Why Automated Blog Tools are Ruining Your Professional Image

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I used to be the master of automation. Many of my blog posts are about automating things, especially syndication of content. Being a programmer for so long, and having job after job where I made automated tasks, it just became second nature to me. The problem I find is that the less time you spend with your personal touch on the content you produce the less effective it is.

For example, Everyone wants to blog once then have every social network get the link and drive tons of traffic to there site. Problem is, this doesn’t work. I’ve been doing it for years with little to show for it.

There are tons of websites that will automate everything for you. Some are free and some charge outrageous monthly fees. The thing about the internet is that everything is a click away. you don’t have to drive all over town to go from one website to another. If you spend 5-10 extra minutes manually tweeting, or adding your blog posts to facebook, you will see much better results…. Here’s why.

Twitter allows for 140 characters, but most automated tools and plugins don’t care. They only tweet your blog post title and the short url. In most cases you still have about 60 characters to work with. You NEED to use that extra space to make your tweet stand out. Use #hashtags (don’t spam hashtags) and keywords.

Make your tweets stand out!

Tweet this: “I’m thinking about how tech is ruining our lives and making us work harder and hurting my professional image http://bit.ly/asdasds ”

Not This: “New blog post: Why Automated Blog Tools are Ruining Your Professional Image http://bit.ly/asdasds ”

in the first example I have used almost all available space. In the second example, I have 43 characters left…

Don’t waste your  friends time on Facebook!

On to Facebook… there are plugins that will post to your facebook wall but they all suck. the reason is becuase they just add a plain jane link with no explanation at all. They are a complete waste. When you add a link to your wall Facebook makes it look great. Theygo grab images from the page and let you add an extra description.

In the above image I just copied and pasted the url to a blog post of mine. If I was really posting this to my wall I would remove the link and add my own description.

Automation = repeat links!

The last reason it’s bad to automate everything is that you get many repeat links. FriendFeed is awful when it comes to repeat links.