A lot of social media purists will tell you that you’re the spawn of the devil if you use automation.

To truly use social media properly, you have to “be there” constantly, otherwise you’re just fooling yourself and your connections.

Bullshit.

Maybe to the purists that are on Twitter and Facebook non-stop, and love to tweet just for the sake of getting influence scores up, automation is evil. After all, they’re on there doing their “thing” all the time, so why shouldn’t you be?

Simple.

The people that aren’t on Twitter and Facebook all the time are generally doing other things. You know… like client work. Yes, they’ll jump on and interact, but usually that’s when the other important stuff is done.

So forgive me if I see folks tell me automation is bad. If I’m going to share a blog post anyway by someone that I truly trust to deliver the goods, why do I need to physically be on Twitter to do this when I can send the same post out with something like Triberr or Twitterfeed?

What’s that? Because I’m not being true to social media and its values? Give me a break, please.

Gee, Danny, how do you really feel? Seriously, I agree with Danny Brown when he says “Social media is just another toolset, or platform, or information base, or whatever tag you want to give it, to help you manage your needs better, whether they be personally or professionally.” I use dlvr.it to parse out my blog posts and social bookmarks throughout the day while I’m doing REAL work. That get’s the conversation started. On the backend, I use HootSuite and Gist to keep the ball rolling. Personally, I think that if you’re not using some form of automation, you’re working too hard and social media is costing you too much…