 I received a question from Reader whether or not it's a good idea to use social media automation tools such as Buffer or HootSuite or MeetEdgar and RecurPost, other things that are able to keep posting to your social media accounts for you on a recurring basis. You can kind of program it to keep repeating certain posts. The short answer is no, I don't think it's a good idea, at least for those of us who are solopreneurs, service providers, small business owners. A couple reasons why. One is that at least on Facebook, the algorithm greatly discourages those types of softwares so you will almost never see posts from posted by Buffer or HootSuite or RecurPost or other services like that because Facebook has noticed that those posts tend not to get very much attraction. Why? Because the people who are reading those posts know that they have a sense that, wait a second, this doesn't seem like this is really from that person or yeah and well not surprisingly because it's the robots that are reposting things for for the person. So one is that practically speaking it's not great for visibility and it tends to decrease your visibility on other posts because if those posts aren't doing well then the algorithm says well maybe your content's not that great okay. But secondly for more of the sort of ethical internal reason it's not your authentic self. If you keep repeating certain things you've said before without consciously saying yes I want to post that again your thoughts chances every time you repost something your thoughts about that have changed at least slightly or maybe you're not taking into account a current event that's happening right now that you want to say something about and so I really do recommend that instead of using those automatic social media posting tools just take the extra minute to post it you know post it again with your own voice to say you can still share your previous content of course but when you share it again say this is still relevant because or I really believe that you know or something I want to add to to what I shared here was this you know or this is such an important message I'm sharing it again you know given the current situations with such and such or whatever it's important I wanted to share it again or something like that be your authentic self on social media because that's what it was built to be and so it's good for your your heart but secondly it's practically better for social media visibility so I hope that's helpful