“Successful companies in social media function more like entertainment companies, publishers, or party planners than as traditional advertisers.”
— Erik Qualman, motivational speaker and best-selling author
Social media is at the epicenter of modern online business activity.
Through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, users share opinions about brands, buy products, and engage with company news and article shares.
This medium has allowed brands unbridled access to a massive audience. The real question, however, is this: Are brands using that access to the fullest to develop meaningful connections and insights that will lead to greater prosperity?
In most cases, the answer is no. It’s not about laziness or ineptitude; what’s missing are the right tools to meet the needs and goals of the organization.
To help remedy that headache and assist brands in building a bolstering social media presence, I have done the work to identify the three top social media tools that brands should be deploying to achieve greater resonance and growth.
Agora Pulse
As a small business owner, you likely only have the bandwidth to build a presence on a couple different social platforms to prevent yourself from spreading efforts too thin.
When it comes to social media monitoring, you don’t want to overpay for a tool that covers everything from Foursquare to Friendster, but you still need a forceful ally.
In this scenario, AgoraPulse is the best option available.
With AgoraPulse, users gain access to an affordable social media management tool that monitors only Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for brand mentions and relevant keywords.
AgoraPulse also supplies users with a variety of features that help to track and organize posts and comments so that business owners can quickly reply to online engagements relevant to their brand; this helps maintain an active presence online.
The platform keeps all of these interactions well-organized by giving each social profile its own dedicated inbox.
Posting from AgoraPulse is quick and easy too. Users can publish to multiple networks with a single click and even customize each network’s message before pushing them out or scheduling them for later.
The various analysis tools available help brands to uncover their biggest advocates based on social activity like shares, likes, mentions, and more.
AgoraPulse’s analytics tools enable users to quickly export data into PowerPoint presentations for a professional and easy-to-read appearance. Metrics cover the best times to post, how well various shares performed, your company’s most prominent advocates, and other helpful insights.
Adobe Spark
Understanding how your content is performing is one thing. Creating content that people want to engage with is an entirely different beast.
These days, social media is consumed by images and video content.
If you want to develop stunning imagery and video to share on social media, but have limited experience in the area, Adobe Spark is right for you.
This free tool enables users to generate artfully crafted videos, images, and “web stories” in just a few minutes.
Once logged into the Spark site, users are presented with three options: Post, Page, and Video.
Post is for designing social images, Page is designated for generating “web stories” or info pages, and Video is for creating video content.
Under Post, users create beautifully designed images where they can select from premade designs, layouts, color pallets, images filters, fonts, and other customization features. Adobe Spark also helps you automatically resize images based on the social network it will be shared on.
The video section of the site follows a similar format as Post; users start by entering their slogan or title text, and then select from the type of video you want to create. Choices include:
- Promote an idea
- Tell what happened
- A hero’s journey
- Show and tell
- Personal growth
- Teach a lesson
- An invitation
- Make up my own
Next, users record their narration and add photos and text to slides to achieve a flat design video that can be posted on social, used for PPC advertising, or any number of other promotional needs.
Finally, Page offers a simple website builder that generates responsive pages. Here you can add titles, subtitles, images, CTAs, and other elements that help bring this one-page website to life.
If you need to create visual content for your social channels, it’s hard to beat Adobe Spark.
Reveal
Reveal is a tool that takes advantage of the growing prominence of AI to help users achieve better ad performance.
Reveal is a Slack bot that serves up Facebook and Instagram ad metrics such as impressions, reach, amount spent, purchase value, and many more metrics, effectively allowing users to manage social advertising campaigns from within Slack.
In addition to performance stats, Reveal will also deliver click-through-rate (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC) notifications anytime there has been significant changes. This feature helps business owners save money when things start to get too rich for their blood and adjust their campaigns accordingly.
These social media tools provide the core functions that a business owner needs to develop a meaningful presence on major social networks. No matter if you are listening in on conversations about your brand, generating high-quality content, or managing the performance of your ad campaigns, you need an a suite of powerful tools to lighten the managerial and creation process.
Focus on implementing a scheduling and analytics tool, content creation assistance, and PPC tracking; it will be like having a new marketing manager join your team.
What do you think are some of today’s most effective social media tools?
Source: - http://www.sitepronews.com/2017/06/20/3-social-media-tools-every-brand-should-use/
