While many business owners use social media as part of their overall marketing strategy, a good number of them question whether investing in social media software is worth it or not. Some business owners may be seeing some decent results from their social media while for others, social media only contributes a small percentage to their bottom line. In both cases, it is definitely worth investing in social media tools to help leverage their efforts and scale their campaigns.
One of the biggest reasons why, is because customer engagement is one of the best ways to build relationships. Did you know that 90% of young adults (ages 18 to 29) use social media compared to just 35% of those over age 65?
Furthermore, a third of millennials say social media is one of their preferred channels for communicating with businesses. But how can you connect with this demographic if you’re not aware of when they’re even trying to interact with you? With the right tools, you’ll always be notified of when a follower is trying to interact with you.
It’s not just about your average customer/follower interaction either. Social media software allows you to manage your reputation. Your reputation is incredibly important online as it determines whether a prospect does business with you as well as whether they choose your or your closest competition. Internet users often vent their frustrations on social media channels which can really generate negative press about your business.
With the right social media tools, you can quickly react to negative press on social media. You can address customer complaints and resolve problems before they get out of hand. This not only helps you prevent negative reviews and feedback, it also helps your brand’s reputation because it shows your audience that you really care as a business. When prospects and existing customers see that you are engaged with your customers, they feel safe about doing business with you.
It’s doesn’t end at customer engagement. Social media tools allow you to be more efficient and effective with your posting. Social media marketing requires you market on multiple social platforms from Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, to Instagram. With each platform having a different set of posting requirements and in some cases, varying audiences, it can be incredibly time consuming to post to all of these platforms if you do it manually.
Social Media Tools
Social media software allows you to easily manage multiple social platforms as you can aggregate all your profiles in one control panel. You’ll be able to respond to conversations, optimize your posts for all the platforms you use, and more. These features allow you to save time and stay organized so that you can focus on the message and the marketing rather than wasting your valuable resourcing on keeping your social media campaign together.
Marketing is also more effective with the right social media tools. You can stay consistent with your marketing and plan everything ahead of time. You can schedule posts ahead of time so that you can align your posts in accordance to your content creation calendar. The consistency is what will allow you to build your brand presence over time. This is especially the case if mobile marketing is a big part of your marketing strategy. Check out this article to read about how social media plays into your mobile marketing efforts: See Article
You’ll also be able to capitalize on social mentions and media stories by using monitoring tools to notify you on these opportunities. All you have to do is to enter keywords around your brand, industry, news story, or even your competitors and the software will regularly scan for these keywords. You can say it’s like having your own newsroom for the Internet.
Social Media Data Analyzing
To round everything up, many social media software suites come with tracking and analytical tools to understand your campaigns. Like a normal advertising campaign, you need to track and analyze data if you want to have a successful campaign. With these tools, you’ll quickly figure out what’s working and what’s not working.
This will allow you to adjust and optimize your social media strategy to be more effective. For example, you’ll see which platforms are performing better than others, what types of posts people click on, which audience you should target, and more. This data will help you ensure that you invest your time in the right type of content/posts and make certain that your financial investment into the marketing channel results in healthy returns.
Conclusion
Social media software will serve as an essential tool for your business whether you’re just starting out with your social media campaigns or you’re already having decent results from your efforts. It can help you scale working campaigns into bigger successes as well as help you identify what’s working so that you can make social media a big part of your bottom line.
