Social media done right can be an excellent asset to your business marketing efforts. But How can you choose the right social media platform(s) for your small business? Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter — the list goes on and on.

And once you’ve chosen your social media outlet(s), how can you ensure that your efforts, and perhaps your money, are being spent wisely? As it turns out, there is no magic wand. While it’s wise to stick with one or two platforms at first, as your business expands, your social media presence can (and likely should) expand to more specialized services.

Choosing the Right Platform(s)

A basic aspect of properly utilizing social media for your business is understanding how different social media platforms work. There are three basic categories that are generally recognized as social media platforms: microblogging (Twitter, Tumblr), video and photo sharing (Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo) and peer sharing (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn). Facebook and Twitter are especially good starting points for small businesses, according to according to Brenda Harjala, Head of Community at Rabbit. Rabbit, a video sharing service, is based in Redwood City, California, but has many employees, like Harjala, working remotely.

“Most businesses would be hard-pressed to find a client not on either Facebook or Twitter already, or willing to like or follow their page. And with both platforms, an extra element of customer support is already included, without any additional tools. Both Facebook and Twitter come with built-in analytics and insights so you can see, at a glance, how your pages are doing. You can see your fans and followers, schedule posts, and see details about each post’s reach and interaction, without the need for additional management tools. With Facebook in particular, promoting a post is as simple as clicking an icon on it,” Harjala stated.

Mary Cochran, director of marketing for Sleep Easily, a medication-free sleep solution based in Boulder, Colorado, agreed that Facebook was a good social media starting point.

“For a small to medium sized business, if you can only do one thing I’d put the effort there. Facebook in the beginning will be based on friends and clients; you can build a great referral base. There are many easy to do promotions to promote the website, the company and posts which will help build your client base,” Cochran explained.

Administration of Social Media Accounts

Depending on the size of your business, you may or may not have a dedicated social media team or individual expert on staff. If you don’t, utilizing social media means becomes an additional task. As a business owner, you may decide to add social media to your own to-do list. But it can also be desirable to recruit one or more of your employees as well. However, the key is to persuade, not coerce participation, according to Harjala.

“Everyone isn’t cut out to be a brand advocate, or someone willing to actively share your business with their peers,” Harjala stated.

Harjala also emphasized that company social media accounts should be established by and remain the property of the company from the very beginning. Doing so minimizes the potential disruptive effect of departing employees.

“As a business owner, you should be the admin on your social media accounts, while your employees are managers or contributors. If someone departs, remove their account access. (There’s) no need to close the accounts entirely. If someone’s managing your social media but decides to move on, definitely retain the accounts. This way you can take them over, or easily hand them off to a new hire, and not need to start from scratch,” Harjala explained.

On the other hand, Individual employees using social media on their own time should do so with their personal accounts. These accounts must remain off-limits to company interference, according to Cochran.

The main account should be the company account so on Facebook, (that means) a Facebook page, on Twitter, the company Twitter handle. Individual accounts tend to go with the employee when they move on. Don’t try to hijack an employee’s Facebook page,” Cochran warned.

Proper Social Media Engagement

The best-imagined social media efforts inevitably fall flat without proper engagement. However, this varies from platform to platform, according to The Next Web. With Facebook and Instagram, posting once per day is plenty. Posting on LinkedIn just two to four times per week is fine. On the other hand, you should be prepared to post on Twitter and Pinterest multiple times per day. You or your designated social media point person must be willing to maintain the necessary posting frequency for your chosen platform, according to Cochran.

“Only be involved in whatever social you can handle and monitor. Don’t have a Facebook page if you don’t intend to use it,” Cochran insisted.

Indeed, effectively dealing with criticism and complaints is also a necessary aspect of social media engagement, according to Harjala.

“Responding quickly, and not leaving negative tweets or posts on your wall without a response, is the best way keep everything in check. If someone writes that your product doesn’t work, reply with assistance or contact info to work it out together. If a user leaves a bad review of service they received from your business, follow up with an apology and an offer to help make it right. If someone blasts your wall with spam, be there to clean it up right away. Instead of potential customers seeing only the negative, they’re seeing a company dedicated to good service,” Harjala explained.

Paid or Free?

One major advantage of social media platforms is that it’s possible to establish and maintain at least a basic profile for no cost. However, many social media platforms follow a “freemium” model that reserves certain features, such as sponsored posts and advertising, for paying customers. As a small business owner, you may wonder if it’s actually worthwhile to spend your hard-earned dollars on social media advertising or “soft” promotional strategies such as promoted posts. Once again, there is no hard and fast answer. While Cochran noted that sponsored posts can help your business gain visibility (and potential new customers and clients), Harjala recommended saving your money, at least at first.

“Unless you’re overflowing with real, supportive, active followers, stick to free social media for a while. This may seem counterintuitive; how do I get followers and more sales if no one sees my posts? The experience spent building a genuine audience, and learning from your audience, is worth more than a few extra views on your posts by people you don’t even know are interested. You’ll not only get a better feel for your niche, but you’ll get the chance to see what your fans respond to. And if you build your community right, in a way that’s valuable to your followers, “ Harjala explained.

ie3media.com

Marketers’ Favorite Social Media Tools

in Digital Marketing, Social Media

On average, content marketers use 17 tools to help them do their job. And with more than 5,000 tools available, it can be overwhelming to know what tool is the best for your team and your marketing goals.

When it comes to social media, the right tools can make a huge difference in the time saved, analytics uncovered, audience engagement and much more.

https://www.brandpoint.com/blog/marketers-favorite-social-media-tools/

“I prefer keeping my followers clean rather than having millions of followers that don’t match my subject matter. So I use ManageFlitter to review my Twitter followers and delete those that are irrelevant. It allows you to manage your followers, easily remove accounts that don’t follow you back, aren’t relevant or don’t have photos. The paid versions have sharing, content searching and easy following. ”

-Mary Cochran, Co-founder, Launching Labs Marketing

Marketers’ Favorite Social Media Tools

When it comes to social media, the right tools can make a huge difference in the time saved, analytics uncovered, audience engagement and much more.

We asked marketers to tell us about their favorite social media management tools. Their answers were surprisingly all over the board with hardly any repeated platforms, proving every marketer’s needs and goals are different. While some may need to use design tools to assist with their visuals, others need more streamlined ways to chat with their customers.

Here are the social media tools that marketers love the most, organized by category. Are there any that can help you meet your social media goals?

Posting and scheduling
Platform management
Audience development and engagement
Promotion and influencer engagement
Design and visuals

[RELATED: Top Social Media Monitoring Tools]

Posting and scheduling

Loomly

“Loomly allows me to schedule posts in advance across multiple platforms and has one of the most user-friendly interfaces I’ve seen in a social media management tool. The calendar view is probably my favorite feature because I can easily see my posts for the entire month! The advanced analytics features on Loomly also allow me to create more comprehensive progress reports for my clients. All my visual content is saved for future use, and I can also create post templates for evergreen content.”

-Jackie Kossoff, Social Media Consultant, jackiekossoff.com

Meet Edgar

“Meet Edgar allows you to create a carousel of prescripted social posts and set a publish schedule. When you reach the end of your scheduled posts, it goes back to the beginning and starts over.

It’s best used for your evergreen content: blog posts and images that you can continually share with your audience because they have value for many years. Meet Edgar allows me to maintain an active social media account without constant work or attention. It is truly a lifesaver!”

-Allen Michael, Founder & Editor, TheStickVacuums.com

Missinglettr

“Social media tools are dull. Take a link, share it on a schedule, return analytics on engagement. Helpful? Sure. But boring. More so, they don’t do the one thing business owners and marketing professionals desperately want: To create a relevant, unique and tailored social media campaign based on their content — automatically.

Missinglettr does just that.

Give Missinglettr a link to your content, and it will automatically pull out relevant quotes and photos. From there, it generates a 365-day social media promotion campaign complete with text, hashtags, auto-generated ‘quote bubble’ images and links back to your post. Review and approve this campaign at your leisure and let Missinglettr do the work over the next year for you!”

-Michael Mehlberg, Co-founder, Modern da Vinci

PostBeyond

“PostBeyond is a wonderful social media tool to get employees sharing content to their personal networks. As the admin, I push relevant content into the platform where staff can see and share it with one click. We’ve all heard that people are more likely to trust a person than a brand, so this tool is great for that.”

-Chandler Larson, Social Media Specialist, MentorMate

SocialFlow

“SocialFlow may not be one of the most known platforms, but it packs a powerful social media marketing punch. One of my favorite features is the ability to utilize the platform’s algorithms to post my branded messages across multiple social channels at the most opportune times for maximum reach, engagement, and conversion rate.”

-Stephen Seifert, Marketing Director, Your Doctors Online

Tailwind

“Tailwind is a big time saver for Instagram and Pinterest. It allows me to grab pins or images from the web using their handy Chrome plugin.

For pins, hit the Tailwind icon, choose your boards and schedule them. I noticed a drastic increase in site traffic when I increased my daily pins from 10 to 30. But scheduling through Tailwind took the same amount of time as doing it manually.

For Instagram images, you hit the icon, write your message and you’re done. You can even pre-define hashtag groups to add in. They make it so easy!

Plus, there’s an app to go with it. You can discover new pins, schedule images and more right from your phone.”

-Rebecca Bertoldi, Account Director, Meehan Digital

Platform management

IFTTT

“IFTTT is an integration tool that allows you to connect various applications to work seamlessly together. Nothing else comes close to the number of tasks you can do or apps you can integrate. For example, if you’re managing a bunch of social media accounts, you can easily set up functions that automate content posting and management for most available platforms. (E.g. you can set up a function that logs all your Twitter or Instagram posts into a spreadsheet for easier management OR you can set up a function that automatically reposts Instagram images as native posts on Twitter.)

In a nutshell, if you can think of it, IFTTT can do it. Best part is that people are constantly sharing recipes for different functions on IFTTT’s website and various marketing communities, so you rarely have to figure things out for yourself. It might take a little getting used to, but once you’ve got the ball rolling with IFTTT, you won’t know how you survived without it!”

-Pierre de Braux, Content Strategist, Spiralytics Inc.

Jarvee

“The social media tool I think is the most underrated is Jarvee. It supports Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and Youtube in one tool. You can also manage multiple accounts on each platform, which is often a much more expensive offering from the more well-known social tools available.

My favorite feature is the simplicity of adding RSS feeds to the system so I can greatly speed up my workflow when I want to share the best content from my favorite sources.

The only thing to keep in mind with Jarvee is that you have to install it on your own virtual private server or run it from your own computer, so it cannot be accessed from the cloud.”

-David Alexander, Digital Marketer, Mazepress

Quuu

“We operate in an era where a company’s content isn’t enough for a healthy social media presence. There’s an additional art of content curation. However, scoping the internet for helpful articles that align with industry standards AND your company’s values could take an entire day’s work. Quuu helps by giving a select number of suggestions from around the web that would align with our content curation goals. I can then link our Quuu recommendations to our Buffer account and get the autoposting sorted.

If at any time the Quuu suggestions don’t reflect our brand, I can go back into Quuu and easily change the keywords Quuu uses for picking out content pieces. Quuu and other services have helped us not only build our brand value but also connect with other content creators within our industry.”

-Shelby Rogers, Content Marketing Strategist, Solodev

Audience development and engagement

Chatfuel

“It’s difficult running a Facebook page with the big drop in reach and engagement due to the algorithm changes, so using a chat bot is one solution. One of the better chat bots for Facebook Messenger that I’ve tested is Chatfuel, which allows me to create a bot without any coding. The bot welcomes people that try to get in touch with me either on my Facebook page or on my site, answers simple questions automatically and allows me to build my Messenger audience list so I can contact these people through Messenger in the future.”

-Marko Saric, Freelance Marketing Consultant, HowToMakeMyBlog.com

Crowdfire

“My favorite social media tool is Crowdfire (see my Crowdfire review here). I primarily use it to build my Twitter following and keep my social content flowing, and it does a great job. I can quickly find people tweeting about the kind of topics I’m involved in and gain followers who will actually engage with me, rather than just playing a mindless ‘numbers game.’ I only need to use it for a few minutes per day to keep everything on a steady incline.”

-Ben Taylor, Founder, HomeWorkingClub.com

Followerwonk by Moz

“For me, Followerwonk is one of the best social media tools out there because of how powerful it can be when used in tandem with other tools and methods. In a previous role, I managed the social media for a golf tournament that was held in the West Midlands. So it’s pretty clear who the target market was — people in the West Midlands that like golf. Using Followerwonk, I found people whose bio and location matched that and then followed them from the tournament’s account.

I then used Crowdfire to send automatic DMs to those who followed back, letting them know they could apply for free tickets. This was a really effective way of generating local buzz for an event, but similar steps can be taken for almost any business type to find people worth connecting with.”

-Izaak Crook, Digital Marketing Executive, AppInstitute

Full Contact API

“Full Contact API will turn customer and lead email addresses into social profile data, allowing us to quickly find their Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn handles for easy outreach. This has helped our follower growth, but has really helped our engagement.”

-Curtis Boyd, Director of Operations, Future Solutions Media

ManageFlitter

-Mary Cochran, Co-founder, Launching Labs Marketing

ManyChat

“My favorite social media tool is ManyChat. This allows you to grow a Facebook messenger contact list for your brand and to automate it with answers using a messenger bot. I believe Facebook Messenger marketing will be a big part of the future of online marketing and growing a list now is critical. With ManyChat, we get close to an 80 percent open rate on our broadcasts to our list with only 20 percent on our traditional email list.”

-Ryan O’Connor, Co-founder, One Tribe Apparel

Objection Co

Objection Co reads our customers’ bad reviews and automatically formulates a review removal strategy. My favorite part is the notifications it sends that include instructions on how to remove the review that was just published.

-Curtis Boyd, Director of Operations, Future Solutions Media

Promotion and Influencer engagement

Easy Promos

“With Easy Promos, I can create contests directly on various channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. They offer great templates and they adapt depending on the brand I am working with.

I can keep all contest rules within the platform and link it to any of my campaigns as well as randomly be able to pick the winners and have a Certificate of Validity to share (this is very important in larger markets where my reach is in the 100,000’s).

I can also adapt these campaigns depending on the language spoken in a particular market, may that be Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German or English.

-Renata Sandor, Marketing Specialist, Netquest

GaggleAMP

“I love GaggleAMP, a social media amplification tool we use for our monthly new product showcase events. GaggleAMP allows us to drive between 2.6 and 3 million views per month. Every month our Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) events help launch at least 10 new products in the Boston market. In nine years, our crowd promoting model has contributed to social media visibility for more than 1,000 products. Almost 400 community members have signed up to be a part of our ‘Gaggle,’ helping to spread the word about local startups and their new products. I love that both sides of the equation win when you use GaggleAMP. We get increased visibility for local startups and our Gaggle members get great content to share.”

-Bobbie Carlton, Founder, Carlton PR & Marketing

PeopleMap

“PeopleMap is an Instagram marketing tool that I first discovered when I started managing Instagram growth and influencer campaigns for clients. It’s incredibly affordable, super well designed, and SO EFFECTIVE. It allows you to build lists (such as competitors, influencers you want to work with, current partners), track influencer campaign analytics, search hashtags and analyze user profiles to find new accounts to engage with and organically grow your following.”

-Kayley Reed, creator, consultant and influencer marketing manager, kayleyreed.com

REP

“My favorite social media tool is one of which I’m a co-founder: REP. Through it, you can connect with influencers, access profile analytics (like audience interests and engagement rates), message and hire directly, or post free, paid, and pay-per-click offers.

Additionally, we just launched a new feature called Raffles, which we view as a crowd marketing tool. Users redeem tickets for a chance to win a variety of prizes and can procure tickets in a variety of ways, including promoting the products on display. It’s worth mentioning that we see a lot of social media enthusiasts connecting via our community to help one another with growth and give each other shout-outs.”

-Isaac Lekach, Co-founder and CMO, REP

Design and visuals

Canva

“We’d be dead without Canva. It’s truly a design tool, but we make all of our social media graphics with it. From bio blasts to quote cards, infographics, GIFs and everything else in between, we’d be lost without Canva. It makes design easy and fast. Whether we use one of their templates or create something of our own, they help elevate everything we do on social media for our own agency and all of our clients.”

-Jesse Ghiorzi, Director of Brand Strategy, Charge

Fliptastic

“Fliptastic, a slideshow app for ioS, helps us get more eyes on our daily postings. It’s a simple app that converts a collection of photos to a video, lets you control transitions and timing, and comes with pre-set music options. It works for Instagram but it’s ideal for businesses who use Facebook because that platform serves native video posts to a much higher percentage of viewers than posts containing only text, photos, or links.”

-Steve Spatucci, Marketing Manager, Sugarplum Studio

Venngage

“One of my favorite social media tools is Venngage. Using this tool, you can easily create graphs, charts, and infographics to share on social media. People are first hooked by visual content, so having a nice-looking post will draw the user’s eye. Venngage is also free to use, so there’s really no downside to trying out the platform.”

-Maggie Aland, Social Media Analyst, Fit Small Business

Bynder

One of my favorite social media tools is a digital asset management platform called Bynder, which makes posting images on social media faster and easier. We store every image we own in Bynder. The Bynder AI Search feature actually scans the contents of each image for the keyword I search for, letting me find the image I need pretty quickly. When it comes to downloading the image for use, Bynder can be configured to automatically resize the image depending on the social media platform I’m using so I don’t waste time resizing the image in Photoshop.

-Jack Saville, Online Marketer, OnBrand

Planoly and AdParlour

“I find the tool Planoly useful to plan out future Instagram posts. I can ensure the Instagram feed looks aesthetically pleasing and that the photos sit well together in the grid. Another tool that I find particularly useful is AdParlour, which allows you to mock up Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest posts. This is really useful visual tool for showing clients how certain posts will look in their final form.”

-Katy Lowe, Social Media Executive, Passion Digital

Plann

“Plann allows me to plan my Instagram posts in advance and has some of the best editing features I’ve ever seen in an Instagram management app. I’m a graphic designer and since downloading Plann, I’ve only used Photoshop once to edit a photo! Plann also has wonderful hashtag management capabilities and extremely helpful performance (analytics) features to bring further insight into my strategy. Not to mention, I can plan my Instagram Stories in advance with Plann, too.”

-Jackie Kossoff, Social Media Consultant, jackiekossoff.com

A social media strategy gives your brand a roadmap to ensure you’re connecting with a meaningful audience, posting relevant content and capturing the most important KPIs. Learn more about developing a social media strategy.

13 ways your business can attract more social media followers

in Digital Marketing, Social Media

13 ways your business can attract more social media followers

Social media and marketing pros share their advice for how small businesses can get more followers and likes on Facebook, Twitter and their LinkedIn company pages.

Most businesses these days, especially retail and service businesses, have a presence on Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn. But in order to attract prospective customers to your business page(s), you need to actively court and engage fellow Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn users. How? Here are 13 suggestions.

1. Leverage your company social media bio/profile. “Make sure that your company’s online profile [or bio] is [informative] and designed in a way that quickly shows users who you are and what your business is about,” says Bernard Perrine, cofounder & CEO, SocialCentiv, a Twitter marketing tool.

2. Do some research. “Keyword research will help you identify what your target audience is searching for,” says Ashley Orndorff, market research analyst & copywriter, Visual Impact Group. “Once you know what questions they have and the topics they find interesting, you’ll have a better idea of the types of content they’re likely to find valuable.

“Also check your competitors’ pages to see what types of content get the most engagement,” she suggests. “Are their followers engaging the most with an image with a quote, a funny joke, something about their office day-to-day, certain hashtags?” Figure out what’s working for others and try a similar strategy.

3. Don’t just talk about your business. Instead post content your followers will find interesting or helpful. “If all you do is post articles [about your business], people will lose interest,” says Patrick Gillooly, director of digital communication and social media at Monster. “Be a thought leader by sharing content from a wide variety of sources. That way, you create a compelling stream of information that a potential customer would have more interest following—and a lot of the people whose content you shared might start following you too.”

“Deliver content that is positioned in a way that you are solving a problem for the person vs. being overtly promotional,” says Katie Welch, digital marketing strategist at Flowroute, which provides calling and messaging for cloud-based companies.

4. Engage with followers – and respond quickly to questions. “Remember to keep on top of answering questions and responding to followers with thoughtful responses instead of generic answers,” says Alice Williams, communications specialist, Frontier Business Edge, which provides data, voice, video and equipment solutions to businesses.

Moreover, “if you offer up a custom response to someone who either has interacted with your business or has a need your business can fulfill (e.g., [someone] looking to book a flight [or a trip] if you’re a travel agent), you are very likely to gain a quick follower,” says Gillooly. “Do 5-10 of those interactions a day and your numbers will grow very quickly.”

“For example, if someone tweets, ‘I love the Dallas Cowboys!’ and you sell Cowboys fan gear in your shop, reply that he can shop with you,” and offer a discount or coupon code, says Perrine.

“Keep your finger on the pulse of industry-specific conversations and engage with thoughtful questions and helpful answers,” says Mostafa Razzak, principal, JMRConnect, a public relations & influencer communications company. “Do not patronize or waste people’s time by stating the obvious or making comments that show you haven’t paid attention to what they’ve written or the message they’re trying to convey.”

6. Interact with influencers in your industry. “Interaction with influencers that is not promotional or furthering your own agenda will earn you respect and, by extension, convince [them and their followers] that it’s worth their time to follow your company,” says Razzak.

7. Join groups – and group conversations. “Join groups that are in [your] industry and [post] and comment on posts,” says Mary Cochran, director of marketing, Sleep Easily. “Post articles your company is featured in,” and share articles written by or of interest to others in the group.

8. Give people an incentive to follow you, such as a discount code or free giveaway. “Provide compelling incentives that are available only via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn,” says Tim Lavelle, director of SEO & social media, U.S. Interactive Media. “Exclusive offers could include coupons, discounts, freebies, limited editions or other things of interest to your targeted audience. When your audience can only acquire a desired discount, deal or exclusive product/service via social media, they’re far more motivated to connect.”

“A great way to generate buzz about your business, as well as increase your social following, is to run a contest,” says Tracy Willis, content strategist, N2Q Consulting, a creative marketing agency. “Think of a quick and simple contest that encourages fans to share information about your business, and reward the winner with a gift card or tickets to an event.”

9. Ask people to follow you. “Use calls to action (CTAs) to directly request that visitors friend, follow, like, etc. your social media profiles,” says Lavelle. “Numerous studies have shown that telling people to do something (or asking them) makes them far more likely to actually do it.”

10. Include easy-to-find links to your social media accounts on your website and/or blog. “You [may be] missing out on followers by not including a link to [your] Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages” on your website and/or blog, says Jennifer Matthews, a marketing specialist at Igniting Business, which provides web design, marketing and technical services to small businesses.

11. Time your posts. “Post content at times when [it is] most likely to get shared [on] each platform,” says Matthews. People look at “Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter [at different times], making it crucial to test which days and times get the most attention for each platform. Finding your ideal audience is all about testing, and you want to post to social media when your target market is active on each platform,” she explains. Also, “make sure to keep track of which posts get the most interaction for each platform, and keep all that data in an organized document that you can refer to easily.”

12. Don’t try to be everywhere for everyone. “Being active and engaged on a few social networks will get you more followers in the long run than posting infrequently across many networks,” says Welch.

13. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. “Do not get hung up on trying to reach as many people as possible,” says Williams. “It can be more valuable to focus on a [smaller] community that is more likely to convert into customers in the long run.”