First off, sorry about the bombastic title. Please take it with a pinch of salt. 

Automating social media updates is a huge time saver and should be the backbone of most companies' social media outputs. Automation ensures consistency and gives your content a chance to be seen multiple times. Automating updates is also a guarantee of quality - you have time to craft these updates, carefully spell check them and make sure that they are optimised for each separate social media channel.

These are all positive things.

Having said that, this should not be the be all and end all of your social media updates. 

However finely honed, automation leaves no room for engagement, and engagement is key for social media success.

Here are two reasons why you should have fewer automated updates and more legroom for human interaction on social media:

• Social media is reactive. You need someone behind the keyboard for when a client asks you a question, or when a relevant hashtag, news story, or trend, breaks out. If you don't, you are missing a huge opportunity.
• The human connection is key to building valuable business relationships. It becomes quickly obvious when your feed is driven by a charismatic robot. Give your business the opportunity to have real conversations.

This is even more important when it comes to personal social media accounts used for business purposes. Social selling works when you put in the extra effort to get to know your prospects.

So by all means, use automation to do the drudge work, the base paint of your branding if you will. At its best, it will free you up to do the clever and personal stuff no robot can (yet) replace.