So, you’ve decided to jump on the social media bandwagon and see what it can do for your branding and business? Great! Before you start getting started with the various softwares and programs out on the market, you need to first, figure out what social media marketing tools and techniques will fit best for your business.
In this article, I’m going to explain what social media tools are and give you a few suggestions of my favourite marketing tools. I’ll show you how they can be used for online marketing, and then I’ll just mention something about each of these social media marketing tools. To give you an overview of what you can achieve with them.
Social Media Marketing Tools
HootSuite
Hootsuite has become one of the prominent social media marketing software and management tools that align all your social media campaigns on a single platform. You can also select the appropriate social media channel or forum to schedule and publish your content with ease. The free social media marketing tool helps your business seamlessly connect with the right set of targeted audiences to amplify your brand reputation.
It becomes much easier to create flawless and engaging content such as social media posts on various platforms. You can also track your social media presence 24×7 and automatically schedule the posts according to the set calendar.
Hootsuite provides automated solutions that help to upscale the impact of paid and organic advertisements. It has a scalable advocacy solution enabling you to expand the social search. The analytical solution allows you to make data-driven decisions. You can even download the Hootsuite mobile application. You can check out the free version of the social media marketing tool and select the appropriate plan based on your specific business needs.
Image source: HootSuite
Essential Features
- You can get access to the real-time audience using HootSuite Insights, and the various online conversations.
- Hootsuite enables you to integrate your social listening software with advanced tools to get instant essential information from the dashboard.
- Hootsuite provides a comprehensive overview of the results of all social media platforms from one place. You can then set the performance standards and analyze areas that need improvement.
- With Hootsuite Impact, you can easily calculate the ROI on your social media marketing investments. You can also find out how the software helps drive more sales, leads, and conversions.
- You can monitor the duration of response time for solving customer queries. Track the overall performance of your team.
- HootSuite allows you to maximize the value of Facebook posts and manage social media advertising all in one place.
- Plan your cost, create rich content, and publish it on different platforms to engage more customers.
- Manage all your incoming messages efficiently and smoothly. Make sure you give timely responses to any questions or comments.
Tailwind
If Pinterest and Instagram are your primary focus for social media marketing, Tailwind is software you must use. This platform will help you a lot around these two platforms and make sure that your accounts grow quickly.
Tailwind is the marketing partner for these two platforms, so they are safer to use. It is simple and easy to get started. You can login to the platform using your Instagram or Pinterest account and start using it.
When you use it for Instagram, Tailwind will quickly create hundreds of copies of your photo in a click with a perfectly optimized design using the Tailwind Create option and help you save a lot of your time. You can fully customize the design that you select to share and you can then find the relevant hashtags right from the Tailwind dashboard and schedule the post.
So, you can schedule the posts for an entire week or month in advance so that you have plenty of time to focus on other important tasks while your Instagram account is regularly active with fresh content.
You can add your brand details, logo to the platform and Tailwind Create will use those elements to create a highly personalized version of the photo you uploaded.
Tailwind for Pinterest
Tailwind is the most popular software when it comes to Pinterest marketing. It has a deep knowledge base when it comes to growing your Pinterest followers and traffic and the right kind of tools to optimize the overall process.
You can create your Pins on this platform and schedule all the posts for the most active timings so that you get the best out of each Pin that you share.
It also gives you comprehensive analytics around your Pinterest activities, share and traffic so that you can plan your Pinterest marketing accordingly.
Buffer
First of all, we have Buffer which happens to be one of the top social media management apps out there. This platform is used by individuals, businesses, and brands and all of them have found great support from Buffer.
Buffer has various kinds of products under its name. These products belong to different categories like publishing, engagement, analytics, and team collaboration.
Buffer is also available for different platforms like Desktop, iOS, and Android. In addition to that, you can get started with the app free of cost.
However, the free version of the app comes with a bunch of restrictions. And to get rid of such restrictions you will need to pay a monthly subscription fee.
Social Media Marketing Techniques
SM Brand Management
This is the most common technique that the “experts” promise to do. This includes creating and maintaining a blog and Twitter Account, engage people who are interested, share valuable things in your industry, and eventually build up followers, visitors, and trust. It might even involve maintaining a Facebook Fanpage (not effective if you DO NOT already have a strong brand established) or a LinkedIn group.
This technique is effective because it fully utilizes the SOCIAL part of social media. You are out there engaging your target audience. You are making friends with them and creating value for them. You are building your own popularity and trust. If someone knows what you do and thinks positively of you, when they need your product or services, they will not go on Google and find a random service they don’t know. They will buy it from you. If their friends are looking for services you offer, they will refer their friends to you.
The problem with Social Media Brand Management is that it takes time, patience and persistence. Since you are not out there to close deals but to build trust, you won’t see an immediate increase in sales or signups. It’s only when people really trust you and care about you do they start to check out your stuff, and that could take months to years to build.
Companies who consistently pressure their Social Brand Building workers to self-promote, get traffic, and get sales will hurt themselves in the longrun and fail in social media marketing. They clearly do not understand that this technique was not appropriate for their 1 month ROI agendas.
Pros
Really engages your target market. Builds trusts. Leads to sustainable success.
Cons
Extremely slow. Takes a lot of time. Need to truly care about your audience.
When to use Social Brand Building
When you have a longterm vision of your brand and social influence on the internet, and you can dedicate at least one longterm person who understands what it takes to be popular online and engage with your target audience.
End Result: Brand
SM Targeting
Social Media Targeting is where you find individuals on social media platforms one by one and engage them about your services. This includes finding and tweeting people on Twitter based on their description or keyword tweets, contacting someone directly on LinkedIn for a B2B sale, or commenting on a blogger’s post.
Social Media Targeting is probably the most direct way of social media marketing. In one sense, it is like sales. If someone tweets out “I need a plumber in vancouver…” you immediately tweet them with “We’re in Vancouver and would love to help you out!” If someone complains about your competitor, you tweet them about yourself. Twitter is usually the best tool for Social Media Targeting for B2C businesses. If you sell corporate solutions, you would utilize LinkedIn to locate the decision makers and approach them. This can yield short-term and effective results, depending on how much time you put into it.
The problem with Social Media Targeting is that, if not done carefully, it could be be seen as spam. If you contact 200 people in a day, and you are NOT being a hero to them by providing them exactly what they need, they will view you as a spammer. Yes, the spamming industry makes a lot of money, but once you are identified as a spammer, it would completely destroy the long efforts you have put in for Social Media Brand Management and ruin your reputation.
On top of that, your accounts might be flagged or get deleted. That’s why make sure your Social Media Targeting operator really understands how to provide what people are looking for, not overload them with irrelevant services.
Another problem to Social Media Targeting is that it is not as scalable. By nature of this technique you are contacting one person at a time. Even though the conversion rate and ROI is high for this, it is difficult to execute it on a massive scale without many dedicated employees just doing this.
Pros
Very direct. Immediate results. Measurable ROI.
Cons
Risk of being spam. Could hurt reputation. Difficult to scale.
When to use Social Media Targeting
When you are looking for short-term results while not being too concerned with longterm branding. You also need a dedicated person who understands social media etiquette in order to not become spammy.
End Result: Sales/Conversions
Marketing Gamification
Marketing Gamification is when you create your own viral content that usually indirectly promotes your brand or services. This includes creating a viral video, hosting a competition, or creating a novel site that’s just to get peoples’ attention. Some examples of those, respectably, are the T-Mobile Plaza Dance, Dikembe Mutombo’s 4 1/2 Weeks to Save the World, and Compare The Meerkat.
The difficult thing about Marketing Gamification is that it is usually a bigger-scaled campaign (hence more expensive), and the odds of it really turning viral are extremely low. Very few “social media consultants” offer this service (most blogposts lie in the Social Brand Building realm), as it usually takes an organized professional firm to coordinate the entire thing. This also usually needs to be accompanied with the rest of the social media techniques to create the full effect.
With Marketing Gamification, if it truly becomes viral, you are able to reach millions of people. However, when people talk about it, they usually don’t talk about the brands but the campaign itself, so make sure the campaign connects to the company itself in one way or another.
Pros
Potential of reaching millions of people. Opens the door to the 2 other social media marketing techniques below. Creates more buzz that other techniques.
Cons
Larger-scaled. More expensive. Chances of being viral is slim.
When to use Viral Content Production
When your company has a deeper pocket and wants to create unique buzz in your industry. It’s also more appropriate for products and services that aren’t interesting/sexy by themselves.
End Result: Buzz
Social Bookmarking Promotion
Social Bookmarking Sites are services where people share resources via a reference URL instead of the content itself. These sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Delicious and dozens more. The goal for this technique is to get on the front page or get top ranked on these sites, driving tons and tons of traffic to your website.
In order for this to work, two things need to happen. One is that you have content or services that could go viral (so this technique follows the last one). Two is that you need to be able to get the power users of the bookmarking sites to endorse you. This could be a tricky thing to do and will often cost you money.
When you make a hit with social bookmarking sites, the traffic you can get is so high that it sometimes crashes your server (traffic from Digg that crashes your site is called the “Digg Effect”). However, a lot of the times the traffic itself is not very targeted (especially from StumbleUpon), so conversion rates are usually really low since no one is looking to buy anything.
Pros
Can drive tons and tons of traffic in a very short amount of time.
Cons
Slightly difficult to execute. Very untargeted traffic. Low conversion rates and time on site. Usually need to pay even if not successful.
When to use Social Bookmarking Generation
When you have viral content or services, have some cash to adventure with, and need to drive a lot of traffic in a short time.
End Result: Traffic
SM Influencer Campaign
This is pretty much having influencers who are popular bloggers, tweeters, video makers and such promote your product/services for you. This is probably the most effective and powerful ways of doing social media marketing. The biggest problem with Social Media Brand Management is that it takes too much time to build that trust with the online audience, ranging from months to years. In an Influencer Campaign, you are leveraging the engagement and trust others have built for months and years. This creates the strongest form of traffic because not only can it create hundreds of thousands of visitor, it also has a very high brand building and conversation rate since it is through a trusted referral.
To make this happen, marketers need to identify who are the top influencers in their niches and establish relationships with them. Some marketers pay the influencers directly to advertise or sponsor a conversation, some give out free units, and some just give out first dibs to new services. Whatever it is, make sure the blogger discloses the relationship to their readers to not get in trouble. Getting through this is a huge pain, but once it is executed well, it is the most effective form of social media marketing for making something go viral (think Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week).
Finally, your product or service must be viral or sexy for this to work well since bloggers are putting their reputation on the line and are not going to promote random commodities. If your product/service itself is not special, then be sure to create a unique and outrageous campaign that you want these influencers to write about.
Pros
Generates large amount of qualified traffic through a medium of trust. Builds a strong brand. Fast results.
Cons
Expensive or Time Consuming. Risk of influencers refusing to help or write negative posts about your service/product.
When do use Social Media Influencer Campaign
When your company has a budget, a sexy product or is launching a unique campaign/competition and need lots of buzz with targetted traffic onto your site.
End Result: Brand + Traffic + Sales/Conversions
Conclusion:
Social media has come a long way. From the early days of MySpace and the infamous “poke” button, to the hundreds of millions of users that today populate platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, social media marketing is a lot more important than ever before.