Management of social media accounts through applications like Buffer
Discuss about the advantages opted by making use of the social media techniques for the businesses.
With the increasing use of technology and globalization, the business organisations are making a significant shift from the traditional methods to the use of the social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and more for marketing. This is done in order to connect, communicate and collaborate with the consumers in a more effective manner (Wamba & Carter, 2014). The use of social media tools for the business can be characterized with the benefits as follows. The ability to reach out to millions of consumers, increase in the visibility of the business brand, development of the personal and professional networks, allowance of the real-time two way conversations with the customers, and sharing of the related links of the relevant information to provide value addition to consumers (Ryan, 2014). Some of the popular social media tools used by the businesses are Buffer, MavSocial, TweetDeck, Post Planner, Rival IQ, Grytics, and IFTTT. Few of the features of the mentioned social media tools and the ways in which these tools may be used effectively have been described in the following segment.
One of the most popular social media tools is Buffer, which offers an instant solution to businesses already having multiple social media accounts across various channels. The application like these can be used for marketing as it allows the lining up of posts for the various social media accounts. It also aids in group collaborations and analysis of data of the social media performance across various platforms (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Thus the social media tools like Buffer may be used by the businesses in systematic organization of the social media accounts and managing the overall marketing activities.
Videos are a highly influential medium of marketing. The social media tools like MavSocial are focused towards creation and management of the graphics and the videos for the social media platforms like the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. The applications like these can be used by the business for scheduling or preview the content. The other features may be used for the collaboration purposes, the creation of campaigns and for storing the images and videos (Huotari, Ulkuniemi, Saraniemi & Mäläskä, 2015).
This social media tool is an aid to social media channel Twitter. The tool enables the businesses to schedule, monitor and manage the tweets to be posted on Twitter (Grégoire, Salle, & Tripp, 2015). In addition to this, the application helps in analysis of the data of the consumer’s preferences and accordingly, the business organizations can design and post tweets that are in line with the taste of the customers. This way it is easy to keep the consumers hooked up to the entity.
Creating and managing the video and graphical content through applications like MavSocial
One of the trickiest part of the marketing management on social media is posting of the right content at the right time. The application like Post Planner makes use of the algorithms to analyse the trending topics among the consumers and thus provides a recommendation of the topics (PostPlanner, 2018). The application has a feature of the intuitive post scheduling which allows the most effective content to be posted without much hassle on the part of the managers.
Rival IQ is one of the oldest and the most popular data analytics tool that aids the businesses in obtaining information with respect to the social media activity of the businesses (Guido, 2016). Tools like these can be used effectively by the businesses to obtain data on the audience growth, competitors statistics, most popular topics among the already customers, changes in between the periods of time in terms of the level of viewers and more. The social media tools are a critical means of evaluating the overall performances of the business and comparing the same with the others in the industry.
The social media tool Grytics is an effective means of marketing management, with its prime focus on managing the Facebook groups (Ács, & Pagh, 2017). The tool gathers information about the posts and the members of such specific groups as determined initially. The information is then displayed in the form of statistics in order to aid the businesses to manage these groups. Thus social media applications are helpful in managing the associated groups on Facebook and thus allow the organizations to reap the most out of grouping activities.
The application like IFTTT is an aid to the businesses as these are linked with the platforms like Google, photography, iOS and more (Aspinall & Hawkins, 2016). The tool helps in automating the processes like saving of the attachments to the Google Drive, maintain of the backup of texts to be viewed later on and sending of notifications of the emails. The tools like this allow the managers to focus on the core activities of advertising and marketing and thus makes the business processes faster and efficient.
In order to select an appropriate social media tool, it is important that the marketing manager of an enterprise considers the following points, in order to gain the maximum out of the selected strategy.
- Awareness about the goals of designing a marketing strategy is a must (Laursen & Thorlund, 2017). As to whether the aim is to increase the awareness about the brand or to attract more traffic onto your Facebook group or website. Since each of the social media tools is specialised in one or the other thing, clarity of the goal of in terms of the aim of marketing is critical.
- Identification of the core issues as to why a new social media tool is necessary is must, as to whether the need arose because of the inefficiency on a certain level of the existing tools or as a part of the expansion strategy. This evaluation will help the management to decide the perfect mix of applications and customization of the same.
- Evaluation of the must-have features is important. All social media tools are different. A feature in one may not be present in another one and thus, the must-have features as decided by the top management must be listed initially itself before finalising a tool for the business.
- Consideration of time, money and expertise needed by the tool is critical for the businesses. A social media tool must be opted after due contemplation of the budget, in-house expert capacities and the nature and size of the operations (Jefferson & Tanton, 2015). A comparison must also be drawn with the marketing strategy of the competitors in the same industry so as to gain the competitive advantage too. Free trials must be opted for before the actual use.
- Examination of the limitations in the considered option must be done. The options that are customizable as per the individual needs must be preferred, so as to align the overall values and vision of the entity with that of the marketing practice
Conclusion
As per the discussion held in the previous parts, it can be concluded that the use of social media tools in the business operations has become a prime need for the business organizations of the 21st century. These tools provide a great opportunity to the businesses, to revamp their marketing activities and align with the consumer preferences and the technological innovations. The various tools provide various benefits so as to connect with the customers more effectively. The chief benefits to the business entities by use of the social media tools are better management and analysis of consumer data, time reduction, and cost saving while reaching out to a large number of customers at once and many more. An entity may obtain one or more of the social media tools, depending upon the marketing strategy adopted, nature and size of the operations and budget of the entity, and the overall goals of the business. Thus, in order to have an edge in marketing and maintain a base of loyal consumers, it is necessary that businesses invest in these tools.
References
Ács, A., & Pagh, S. Q. (2017). “Lovestorm” How a Local Community Reclaims Positive Public Perception by Using Social Media. In ECSM 2017 4th European Conference on Social Media (p. 1). Academic Conferences and publishing limited.
Aspinall, E., & Hawkins, R. (2016). Digital Storytelling: Expanding the Life Cycle of a Story. Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=libtech_conf
Grégoire, Y., Salle, A., & Tripp, T. M. (2015). Managing social media crises with your customers: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Business Horizons, 58(2), 173-182.
Guido, M. (2016). The Top 25 Social Media Analysis Tools. Michigan Bar Journal, 95, 52.
Huotari, L., Ulkuniemi, P., Saraniemi, S., & Mäläskä, M. (2015). Analysis of content creation in social media by B2B companies. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 30(6), 761-770.
Jefferson, S., & Tanton, S. (2015). Valuable content marketing: how to make quality content your key to success. 2nd ed. UK: Kogan Page Publishers.
Laursen, G. H., & Thorlund, J. (2017). Business analytics for managers: Taking business intelligence beyond reporting. 2nd ed. UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Popky, L. J. (2015). Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters. Oxon: Routledge.
PostPlanner. (2018). How PostPlanner Helps You. Retrieved from: https://www.postplanner.com/features
Ryan, D. (2014). Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. 3rd ed. UK: Kogan Page Publishers.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. UK: Sage Publications Ltd.
Wamba, S. F., & Carter, L. (2014). Social media tools adoption and use by SMEs: An empirical study. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing. doi: https://doi.org/10.4018/joeuc.2014040101
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