The ability to automate simple tasks has caused some of the largest industrial revolutions in business. From the printing press, to automakers and the textile industry, automation was critical to getting products out faster, better and most importantly cheaper.

One of the fastest areas on growth for Internet marketing is in the area of automation. Just like with these other mega industries, the Internet marketing world is searching for ways to do Internet marketing faster, better and most importantly, cheaper.

It is common knowledge that social media marketing works and is here to stay.  It is understood that the more friends and followers the more potential one has to offer products and services, drive traffic to blogs or websites and especially to build lists.

Since list building is considered so valuable to online marketers any tool that can augment or help automate these time consuming marketing techniques is considered a godsend by the web-marketing world.

In the last year a number of very success social media marketing, blog marketing, YouTube marketing and syndication marketing sites have been developed to help automate the time intensive overly repetitive process necessary for rankings, SEO, friends and followers, video views, comment, blog views and bookmarks. One of the other growing areas is outsourcing versus automation.

There are companies that for a reasonable monthly fee will handle your SEO, social media or bookmarking duties. There are even oversees companies outsourcing full time work to have someone spend 40 hours a week building your Facebook, Twitter and MySpace profiles.

These services include friend finding, status updates, direct messages, social book marking, blog writing and more. The costs for these companies vary by what they do and how many hours per week they do it. We looked at a couple of them and they range from about $200 per month up to $2000 for the higher end SEO companies. The average for a full time oversees worker was about $900 per month, which is very affordable for full time help.

Others have gone back to the free intern system, which has worked brilliantly for some companies. Demetrios Tzortzis owner of http://TrafficToolbelt.com has used Interns for years for inexpensive and free Internet marketing services. Demetrios told us “If you can get an excited intern from a local university and spend enough time to train them properly on online marketing and especially Social Media Marketing it can be very profitable. The key to great social media marketing is having a plan, having the time necessary to follow the plan and consistency, something busy people don’t have. I prefer to trade my Internet knowledge and train my people how to make money online. I think it a very fair trade and each one of my Interns eventually has the ability to partner up with me later as they launch their own Internet businesses.”

Another option although never as effective as a real person is Automation. There are a few websites out there that are very popular right now. They have a valuable product that works and that saves people a ton of time. Some of them are more complicated that then others. We have actively used the main four and have explained the pros and cons for each.

http://SocialOomph.com used to be called http://TweetLater.com.  This site is designed to help automate your Twitter marketing systems. SocialOomph is working directly with Twitter to give you a wealth of services. Some of these services are free and some are for a fee. At almost $30 a month the site is well worth the fee although the free items are more valuable than the paid features. The biggest difference between it and the others are the statistical data mining abilities. In terms of the automation there are others that are free and far superior. The main two free automating services we recommend are the auto follow: the ability to immediately follow anyone that follows you and the automated direct response messaging system: the ability to send an automated direct response to anyone that follows you.

http://FutureTweet.com This free and easy to use website allows the user to set up automated tweets into the future. One simply sets up an account, schedule a tweet and lets the website do the rest. They have been having some issues with Twitter recently about “providing the recurring updates functionality is in violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service.” Hopefully future Tweets can get this worked out with Twitter so we can use this great Twitter marketing Tool!

http://Synnd.com This website is definitely for the advanced users only. It has some great functionality once set up. It has two main functions, the ability to syndicate retweets by trading services and by bookmarking each other sites to help with back linking and SEO. It runs around $50 a month and is worth it for people who are serious about SEO and back linking.

http://AutomaticallyYou.com This powerhouse of site is poised to grow at a fast pace. For about $40 per month one can use their automated system directly from your own computer to make friends on twitter, MySpace and even the extremely difficult to automate Facebook! In addition, they allow the user to schedule and post status updates and automated tweets. What set this site apart from the rest was the amount of content they have for the user. They have set up many categories of pre-written tweets and status updates that within a few seconds one can add to ones automated system without having to write one’s own tweets. They have categories of motivational tweets, inspirational, current news, funny videos, interesting articles and much more.

It is going to be very interesting to watch what happen in the next 12 months with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. They all have strict rules about automation yet who are they to tell the consumer what they can and can’t do.

If they are too strict another social media site may come in and take market share. Twitter being much more accepting than the tyrannical Facebook has exploded in market share in the last 12 months. Another issue is that these social media sites allow interns and outsourcing, why can’t someone like me the consumer create or utilize a computer program that acts like a personal assistant.

Morally they are the same from our perspective and mandating rules to Internet marketers have been proven to kill your market share, just ask Microsoft, companies like Apple that listen are patiently waiting.

Sincerely, Peter Celnicker