Three Tools to Boost Your Social Media Efficiency

WITH so many social media channels, it can be difficult to stay on top of each of your accounts without a little bit of help. Luckily, there are tons of social media tools that can help you out.

Unfortunately, with so many options how do you know which ones to use?

No worries, as we will go over several social media tools that will help you be more efficient with your social activities.

Scheduling Social Media Updates

At the core of every social media profile are the updates that get posted to it. Now, if you are posting all your updates manually, you could be missing out on one of the most popular social media automation methods.

Look, you shouldn’t use tools to completely automate your social profile.

Instead, you can utilize a few tools that let you schedule your updates in advance.

Similar to a content calendar, you can create a social media content calendar. With this, you will know ahead of time of what to post and on what channel.

Armed with this information, you can easily schedule these updates to post when and where you want.

To do this, I’d recommend looking at Buffer.

Schedule Social Media With Buffer

If you are not familiar with Buffer, it is a social media tool that easily allows you to schedule social media updates to your Facebook (profiles, pages, groups), Google+ Pages, LinkedIn (profiles, pages), Pinterest (boards), or Twitter accounts.

Buffer offers both free and paid accounts.

To get the most out of your social media scheduling, I recommend forking over the $10 a month in order to schedule up to 200 social media updates per social profile. You will also be able to connect up to 10 social profiles.

Once you have created your account, you will need to connect the social profiles you would like to post to. After that, it’s easy to start adding content.

If you have a social media calendar, you will be able to schedule all your posts in advance. In your Buffer account, simply add all of the content you would like to schedule, choose the account to post to and set the time to post (or use your default posting schedule). By queuing up your content in advance, you will save time in that you won’t have to login to each social media account to post multiple times each day.

Instead, you can use a single interface to schedule content for all your social media accounts.

Another benefit of using Buffer to schedule content is that it is ideal for companies who have multiple people posting to various social media accounts.

For example, Fortune Magazine found Buffer to be the ideal solution for scheduling social media updates. Fortune had an issue with multiple people posting social updates right after each other. Then not posting again for an hour or two.

Using Buffer allowed them to have multiple users add social media content to their queue that would not be posted until the next scheduled time. This allowed them to be more efficient with their posting of social media.

Create Eye Catching Social Images in Minutes

As you are aware, using images in your social media updates can significantly increase your engagement rates.

But what if you are not some sort of graphic design ninja?

Not to worry, with this next tool you can create some pretty spectacular graphics in just a few minutes.

Use Canva for Social Media Images

To do this, you will need to use Canva which is a free web based software for creating social images.

Canva makes it drop-dead simple to create the right size image for any social media channel.

By using Canva, you can skip the need to find and hire an expensive graphic designer. This can save you not only a ton of time going through the process of hiring but also saves you some money.

And who doesn’t want to save some money?

Canva has a huge library of pre-made templates. The benefit of using a pre-made template is that most of the legwork is done. This means that the fonts, layout, and image effects are already in place. You will simply need to edit some text and swap out the image.

It doesn’t get much easier than this and it’s a huge time saver.

When you are happy with your work of art, you can share it directly from Canva to Facebook, Twitter, or via email. Additionally, you can download your masterpiece and manually attach it to your next social media update.

Still not sold on how Canva can help you be more efficient on social media?

Canva is used by thousands. In fact, Upworthy relies on Canva to help them create, edit, and share images on their social media accounts.

Upworthy creates quite a bit of content that needs to be posted in near real-time. They don’t have the luxury of going back and forth with a designer and intricate approval processes. Instead, they need to get their content posted ASAP.

By using Canva, it streamlines the design process and allows them be fluid in the creation process and ultimately get their content posted quickly.

Still need more convincing about using Canva?

They have a huge library of various case studies worth reading.

Monitoring Your Social Media Accounts

Now that we’ve covered what post on social media, let’s take a look and see how we can monitor what is happening with your efforts. Social media monitoring is important because it allows you to stay on top of what’s happening with your various social media accounts.

By monitoring your social media accounts you’ll be able to interact with your audience and never miss a conversation. This will help increase your engagement and further build relationships with your followers.

While there are many tools that allow you to monitor social media, we’re going to focus on one of the more common social media monitoring platforms, Hootsuite.

Use Hootsuite to Monitor Social Conversations

Hootsuite is one of the more well-known social monitoring services. With Hootsuite, you can connect to social accounts from over 35 networks including these core channels:

• Facebook
• Google+ Pages
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

When logged in and connected your social accounts, you can create various streams to help manage your conversations. For example, you can have a stream to monitor @mentions, another to watch for specific keywords being used in social updates, or even a stream to monitor your competitor’s conversation.

Aside from social media monitoring, Hootsuite can help you with other aspects of your social media campaigns. Some of the additional features that might interest you are:

• Scheduling social media updates
• Social media analytics
• Workflows
• And more

A major benefit of using Hootsuite is that you can use one website to manage all your social media accounts. No need to login to different social media sites and profiles to manage your social media.

In fact, there have been countless companies that have used Hootsuite to be more efficient on social media.

One such company is Five Guys Burger & Fries. They have used Hootsuite to help be more efficient with hashtag monitoring, analyzing engagement, social scheduling, and more.

Check out what the Online Marketing Specialist of Five Guys Kenneth Westling said:

I love using Hootsuite because it simplifies social media for me. I don’t need to sign in to all my accounts to see how many new shares or photos or comments we have on multiple social networks. 

Whether you are a single person entrepreneur or a nationwide company, Hootsuite is worth looking into for social media efficiency. For some, you might find that Hootsuite gives you everything you need to run your social media efficiently.

Becoming More Efficient on Social Media

Social media can easily cost your hours of inefficiency. Luckily, by staying focused and using the right tools you can save yourself several hours each week.

Are these 3 tools right for your social media needs?

Or do you already have a “go-to” set of tools that help you handle a large chunk of your social media activities more efficiently?

Either way, sound off in the comments below and let me know what is working for you.

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5 Social Media Goals Needed For Your Strategy to Succeed

“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” — Earl Nightingale
I don’t think there’s anyone who’d disagree with that.

If you set off in one direction, having no idea where you’re headed, chances are, you’ll never get there. What’s your destination, the point of your quest, your end goal?

You’ve got to get that figured out – before you get going.

Social media planning is no different. When you’re building out your strategy for the coming month, year, etc., you need to decide what you’re looking to get out of the time you invest.

Essentially, what’s the point of the work you’re about to get started on, what’s the ROI you’re seeking?

Keeping these 5 goals in mind while building out your social media strategy can help you get the most out of your efforts:

1. Improve the influence of your brand

With the literally limitless Internet and constant barrage of content on social media, it’s a wonder the human mind can even process it all.

Every brand, personality, article, product, etc. are all competing for attention at any given moment.
So you’ve got your work cut out for you when it comes to finding a way to help your business stand out from the crowd.

How can you make sure your brand voice is heard?

Stay true to your customer base. Before you even begin any kind of social strategy, you should have a firm grasp on who you are as a business and how to speak to your customers, as well as their wants and needs.

If you’re focusing on using the appropriate tone and sharing content aligned with your brand persona, you’ll be better able to reach the right audience, solidify your brand image and strengthen your relationship with your customer.

Ever asked someone an important question…and never received a reply?

Doesn’t make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, does it?

Make sure your social media strategy includes initiatives to answer questions posted by your audience either to your social channels or within the comments section of your blog.

When you follow up with the individual who left the inquiry in a timely, knowledgeable and professional manner, you not only exhibit your quality customer service skills and attentiveness to that particular person, but also, publicly, to your entire social audience.

This creates a sense of brand loyalty between you and that particular customer and shares a positive example to potential customers who may be watching. Meaning you can earn life-long customers, referrals and new business, simply from a few minutes spent on a thoughtful reply.

With a strong social media presence, you’re going to need great images and pictures to attract and engage your audience.

When you’re sharing original content, reposting external content, following people, asking people to follow you – essentially, with every post, picture and statement – make it your goal to stay true to who you are and focus on getting the word out about your company and products or services you provide.

Your brand is awesome. So make sure people know about it.

2. Generate more traffic from social media

So once you’ve got it on your game plan to make your presence known in the social space, where do you want to direct those interested in learning more about your business?

Your website. Where else?

Wherever you can within your social updates, you’ll want to link back to your website.

This can be via links to articles featured on your blog, customer testimonials, press releases – the options are endless, so long as you have a landing page for it, you can send people there.

At times, business owners tend to view website traffic as the means to an end. More conversion, more sales and ultimately, more business.

They’re right. For the most part. Think about it. Why do brick and mortar stores feature people dancing in hot dog suits out front or offer big flashy coupons in the Sunday paper?

Because they want to drive more traffic into their store and thus, increase the chances that they’ll make a sale, or, more importantly, that they’ll gain a long-term customer.

This same idea is reflected within the online space with your social media updates as your “dancing hot dogs” and your website as your storefront. The difference is, earning website traffic requires less of a customer commitment than driving out to a store.

Benefit? More people come. Problem? It’s also easier to leave.

So you need to make sure that the links you share on social lead to quality content and information, presented in aesthetically pleasing, easy to consume fashion – so visitors want to stay a while.

But keep in mind – website traffic is important on its own as well.

In the same way that you develop brand interest and customer relationships by sharing social updates that speak to your audience, engaging with them and answering their questions, your website helps feature who you are as a business.

Construct your social strategy to focus on driving traffic to your website – for both future business and brand awareness.

If you’re looking to customize your audience, we have a free software that you can grab here.

It is also important to use tracking tools which help you track every movement of every visitor. Then, you can tweak your approach in an effort to increase the number of website visitors coming from various social channels. We recommend ClickPerfect to add tracking to every link you use!

3. Expand your mailing list

One of the major disadvantages of social media is an overcrowded channel where everyone’s competing with the same mass audience for attention.

Sure, you can reach a lot of people at once.

But are they all listening?

Most likely, no.

Ideally, you’d be able to talk to a current or potential customer one-on-one, in a less distracting environment, when sharing a marketing message.

That quiet digital environment is your customer’s inbox.

Your social media strategy should include methods to direct your followers not only to your website for traffic purposes, but also to subscribe to your blog, fill out a form to download content, sign up for digital coupons – by sharing their contact information.

By requesting this information from them, you’ve now got yourself a direct line of communication to potential customers, with which you can share more detailed messages, send out surveys to better understand their needs and advertise your newest offerings.

Remember, social updates are like generic advertising. People take a 2 second look and move on.
But if your social strategy focuses on updates that entice your audience to share their contact information, you can turn that 2 second look into a 2 minute read, and ideally, a sale.

4. Obtain quality leads

Most people aren’t going to seek more information about your company unless they have at least a basic interest in your products or services.

But not everyone that shares their email address with you will be a future customer.

So how do your determine the different wants and needs of individuals on your mailing list and ensure you’re directing the right messages to the right parties?

By attaching different lead nurturing email campaigns to particular pieces of content, based upon the topic, you have a higher chance of putting the right message in front of the right customer.

You can also request additional information from subscribers by asking them to fill out a download form that asks for not only their email address, but also their current challenges, what business they’re in, how old they are – whatever information will be beneficial to your marketing efforts.

Here’s an example. If you are a home décor retailer and offer a downloadable pamphlet showing how to set a table using crystal dishware, the email addresses of those individuals who download the pamphlet will automatically be entered into a lead nurturing campaign featuring a series of three follow up emails about different ways to decorate a home using crystal ware.

The form the individual completes may also include questions regarding age, location and occupation, which offer your company important data that can be used to help better focus future marketing efforts.

Use your social media strategy to earn contact information and customer details. Create a mailing list.
Direct the right content to the right customer. And get them to share more about themselves.

Now you’ve got a lead. Which will hopefully allow you to…

5. Increase your overall sales

At the end of the day, your company’s goal is to make money.

All the social shares in the world, the highest brand awareness possible with the greatest website traffic, longest email list and a sweet collection of leads are all efforts to earn a sale. And ideally, a life-long customer.

All of these efforts must work in unison for your business to reach this goal. It comes down to adjusting this, adding more of that, taking out a little of this, until you find the right formula that works for your business.

Your social strategy must include a system for tracking your conversion rate from interest and click-through rate on social media…all the way down the line to overall sales.

Social tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite and Sprout Social, among others, can help you determine the value generated by each of your social channels and allow you to test various tweaks to your campaigns and overall strategy, so that you’re focusing on the right things that deliver the greatest return.

In the world of social media, things are constantly changing

No one knows it all when it comes to building out a perfect social media strategy.

In fact, a perfect social strategy doesn’t exist. And never will.

Why? Because no one can predict the future. Or changes in technology. Or customer buying behavior.

But you can ensure that your business stays on track with the right goals in mind and regular adjustments to your overall strategy, based on the information you’ve gathered along the way.

Using these 5 tips with the right tools like Share and Redirect and ClickPerfect can help your social media strategy stay on track and get the most out of your efforts.

Does your social strategy already have these goals? If so, which ones do you feel are the most important to you?

Don’t have your social media goals defined yet? Which ones listed above will you decide to use?
Let us know in the comments below!



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Dominate Social Media With 3 Killer Metrics

DO YOU remember when metrics were all about hard data? You looked at spreadsheets that contained inbound searches, conversions, and other numbers, then used those numbers to determine how well your campaign was performing. That wasn’t a lot of fun, but at the time, it was effective.

Luckily, social media has managed to move metrics beyond hard data. You already know that you need to pay attention to “Likes,” referral traffic, and other common social media metrics. What you may not realize is that there are other important metrics that brands often forget about.

These metrics go beyond “Likes” – they let you see what is really going on with your customer base and stay on top of your social media presence. Now you have the opportunity to gauge how people feel about you – allowing you to see the people behind the numbers.

Suddenly, you see “Joe” and “Sue” instead of “Customer X” and “Customer Y.”

Brand Sentiment

Brand sentiment is one of the best ways to find out what Joe, Sue, and the gang have to say.

First, though, let’s take a closer look at this metric.

Brand sentiment refers to the emotion that people display when they mention your brand. Most people are emotional on social media, so with brand sentiment, you can measure happiness, annoyance, excitement, anger and more to get a better idea of how people view your company.

In fact, studies have shown that messages online could influence emotions offline, allowing you to really tap into a positive emotional state and link that – in a productive way – to your brand.

This emotional aspect goes beyond simply looking at mentions, and gives you insight into how people truly feel when they interact with you, or are exposed to your content on social media.

Measuring Brand Sentiment & Using the Results

As much as you may want to make your least favorite employee measure every social media mention, there is a better way to assess brand sentiment.

Social Mention is one of the best tools out there. Type the name of your brand into the site’s search bar and you will get sentiment statistics across various networks. You will see the number of positive, neutral, and negative mentions and get a sentiment ratio.

Hootsuite Insights is another great option. You can get a report for overall sentiment and then break it down by location, gender, and language. That way, you can determine whether your sentiment is solid across the board or if you have weak spots that you need to address.

You’ll need to gauge your brand sentiment on a daily basis, checking for any positive or negative changes. If you notice a drop in sentiment, you should determine what caused the decline.

A drop may have to do with something in your industry, or it may be brand specific. Either way, you need to address the problem so your brand sentiment doesn’t continue to slide.

This is obviously going to take some trial and error, but if you catch the issue quickly by monitoring your results, you’ll be in much better shape.

Plus, once you get the hang of it and start taking the right action to get things back on track – your public perception will be back on the upswing. Let’s face it – Brand Sentiment is really like a popularity contest, and you always want to come in first!

Customer Response Rates

Brand sentiment is just one piece of the puzzle. Put another piece in by measuring your customer response rates.

According to a social media industry report by Sprout Social, 43 percent of the messages people send to brands on social networks require a response. That is a huge increase from the 15 percent that required a response in Quarter 3 of 2013.

Unfortunately, a lot of brands haven’t made the adjustment to this change. They either don’t check their social media inboxes on a regular basis, or check them but treat the platform the same way they treat email. They will get to it when they get to it. It might be a day, or it might be a week.

If you find yourself getting lazy about responses, it could cost you some customers. While you might want to wait until tomorrow, it’s a good idea to take action today.

If you fail to message people back in the timeframe they want, you can expect to experience a fall out. Sixty percent of people say they dish out some type of negative consequence when they don’t receive a timely response, including telling their friends and family, escalating the concern, or buying less from the company in the future.

So, without adequate follow up, you could be setting yourself up for a negative – and public – response from over HALF of the customers who reach out to you!

Let’s look at how to avoid that, shall we?

Measuring Response Rates & Using the Results

Use an analytics tool like Sprout Social to track response rates and streamline replies. Once you have your rates in hand, work on improving them to really optimize your customer relations.

Need some hard quantifiers to get started? Aim to keep your response rate within an hour or two to really maintain customer happiness.

According to Search Engine Watch, 65 percent of Twitter users expect a response within two hours when they send a message to a brand. The percentage goes up when people send complaints to brands. In fact, 72 percent of people expect the brand to message them back within an hour when they submit a complaint.

You can always get faster, whether you need to hire a team dedicated to responding to messages or provide around-the-clock service.

Share of Voice

So far, you have looked at metrics that focus on your brand. Now, it’s time to switch gears and look at a metric that focuses on your competitors.

You need to see how you stack up against the competition, which is why the share of voice metric is critical.

Share of voice (SOV) refers to the number of mentions your brand receives when compared to the number of mentions that your competition receives. For example, if brands within your industry receive 100 mentions, and you end up with 50 of those mentions, your SOV is 50 percent. That is fantastic and really shows the influence of your brand within your target group AND niche.

On the other hand, if you only have 5 mentions, your share is at 5 percent. That means you need to roll up your sleeves and get to work to improve it.

Share of voice is about more than just dominating the conversation. It can also help you increase your market share. According to the Nielsen Company, if your share of voice is larger than your share of market, your market share will grow. The research company states that if your SOV is 10 points higher than your share of the market, your market share will grow half a percent. The percentage continues to go up as your SOV increases.

Measuring Share of Voice & Using the Results

Analytics programs make measuring your share of voice a snap. You can compare keywords to see which brand is dominating the market. You just need to run a report comparing the keywords to determine how you fare against the competition.

For some quick tips on breaking down your own personal results, be sure you have a Social Mention search ready to go, and then take a look at this quick article on creating a Share of Voice Report by Convince & Convert.

This quick analysis will really help you know where you stand. This is a great – and useful – way of levelling the playing field, simply by being in-the-know.

From there, you can up your game, and increase your SOV accordingly. Simply spend some time looking at what your top competition is doing, and take some notes about where you can improve:

• Does your competition have consistently active viewers due to really engaging posts?
• Is their content upbeat and positive, increasing their brand sentiment?
• Do they reply quickly to customer mentions, which results in a great customer response rate?

See how quickly each of these killer metrics become interwoven, and how they are all so important?

Coming Full Circle

When it comes to analytics, a lot of the most important metrics get ignored. But, being aware of the impact certain stats can have – and how they influence each other – may really help you hone in on the best marketing plan for your social media efforts.

Brand sentiment, response rate and share of voice can each provide a snapshot of how your strategy resonates with your viewers. All together, they become a powerful assessment of your overall performance and reputation on social media.

Get started now: add these analytics to your marketing strategy so you can improve your customer experience and your bottom line.

While you’re at it, take a quick look at these ways to boost your social media efficiency and really up your social media game!

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10 FREE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TOOLS

10 FREE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TOOLS

Buzzsumo
Used by many brands, Buzzsumo hits the nail while generating the right content on social media! It's simple, straightforward and gives you, in a matter of seconds, the current search rate of your "look-alike" content 

Canva
Canva is a market place for designer tools. All you need is a bit of creativity and a clear vision of your design and Canva gives you much more than what you asked for. 

Hashtagify
Hashtagify helps you know how your hashtags rank in the social channels. type your desired hashtag in the search bar and you'll get the top 10 hashtags related to it, direct and to the point.

Buffer
Buffer is Easy and extremely efficient to schedule your social media posts. It's just a click away process and the best part is the weekly reports of how your tweets have performed!

Hootsuite
Hootsuite is similar to Buffer in scheduling your social media posts. if you are new into social media marketing I would personally recommend starting with Hootsuite as it's comparatively easier to understand.

How Sociable
How Sociable is to literally find out how sociable your brand is! A free account in How Sociable gives you access to monitor 12 social media accounts simultaneously which honestly, is quite a successful start for any business. 

Social Mentions
Social Mentions is perhaps the easiest way to monitor your brand's mentions in the wide web. All you have to do is mention your brand name or any target keyword and give it a second before you have your results bubbling on the screen.

Tweet Deck
Tweet Deck allows you to maintain, monitor, schedule and analyze your tweets. With lots of options available, it is perhaps the best social media monitoring tool for Twitter.

Google Analytics
If you are looking to analyze your social presence, Google Analytics is what you should be looking for! It's deep, insightful and although it requires time and effort to study its various features, it's a life savior, precisely giving you what you want, at all times!

FollowerMonk
Designed by Moz, FollowerMonk gives you all the necessary details of your twitter page like who your followers are, their geographic location and even influencers who can help you

SproutSocial

SproutSocial is a holistic tool as it helps you schedule, monitor and analyze your presence in the social world. It's prominent as it also includes social CRM tools and team collaboration tools, that sets it apart form the rest of its competitors!

Tips on How to Win at Social Media Marketing

With the growing number of businesses using social media for their marketing campaigns, how can yours stand out? Read on and discover the arsenals that can help you win at social media marketing.

Whether your business is only starting or one that’s been up and running for decades, social media marketing – when done right – can help you significantly expand your market and customer base.

Marketing your brand or business in various social media networks and platforms can positively contribute to your acquisition of customers, and eventually, sales.

The Basics
Every success starts with a goal and the foundations that ground them. The same thing is true for social media marketing; you need to understand the social media marketing fundamentals. To get you started on the right foot, here are ten social media marketing laws developed by Susan Gunelius, an author and the CEO of a marketing communications company.

• Listening. Before you think of creative campaigns, get to know and listen to your audience first. Figure out their needs, interests, and the things important to them. A campaign no matter how great will be useless if it won’t add value to your audience.

• Focus. Focus on what your brand is about and how it can add value to the lives of your target audience. Ground your campaigns with your goals. Don’t attempt to be all things for all people. Refrain from being a jack-of-all-trades. Keep your focus.

• Quality. A huge number of followers is nothing if these followers don’t engage with you. Pursue quality relationships with your audience. Engagement is more important than mere numbers of followers. Pursue and work on long-lasting connections.

• Patience. Take your time and don’t be too hard on yourself because, as cliché as it may sound, success doesn’t really happen overnight. And as you practice patience, never let your commitment to your business’s success die down and quiver.

• Compounding. This law goes with the law of quality. If you commit yourself to sharing quality and valuable content, it will also yield quality and valuable followers in return – aka those who will share, talk about, etc. your content to others as well.

• Influence. Finding appropriate influencers to partner with in your social media marketing campaigns can greatly improve your brand’s marketing, leads, traffic, and sales. With the help of influencers, it’ll be easier to reach new and larger audiences.

• Value. In sharing your content, products, and services online, try your best not to be too sales-y. If you bombard people with promotions instead of value, you will lose them. Focus more on providing them valuable content. Build lasting connections.

• Acknowledgement. Never neglect and be a snob to people who try to reach out through a comment, message, etc. Never forget to acknowledge these people and reply. If you always make them feel noticed, you’ll be able to keep them for good.

• Accessibility. Always be present and available to your audience. Making a disappearing act is a big no-no. You must be consistent not only in sharing and publishing valuable content, you must also keep the connection through engagement.

• Reciprocity. To be successful in social media marketing, you shouldn’t only talk about yourself and your business. You also need to allot some time to share and talk about the content of others too. In the long run, they’re most likely to the same.

In any social media marketing campaign you will do for your business, always go back to the fundamentals and basics. This way, you’re sure to start and finish strong.

Go-to Tools
Because social media marketing is no easy task and one that never sleeps, you will surely need some help. To run your social media marketing campaigns smoothly 24/7, you can utilize various social media marketing tools to make your social media marketing tasks a bit easier and more manageable. With that, here are some of the must-have tools you must try:

• Canva. With this nifty visual content tool, anyone – even those without any background in graphic design – can create capturing graphics. This tool’s drag-and-drop function, templates, and other design elements makes graphic design easy.

• Hootsuite. If you find it hard to manage your social media accounts, you’ll find Hootsuite extremely helpful. With this tool, you can manage and schedule all your social media posts on all your accounts all in one place. This tool has analytics as well.

• CoSchedule. This tool is more than just a tool; it’s a toolset you can use to centralize your entire marketing strategy. CoSchedule offers a plethora of tools for all types of marketing – content, blog management, social media, and a lot more.

• Buzzsumo. One way to practice the law of listening as explained above is through utilizing Buzzsumo. With this tool, you can do content discovery, brand monitoring, influencer marketing, content research and curation, competitor research, etc.

Conclusion
Social media marketing is an inevitable trend that keep’s on growing. If you don’t join in on the trend, you’ll miss out on the great potential it can bring your business. However, joining in on the trend isn’t enough. You have to win it and stand out amongst your competitors. So, give the above tips and tools a try and make your first step in winning at social media marketing.


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7 Ways to Use Marketing Automation to Grow Your Business [GUIDE]

We know that small business owners have no shortage of tasks on their daily to-do lists, and we’re here to help you shorten it even more.

Implementing automated features make attracting and maintaining customers a snap. In this guide, we’ll cover the specific automated steps you can implement for email and social media marketing. Before we start, let’s talk about the top four benefits of automation so you understand why it’s so valuable:

1. Save time
One of the biggest benefits of automation is that it allows you to save lots of time. By setting a few marketing emails on auto-delivery, you won’t have to create and send individual emails every time you need to communicate with your list. If you use an automated platform for social media updates, you can schedule a series of posts at one time.

2. Reach customers in a timely manner
By using automated features, you’ll reach your customers quickly. For example, you can automate a welcome email that is sent 24 hours after a new contact is added to your list. This guarantees that new contacts get valuable information about your business in a timely fashion, even while you sleep.

3. Ability to work ahead
As a small business owner, it’s vital to ‘work ahead’ as much as possible. With automation, you can set up emails and social media posts in advance.

4. Turn prospective customers into paying customers
Automating some of your marketing tasks can help you convert interested customers into paying customers. In fact, a report published by Regalix showed that nearly 86 percent of businesses believe marketing automation is one of the most efficient ways to nurture and manage new leads.

Are you convinced yet? Excellent! Now let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of it all. Here are seven ways you can properly utilize marketing automation:

1. Capture emails through sign up forms
Before setting up automation, we suggest setting up an email sign up form on your business’s website. These simple forms help you collect names and email addresses from interested customers or clients.

The steady stream of new contacts that comes in through this form will give you an authentic list of email addresses to draw from to send emails to. Your efforts to build your email list should be ongoing, and a sign up form is a hassle-free way to keep names coming in with little effort on your part.

VerticalResponse has an email sign up form that you can use. It’s simple to set up and activate, and all of your new contacts go right into your VR account. From there you can automate emails to send out to your new and existing contacts.

If you prefer, you could also use a third-party service to create sign up forms that work as pop ups, sidebars, or sliders on your site.

Consider trying OptinMonster. If you’re using WordPress, ThriveThemes has a plugin you can use to collect customer information. Both of these sites make it easy for small business owners to establish “information collection points” on their websites. There is a cost to use these services, but you don’t need any website or coding experience to get started. 

2. Automate welcome emails
With a sign up form in place, one of the first marketing items you’ll want to automate is your welcome email. Since every new contact receives a welcome email, it makes sense to automate it.

If you decide to use the VerticalResponse sign up form to collect email address, the new contacts are automatically added to your list. You can go into your account, create a welcome email and set it up to deliver the warm greeting within 48 hours. You want to make sure that new contacts receive a welcome email shortly after they sign up for your email list, while their interest is still peaked.

The welcome email should outline the perks of receiving messages from your company and include links that direct customers back to your website.

If you need help creating a welcome email, we have several resources to check out:

10 Examples of Highly Effective Emails
7 Tips to a Stellar Welcome Email
7 Reasons Your Business Needs a Welcome Email 

3. Send a series of event reminders
Let’s say you have an event coming up or a big promotion. You can use automation to set up a series of emails that reminds your audience about it.

For example, when an insurance broker is hosting a day of free consultations, the owner should set up three emails to automatically send to customers. The first email describes the event in full; the second email is a reminder to sign up for a specific time slot before the consultation day is booked. A day before the event, a third email encourages people to take advantage of the few openings left and adds an incentive of free coffee and donuts.

All three of these emails can be created ahead of time and sent over the course of two weeks. All of the emails should include links back to your website where customers can find out more information.
You can apply this same concept to an upcoming sale, a charity event, a customer appreciation event or an appearance at a local trade show. The idea is to set up a series of emails that reminds your audience about a particular event.

4. Treat your loyal customers
Segment your list by pulling out the names of your most loyal customers and develop an automated email campaign that focuses on rewarding them. Consider writing an email that ‘Gives Thanks’ to your repeat customers for their loyalty and offers something in return. Maybe it’s a 10% off coupon, a voucher for a free service, the chance to be the first to try a new product, discounted shipping or some other kind of gift. You can set this email up to go out every other month for six months to encourage your loyal customers to keep buying.

For inspiration, take a look at this email from Ghurka, a leather accessory store, which honors loyal customers.

5. Encourage active customers to buy again
You can also automate a series of emails to entice recent buyers to buy again. If a customer has made a purchase or signed up for a service within the last 2-3 weeks, put them in their own group and prepare to create an automated email series specifically for them.

For example, in the first email you can thank them for the purchase and showcase additional merchandise you have in stock. Here’s an example from Crate&Barrel:



The second email could offer a discount on a similar product or announce the arrival of a new accessory. The second email could also be a gift guide that highlights several of your hottest items.

6. Bring old customers back
Similar to encouraging recent customers to buy again, you should also think about ways to re-engage inactive customers too.

Take a look at your email list and pull out the names of customers who haven’t purchased anything from your business in the past 6-8 months. Create a series of emails that are designed to get them back on your bandwagon.

The first email can simply say, “We miss you” and include a special offer. The second email, which you should send a week later, could contain a survey asking why the customer has strayed. The survey results can also offer valuable insight that you can use to maintain customers in the future.

7. Automate your social posts
With your email automation underway, you can now switch gears to social media automation. If your business uses more than one social site, you can use a social media management tool to automate the process.

Management tools let you schedule posts ahead of time, which drastically reduces the number of times you have to log in, create messages, and post them. With automated tools, you can set aside an hour per week and schedule posts for the entire forthcoming week.

For time-strapped business owners, automation prevents social neglect. After all, you don’t want your customers to get used to a minimally updated Facebook page or sparsely posted tweets.

So, which social media automation tools are the best? There are several options. It’s important to note that all of these apps offer a free plan, so definitely take them for a test drive and see which one fits your business before committing long-term.

HootSuite. This app syncs with several social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. You can access all of your social accounts from one dashboard.
TweetDeck. If you’re an avid Twitter user, TweetDeck can help you schedule posts and monitor feeds.
IFTTT (If This Then That). For the more advanced social media user, IFTTT is a great option simply because there are more automation features to choose from with this one. As an example, you can easily link it to your business blog, and when a new post is added, a tweet will automatically go out to advertise the new content. You can also turn to content curating platforms. These tools give you a list of content that is relevant to your readers and enables you to share it with little fuss. This way you don’t have to scour your feeds looking for valuable content to share; the search is already done for you.

Swayy and Pocket are good content curation apps to start with. All you need to do is enter a list of general topics that you’d like to see in your feed and you’ll immediately get dozens of content options in your search findings. As you share this content, each platform hones in on your preferences and gives you more specific content that’s tailored to your needs over time. A word of caution
Automated marketing is a fantastic tool for small business owners, but you’ll want to use it in moderation. Not everything can, or should be scheduled in advance. For example, when breaking news happens that’s relevant to your industry, you’ll want to create day-of social media posts and emails. When a new employee comes on board, or you’ve decided to run a last-minute sale, you won’t be able to rely on automation either. Just remember, like any other resource, automation is another tool you can keep on your pegboard and use it as needed.

Share with us on social which parts of marketing you currently automate and how it works for you.


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