The Beginners Guide to Find the Best Social Media Marketing Software

With the right social media marketing software, you can make more effective use of your channels to connect and interact with your target audience. Businesses can exploit these channels to better market their products and boost the visibility of their brand.

With over 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide, it offers the widest reach of any marketing effort. However, to best accomplish this you will need help in the form of software and tools. With the right choice of the best social media marketing software, you stand a better chance of executing an effective marketing campaign. So there is a need to match the right tools to the right strategy for success.

Before we however look at how to determine which is the best social media marketing software for your business, let’s discuss a little further why social media matters at all.

Social media practitioners had to fight long and hard to get a seat at the table, but some brands still can't grasp the importance of social media. Discover how you can change your organization's culture with @SallieB on the Social Pros podcast. https://t.co/BWIsRhTttd pic.twitter.com/5raPB6gVrz

— Jay Baer (@jaybaer) November 20, 2020

Benefits of Social Media

Social media is a tough environment as it requires a fair bit of strategizing and creativity to succeed. However, despite these challenges, it does offer a plethora of great benefits that make the investment well worth it.

• Boost Brand Awareness – The viral nature and widespread reach of social media makes it easy for people to become familiar with the products and company name.

• Boost Online Traffic – As you build a presence and following on social media, it becomes easy to link content to your website, resulting in improved online traffic.

• Generate Leads – Social media is a great platform to place advertisements on new products and services, and encourage engagement with audiences that express an interest or inquiry.

• Audience Engagement – People have come to prefer and appreciate the easy manner in which they can communicate with businesses through social media. Comment sections have become an open platform where opinions, reviews, and complaints can be shared with companies expected to carefully handle responses.

• Collect Data – From running polls to tracking likes and shares, there are all sorts of marketing data that can be collected via social media to help in everything from product development to strategizing on how to beat out the competition.

• Reinforce Customer Loyalty – Because social media is a direct channel to customers, it offers a great opportunity to connect and reward. From informing them about coupon codes to product launch events, it becomes easy to encourage their loyalty and engagement.

• Become A Thought Leader – By posting interesting and informative content on your niche, you can easily give your brand the image of being a thought leader people can trust and turn to when related topics come up.

• Partner with Influencers – They have become the celebrity darlings of the marketing world as their following gives them much influence in helping build brand awareness that will drive more sales. Target those that specialize in your type of product to help reach out to an audience with the same interest.

• Reputation Management – When there is a positive commentary about your brand, it is an opportunity to draw more traffic to your site. With negative commentary, it is even more important to act quickly before the situation escalates. Social media helps to track these trends and respond accordingly to protect the brand.

• Monitor Competition – Keeping an eye on what your rivals are doing can help in fine-tuning your own marketing strategies and avoiding problems they may have experienced.

Guide to Choosing the Right Tools

Know Your Social Media

It is necessary to understand how each social media platform works. From the type of content they share to the demographics of the audiences they attract. For instance, if looking to connect with U.S. teens, you will find that Snapchat is the most popular as compared to Facebook, which still dominates amongst adults.

Also, some platforms are best used for specific types of businesses and marketing efforts due to their dominant content. Pinterest is a primarily visual platform that plays well into the promotion of fashion businesses. Facebook is more comprehensive as they accommodate various media including images, video, and links.

This can guide you to the best social media marketing software for your particular business. Some software and tools are also better suited and tailored to specific social media platforms.

“It is indeed important to know what social media marketing platforms you should be using and learning more about. But the common types of content used in social media marketing that is proving it's value is also important, if not the most important.” -Larry Kim

Define Your Goals

Different social media platforms and tools excel at certain tasks. You need to determine what you want to accomplish to figure out what tool is best suited for the job. In business, before investing any time and money, you have to know what the end game is.

For instance, if you want to find out how many people actually clicked through to read your content across various social media channels, then you need the best social media marketing software that offers analytic tools that cover the same range of channels. Software like Hipsocial is great for such tasks and helping in scheduling and social listening.

Know Where You Are At

Before you can make a plan for the future, it is advisable to take stock of how your business is doing now. Thereafter you can strategize on how you can build up to your desired goals and what tools you will need to accomplish them.

If already using social media marketing, you need to analyze the performance of your current efforts and tools to determine what changes need to be made and what needs to be adopted or dropped. Analytic tools can be useful in understanding what level of audience engagement you are receiving across your channels and if you should continue in the same vein.

Matching Features

Once you know which platforms you need to engage in, you can better define the type and range of features you will need for your software. Understanding what goals you want to accomplish on each platform will further assist. Here are some of the common features you will find on the best social media marketing software choices and what they offer.

• Analytics – Data that lets you know the demographics of your audience, their level of engagement, and how different posts are eliciting a response.

• Calendar and Scheduling – Helps in organizing the timing and frequency of posts. Can also be used to save content for future posting to ensure regular content updates.

• Custom Integrations – Allows for other software tools that you already use for marketing and CRM to integrate with your social media marketing software.

• Notifications – Helpful mobile notifications that keep your updated on responses and analytics related to your posts while on the go.

• Follower Engagement – To see how well followers are responding to your posts through such parameters as likes, shares, and comments. Also, track how many relevant comments you are being responsive to.

• Team Collaboration – Social media marketing is often a shared responsibility in the organization. This means you may need shared and different levels of access for various team members.

Assess Team Needs

As mentioned, social media marketing is often a team effort. Most organizations that are not solely operated will have people with different specialties. Each one can make worthy contributions to niche subjects.

It is advisable to consult with your team to figure out what features they feel will be useful in running campaigns and meeting your social media marketing goals. You will also likely want different levels of access. For instance, an intern should not be able to respond on behalf of the brand or make posts without managerial review. Whatever software you use should allow you flexibility in determining what level of access each team member that will contribute will have.

Research Softwares

Besides ensuring that the software you use has the necessary features, you have to know how well it performs. The market is full of many options and it can be difficult to figure out which software is best suited to your needs. Do some online research to determine the best-rated software. Make use of independent and reputable user and expert review sites. You will likely find detailed reports that will tell you if there are problems worth paying attention to. It can also tell you how responsive the provider is to concerns. If and how they respond to negative reviews will be telling.

Consider Outsourcing

Social media marketing has become a popular niche product offered by marketing firms. They offer various services including content creation, monitoring, and analytics. Because they have a dedicated workforce for this, it is easier and more effective for many businesses to simply outsource this responsibility to them.

Because many firms work with different industries and social media platforms, they tend to also have more experience with various software. You can get recommendations on the best social media marketing software that they use for businesses in the same sector.

Power of Analytics

This should be a key feature that will guide everything from your choice of platform to what content works. Analytics provides valuable data that drives decision making. These measurements tell you how your current marketing efforts are faring and if it is connecting with the audience you are targeting.

This in turn can help in determining where your best response lies and where you should be focused. Software like Hipsocial provides the kind of data and reports that give a better understanding of how well your efforts are working. It can also help in discovering what type of content is trending and apply this to drive more traffic and following from online audiences.

Analytics can also be used to research the competition. These meaningful insights and intelligence can help ensure you maintain a competitive edge. They can also be a learning experience as you get to see where they fail and avoid the same mistakes.

Client Support

Whatever software you use, there should be adequate help in mastering it. Some software may be quite user-friendly, but with many features, a learning curve is to be expected. It is helpful when the provider is able to guide users on how to best exploit this software.

From how-to guides and video tutorials, there are many ways that they can offer support and learning materials to clients. If all this fails, there should be a mechanism for direct communication. Timely responses indicate a commitment to customer service that is highly desirable when trying to navigate and effectively utilize these tools. You can get feedback on this by checking user review sites and even social media handles run by the provider.

Pricing

Whatever investment you make will need to factor in cost. Different software comes in at different prices. The rates are typically time-based, that is, hourly, monthly, or yearly. Granted, the pricing may be dependent on such factors as the range of features and the number of users. If opting to outsource you will also need to receive quotes from various providers to similarly make comparisons on price.

Price comparisons are important so you can try to figure out where the best value for money lies. If you narrow down to vendors that offer a free level of access or trial periods, this can be a good opportunity to try before you buy. Give such vendors priority as they are likely confident you will enjoy their product and want to continue with them.

Conclusion

Having the right tools can make social media marketing a more streamlined and better-controlled process. It can also help in harvesting important data that will guide future marketing efforts and gauge current performance. Whether your business is big or small, an investment in quality social media marketing software is necessary.

Hipsocial gives you the ability to learn what content will appeal to your audience and promote their engagement. Its analytic tools help give powerful insights into the intricacies of your audience, how they respond to your campaigns, and guide data-driven decisions that will make your social media actions more effective and profitable.