Some 90 percent of brands use social media to increase brand awareness. However, 58 percent of those brands say measuring the effectiveness of social media efforts is challenging and only a small percentage (38 percent) measure social media ROI, according to Hootsuite’s Social Barometer 2018.
The obstacles hindering success of corporate social media campaigns can vary; for one, the time investment can be daunting and teams might not know what platforms are best to engage with their target audiences. For example, Instagram can be a great tool for hiring design executives but might not be the best tool for engaging with engineers in niche industries.
Additionally, keeping up with platforms’ frequent updates can be tricky but necessary to ensure the marketing team is leveraging the platform effectively and maximizing the tools available. Teams also need to dedicate time and personnel to draft and distribute content and monitor metrics to ensure the brand is properly engaging with its customers and that social efforts are tying back to larger business and communication objectives.
With these factors in mind, it can be difficult to feel confident investing marketing budget in social media campaigns and effectively distributing the content.
Luckily, there are a number of social media marketing tools available to help businesses better organize and schedule content, as well as engage with users and report results. Below is an overview of three of the social media marketing platforms Communiqué PR is currently using on behalf of our clients, as well as some of the platforms’ benefits and unique capabilities.
Optimized for web and mobile IOS and Android use, Buffer is a software application designed for managing social media accounts on platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Buffer allows a business to include a variety of profiles (i.e., corporate and executive accounts), which can help synergize the cadence of posts and ability to track metrics.
Buffer also has “approval” features so that posts can be reviewed or edited if necessary before they are published by the team, as well as simple collaboration capabilities, so that multiple users can access or tee up content.
Another attractive feature Buffer offers to business customers is the ability to engage with its followers by replying to comments and messages. This “reply” feature helps marketing teams directly engage with audiences on different social platforms though one application. The ability to quickly respond to conversations and leverage social media to resolve customer support requests helps brands provide quality customer service.
Hootsuite is a social media management platform where the user interface acts as a dashboard to view all integrated social media accounts. Hootsuite supports Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest offering scheduling, monitoring, content curation, analytics, team management, security and content boosting capabilities.
A differentiating factor Hootsuite offers is tailored packages for the financial services, government, healthcare and higher education industries. Many users also leverage Hootsuite’s special integration features to improve the effectiveness of ad campaigns, employee advocacy, analytics and insights.
The ability to respond to posts quickly, create approval workflows and manage platform access helps improve collaboration among brands and their audiences, as well as increases the efficiency of social media campaigns by streamlining the process of posting and measuring impact.
Unlike Buffer and Hootsuite, HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software that offers full CRM and CMS tools, as well as social media management capabilities. HubSpot provides companies with content management, SEO and web analytics tools.
The ability to integrate CRM, SEO and social media management helps brands reach their target audiences on their preferred platforms, drive more traffic to specific landing pages and improve coordination of communication and activities on all marketing and sales avenues. Lastly, through HubSpot’s robust platform, users can track and convert visitors on across all platforms into qualified.
Despite any negatives associated with leveraging third party platforms, social media management applications offer a host of benefits. The comprehensive overview of accounts in one location, combined with improved analytics tracking helps businesses measure how investments in social media impact the company’s bottom line.