Best Social Media Tools for Businesses

1. Brand Awareness

As we previously mentioned, over half of the world’s total human population access social channels every single day. By implementing a good social media strategy by identifying the platforms your target audience is most likely to be browsing and creating content that is most likely to appeal to them, social media channels like Instagram and Facebook are a great place to reach new audiences and potentially convert them into loyal customers. In fact, a whopping 83 percent of people surveyed by Instagram say they discovered new products or services on the application. 

2. Build Relationships

Another one of the most important advantages that come with the use of social media for both personal and business use is the capacity to build genuine human relationships. By exposing your social media followers to the “human” side of your business, whether that’s introducing them to your team members, displaying real-life applications of your products or services, or showcasing your customers benefiting from these products or services, you are building a sense of authenticity around your brand. As a result, this authenticity will likely foster a sense of trust, which in turn can help build relationships between your brand and potential consumers and thus, generate new business!

3. Generate Leads

Given the billions of individuals that actively use social media, there’s a good probability that your target market is already there waiting for you to grab their attention. Social media is a great way for potential clients from your target audience to express interest in your business and products in a way that’s simple and low-commitment. Many social media channels recognize the critical advantage of lead generation for businesses, and as a result, they provide advertising formats particularly tailored to capture these leads. By increasing brand recognition, whether through paid advertisements or organic content marketing, you have the ability to attract more top-of-the-funnel leads. Even if these leads don’t make purchases immediately, increasing their awareness may lead to them becoming full-fledged customers in the future.

4. Advertise Products and Services

Social media advertising is a great way to promote your company and circulate content at a quicker pace and much lower cost than most other forms of traditional advertising. These days, many social media platforms provide businesses with advanced targeting tools, allowing you to reach the ideal audience while maximizing your expenditure. (See our blog regarding Facebook Advertising, for example.) This year, advertisers are anticipated to spend more than $56 billion on social media advertising and product promotion ALONE. 

5. Drive Website Traffic

Another huge benefit of social media is the ability to drive traffic (visitors) to your website. Taking relevant material from your blog or website and pushing it to major social media platforms is an excellent method for gaining website traffic. It is also helpful to include links to your web address everywhere you can (without over-optimizing and looking too spammy, of course) to increase site views. Putting your website in your profile’s bio and regularly incorporating the link into social media posts are some examples of this. 

6. Increase Sales

If you haven’t already, the time has come to link your social media marketing efforts with your sales objectives. This is because your social media accounts are an important aspect of your sales funnel, which is the process of converting a new contact into a paying customer or client. Social networks have become increasingly significant for product discovery and e-commerce as the number of individuals utilizing social media continues to rise and social sales technologies continue to expand. 

7. Customer Service

Social media isn’t just a place for consumers to find their new favorite brands, products, or services. It is also a way for them to interact with the companies from which they purchase these products or services. It is essentially customer service, but instead of sitting behind a desk in a store, you are sitting behind your screen. Customer service via social media, unlike uncomfortable phone conversations, long emails, and awkward face-to-face encounters, is much simpler and quicker for both the consumer and the brand they are interacting with, especially if you’re using the right social listening tools for business.

Whether it’s listening to complaints or criticism, answering questions, gathering client feedback, or resolving specific issues with a sale, providing social customer service entails engaging in meaningful, back-and-forth dialogue with consumers.

Remember, however, that with social media, everyone can see how you engage with your customers. Potential buyers, prospects, competitors, and the general public can all observe real-time, unfiltered discussions between consumers and brands. As such, it is important to respond to queries and concerns in a professional way that shows you care about your audience. In addition, putting good encounters and praise of your brand in the spotlight (like as social media posts, for example) is another significant benefit that can come from this. 

8. Build Trust and Transparency

This relates back to number 2, building relationships and humanizing your brand, but it deserves to be reiterated. While it is true that a lot of what people see on social media is fake, there is also an opportunity to showcase real authenticity. Because we have become so familiar with the artificial nature of social media networks, people nowadays crave authenticity and transparency, especially when it comes to who they give their money to. A real, transparent, and honest company resonates with consumers and builds trust around your brand image.

9. Stay on Top of Trends

Things tend to move incredibly quickly in the digital world, and you don’t want to be left behind. That means that staying on top of the latest trends is an important part of successful social media management. With the right tools, trends can be found in abundance on social media. By utilizing social media management tools, as well as implementing strategies such as social listening, you can stay informed on potential developments in your sector that may affect the way you do business. Social media activity and shared material from your target audience may provide the best insight into industry trends that can benefit your business.

10. Track Success

By taking advantage of the social media management tools that are available to you, you’re able to access insight into your company’s successes and failures. This includes what products, services, or content your clients like and want to see more of as well as where your business may be lacking. A rush of praise or consumer complaints can influence social media marketers to develop real-time solutions and products that generate positive buzz among their customers.

Social Media Management Tools

Social media itself is a great marketing tool for large and small businesses. Managing several social media accounts at once, however, can be a real headache, especially with so many popular platforms available. Whoever handles the social media marketing for a business, whether it’s an in-house employee or an outsourced agency, must dedicate an ample amount of time to managing and monitoring their social media channels. They must log into various social media accounts, compose a unique post for each platform, schedule content throughout the day, interact and engage with consumers, and overall maintain an active social media presence and positive brand image. 

For many small companies with only a few employees, this is simply not practical. Even for agencies whose sole job is to manage clients’ social media accounts, juggling several different clients and accounts while maintaining a cohesive brand image for each can get overwhelming pretty quickly. With this in mind, businesses, agencies, and firms must often resort to implementing social media management tools. A good social media management tool can enable companies to establish a comprehensive social media plan that they can manage from one convenient location. But, what exactly is a social media management tool? 

A social media management tool is actually software that allows you to post to, monitor, and manage multiple social media accounts at once from a single interface. Though there are several accompanying benefits, the overarching goal of a social media management tool is to make it easier to distribute and schedule material throughout your social networks from a single location. It can also make it easier for teams to manage one or many different accounts jointly and collaborate their marketing efforts. 

Best Tools for Social Media Management

Social media management software allows you to manage most, if not all, of the major social media networks from one place. This includes platforms such as Kiopi, Hootsuite, Buffer, and Social Pilot, to name a few. Others are dedicated specifically to a single platform. Take TweetDeck, for example, which focuses solely on managing activity on Twitter accounts. 

Regardless of whether you’re looking to manage one or multiple social accounts from one or multiple social media platforms, there are a few key things you should look for when deciding on the right social media management software for you…