What if there was a way to determine the best time to share your tweets, Facebook updates, and response-worthy content? And what if you could automate the entire process?That’s the thinking behind a new wave of companies that claim to have social media communication down to a science. Recently, I analyzed nearly a dozen vendors in this burgeoning field, which I call the “social performance” category. These firms offer software tools and methods that analyze, plan, deliver, and measure media such as ads, content, and conversations published in social channels. For a price, of course.Although the business is young, there are a lot of players out there already. New entrants include Adobe Social, which employs Adobe acquisitions Context Optional and Omniture; BuddyMedia, which is optimizing earned content to be ads with its Brighter Option acquisition; Bazaarvoice, which has introduced a solution to launch social ads outside of traditional social networks; and Webtrends Social, which tracks social content off domain, ads and their performance back to the corporate website; and finally, Wildfire which has partnered with Adaptly to measure the paid-to-owned transition.

via Why Automating Social Media Marketing Could Hurt Facebook.