A quick guide on social media bots

The bots perform actions and tasks automatically. As if it were a movie from the 90s, they try to imitate human behavior. But, in relation to Social Networks, what does a bot really do for us? To understand what the bots really do, let's dive right into them and their operation for Social Media:

Operation of the bots

social media bots like the Jarvee perform tasks such as giving 'likes', 'retweets', doing 'follow' to other accounts, or commenting on publications. Its operation is very simple and is based on pure and hard segmentation.

You can choose your target audience, by sex, age, geographical location, among others. So far we can see that it is a manual segmentation, but keep an eye on the data, because this follows. In addition, bots allow you to spin your segmentation around a hashtag or a specific account, using them as mere conduits to reach other accounts or publications related to topics of our interest.

Although the bots perform necessary actions if we want our social networks to work, in the end, they are things that we should all do routinely. Follow accounts that resemble ours or that may interest us, give 'likes' to posts or posts that we find interesting, make 'retweets' that complement the information we offer, write comments with content and coherence in publications that call our attention.

The first and most important error of the social media bots is that, although the segmentation is very thorough, it does not allow us to control what we follow or give 'like'. Simply by having an apparently attractive hashtag for our brand, or following an account related to our content, does not mean that it is beneficial for us. That is, it would entail a lack of enormous control over our social networks.

In addition, although bots for social media try to imitate human behavior, we must always bear in mind that they are not, and therefore, that lack of "feeling" can lead to problems. Recall recent cases in which Twitter and Instagram have taken a look at accounts that perform suspicious behavior, and this would lead to a huge reputation crisis, and possible 'bans' to our accounts, from temporary to permanent. These automation tools seem simple, and really are, but complicated if we do not know how to control them.

Good or bad choice? It is at this point that we must ask ourselves if they are really necessary, and therefore, they will bring us benefits.

I am sorry to tell you that there is no universal answer to that question. Like almost everything, it depends on the use that we are going to give them and what we want to achieve. So, I would ask a better question, what do we want to automate and what does not?

Using or not using social media bots, finally, we come to this question. The bots can benefit us, whether we are a large company or a smaller one. Everything depends on the control we have over them.

Tools like chatbot, can take away many headaches and free us from a significant workload. In addition, other types of bots can also help us grow little by little, and open doors that without them would be difficult to reach.

Now, all this has to be controlled always by a human. The technologies help us, it is true, but they do not provide us with the rational part that we also need. Always keep in mind your brand identity; otherwise, you can create many problems.