Like most things in social media, the answer is 'it depends'.

Being seriously active on social media takes time. Automation can help. Used ineptly it can actually undermine your social selling efforts.

This article has some excellent advice, and makes a good distinction between activity to engage, where automation can defeat the purpose, and other activity, say brand-building, where a degree of automation, used wisely, can serve your purpose quite well.

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Identifying Buyer Intent with Social Media Listening  Robert Caruso

The fact is that social selling, whether it be consumer or business focused, requires exceptional listening. I am not talking about passive sentiment monitoring around topics or brand names, but active prospect and customer listening that uncovers opportunities. You will always make more money with your ears then you do with your mouth.

This article takes to a new level the standard discourse about the importance of listening for successful social selling. It's a bit nerdy - nothing wrong with that - but is making me think more seriously about the whole business of social media listening.

I've also signed up to try out the nmodes semantic technology application the article describes. It's free to try and there is nothing on the site to indicate whether or when it will cost money to use.

Reid Hoffman's Vision of a Hyper-Networked Future   Tess Townsend

Venture capitalist and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has a question he likes to ask people when he first meets them: “Who’s in your tribe?” The question essentially translates to, “What types of people make up your network?”

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Hoffman pictures an economic shift characterized by a migration from emphasis on “The Organization” to reliance on “The Network.” 

You might share my discomfort at what I read as an implicit celebration of monopolies, where this article reports on some views of Hoffman's co-founder at PayPal, Peter Thiel, but Hoffman is a visionary, both of these men are influential and the idea the networks can help build monopolies is worth thinking about it, whatever inferences or conclusions you might draw from that.