.

What are your thoughts about whether or not to automate?