Before we created HipSocial, Agile CRM was our main focus. This all-in-one Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution has always been a crowd-pleaser. It’s fulfilled the needs of small and medium businesses from all industries and sizes. On top of features like sales enablement, marketing automation, and customer service, it also offered social listening features for Twitter. This enabled businesses to monitor and protect their brands’ reputations on social media.

Incorporating social listening for Twitter into Agile CRM seemed to benefit a number of our clients. And so, we decided to take a closer look at social media management to see if we could brainstorm an app that could be dedicated to social media.

Social Media for Business

Throughout human history, competition and innovation have produced some of the most incredible technologies, solving problems in logistics, healthcare, entertainment, and more. Among those areas most touched by advances in technology, communication has become an integral part of daily life.

Today, social media is an explosive channel that offers benefits at home and at work. The marketing dynamic is every-changing, but every once in a while a development comes along and solidifies a particular technological achievement in time. As social media usage continues to rise to over half of the world’s population, there’s no reason to think it will go away anytime soon.

While communication is at the core of the purpose behind social media, the utility of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, goes far beyond a personal means of communication. Social media entertains us, educates us, connects us, and helps us with everyday tasks.

One such task that has been simplified due to the functions of social media, as well as the prevalence of smartphones, is shopping. Today, consumers have more power in their hands than ever before. According to research, “70% of consumers search for products they need to buy on Instagram and Facebook.” Blazon Additionally, in 2015, 52% of online and in-store purchases were ”influenced by Facebook.”

Customers do more than just shop with social media, however. According to data collected from ReadyCloud, ”71% of online shoppers will recommend the brand they bought on social media.” This mouth-to-mouth means of promotion is invaluable to growing businesses trying to compete in a crowded marketplace. And it works better than you might have imagined. Data from Disruptive Advertising reveals that social media recommendations influence 23% of all online consumers

Social media impacts shopping in a big way. It must be a top priority in your marketing strategy in order for your brand to have a chance at competing in your industry.

Data from Statista highlights the fact that [91.9 percent of U.S. businesses with more than 100 employees were expected to use social media for marketing purposes in 2021.

Social media marketing has become such an important part of business marketing strategy because of the access this channel of marketing provides business owners and marketing and sales teams. More than just mere communication, however, social media also enhances data collection and consumer research.

It may seem obvious that social media platforms enable brands to connect with and engage their users, but the importance of engagement can never be overstated. By delivering engaging content to the right people at the right time, you can turn readers into leads and leads into paying customers or clients.

In the process of connecting with your audience, if you use social media content library best practices, you can actually entice those readers away from the platform itself, bringing them onto your website. Whether it’s organic posts that bring them to your site or paid ads, the result is the same -- your traffic increases, and that’s always a good thing.

Social media also provides small and medium businesses an opportunity to compete against much larger brands, giving them a level playing field of sorts. On social media, your audience is engaging with the content you deliver. If your content is better than industry leaders, then you’ll have a lasting impact on readers (who are consumers in disguise

However, it’s not as easy as creating a post every once in a while and hoping for the best. Social media strategy can be complex, and it takes knowledge, practice, and flawless execution. It takes data monitoring, data collection, and data analysis. And most importantly, it takes constant optimization to keep your content and your strategies fresh and competitive.

Creating and implementing successful social media strategy is almost impossible without the aid of social media management software like HipSocial.

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The Need for Social Media Management Software

Social media management software comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. The market for social media automation software has exploded in recent years primarily because of advances in automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.

We had a successful means to offer social listening on Twitter, but no other social media management software. Plus, we wanted to see what other functionalities could be beneficial to our team, as well as other companies. So, we started interviewing our customers and conducting surveys for social media managers to see what problems they currently had with their solutions.

Many users surveyed stated scheduling their content was important to them, for the sake of consistency. The ability to analyze stats for all their social media platforms in a central location was also mentioned often. This was important to them in order to see if their social media marketing strategy was effective.

It became clear to us that our customers were looking for more than a few extra features. They needed dedicated social media management software.

Purpose of Social Media Management Software

The main purpose of social media management software is to streamline the workflow of marketing and sales teams as it pertains to social media strategy.

There are a number of elements encompassed by social media strategy, and strategies are optimized for individual companies. That means no two companies will have identical social media strategies. It also means that the social media management software market must be diverse enough to serve the wide variety of industries represented throughout the world.

In other words, social media management solutions must come with a variety of features and functions. Additionally, as a rule of thumb: versatility and customizability are directly correlated to complexity-of-use. This means that programs that are extremely customizable are going to be more complex and harder to master for new users. Conversely, the less customizable an application is the more user-friendly it’s likely to be.

An exhaustive list of all the features in social media management software would take far too long to cover, but there are several common themes among features that the best social media management solutions always provide:

• Message Scheduling & Queuing
• Post Optimization Tools
• Targeting & Segmentation Tools
• Seamless Integration
• URL Shortening & Tracking
• Reporting & Analytics

These tools, in combination with sound strategy and competent management, lead to a more productive workflow, more communication, and better results.

As we considered the main purpose and functions of social media management software, we turned to problems that our new software should be able to solve and goals it should help us and our users achieve.

Problems Solved & Goals Achieved

Better results should be an overarching goal for each campaign, and social media management software enables small and medium businesses to achieve results that are just as good as those enjoyed by industry leaders.

If your goal is to achieve better results from your social media efforts, you must first take a good look at your current processes and procedures. Business process mapping (BPM) is an excellent way to obtain a visual representation of every little process and procedure that makes up your business.

With the help of apps like BPMapp, you can actually identify problem areas within the processes and procedures that take place at work. Once you’ve identified these problem areas, you can find the right solutions to optimize your workflow.

If you find problem areas within your social media strategy, solutions like HipSocial provide data, automation, and other tools to help you and your team overcome those problems and avoid them in the future.

Problems that commonly plague social media strategies include:

• Poor productivity and efficiency among marketing and sales teams
• Poor communication and collaboration
• Poorly optimized business processes
• Low automation workflows

The Solution

Ultimately, we decided to build a solution that had more features at an affordable price. That’s when HipSocial social media management software was born.

HipSocial is a social media management application designed by 500apps. It provides a host of features that are perfect for small and medium businesses trying to compete and grow in a competitive market.

The tools included range from social media scheduling and engagement to social listening and analysis features, not to mention seamless integration into your workflow.

HipSocial was designed to solve problems. In fact, 500apps created HipSocial to solve problems the company was facing in the marketing department. Everything about the app is designed to add value to your social media marketing efforts.

Software today is more powerful than it’s ever been. Maybe your team is suffering due to poor communication or teamwork. Or, perhaps the problem areas in your company stem from a lack of properly optimized business processes. If you’re not taking advantage of automation in this digital era, it’s time to get on board. Your competitors are most certainly taking advantage of software solutions, and you need to be able to compete to keep the doors open and the lights on.

If you’re currently searching for new social media management software, we invite you to try HipSocial. Click here to learn more!

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