Social Media Tools for Small Business
Owning a small business can be the most exciting thing that any person can possibly do. The challenges of reaching out to customers, successfully identifying and entering markets, and keeping a competitive edge over the competition can easily take over every waking moment. In order to help you keep this edge, we decided to give you some of the best social media tools we have found.
However, the stress can easily become too much over the long haul. That is due to the never-ending need to engage with clients while also handling the administrative tasks for your business. Who has the time to handle everything?
Thankfully, we live in a time where technology has advanced enough to provide us the tools to automate most communication tasks, while simultaneously allowing your company to reach new clients without adding any additional cost.
Here are seven social media tools that are taking the small business world by storm in 2017.
MySoPro (My Social Pro)
You already know that social media is a very effective way for you and your business to generate new leads.
Using the right tools makes reaching your social media goals possible and we’ve provided you with one of the best for free! It also happens to be free for unlimited social accounts. This may change in the future, but this is one of the reasons we have ranked it the best!
I’m sure it will become an invaluable part of your business. It finds relevant and engaging content including videos & news, all of which can be posted with the click of a button. It also creates incredible image posts without any photo editing experience.
You will save loads of time by having all your social media in one place with the ability to schedule posts across multiple platforms. You can also measure your social media performance, which helps you get more traffic and generate new leads.
It’s amazing and it’s free so signup here and give it a try. Sign up free at social.mysopro.com
Disclaimer: We own MySoPro, so we may be a bit partial. (When you click on it, it will take you to social.mysopro.com).
AdEspresso
Not going to lie. We cannot live without this tool. 90% of all of the Facebook/Instagram ad campaigns we run are built with this amazing piece of software. They were recently acquired by Hootsuite and this will only allow them to grow and get much better.
SproutSocial
SproutSocial is designed to make managing your social media presence easier by congregating all of your messages into one seamless interface. The goal of this service is to reduce the amount of time you have to use collecting feedback from users, thus allowing you to maximize the time spent helping improve your company’s products and reputation.
SproutSocial breaks down messages on a demographical basis, enabling you to see with a single glance which particular group is responding more. For instance, when deciding on a new gender-specific product, it is a good idea to know who is more enthused by your company.
Information is power, and by understanding who is saying what, you can get ahead of any trends and profit accordingly. What separates this from Hootsuite is that it is designed for companies with just a few employees. One person can manage everything with this service.
Argyle Social
Argyle Social is one of the larger, and more successful, companies in the social media tool industry. It is designed to automate publication of material put together by you or your marketing team.
The company prides itself on being at the forefront of data collection, identifying new and powerful ways to give its clients the information needed to reach out to consumers without having to worry about wasting time and precious company resources.
It is one of the more expensive social media tools on this list, starting at around $300 per month, but the experience and dedication found in this company is guaranteed to make the investment worth it at the end of the fiscal year.
Post Planner
Post Planner is a Facebook management tool that helps automate the sharing of content to your Facebook page. Like others, Post Planner will handle everything in the queue and automatically post out based on pre-configured times.
In addition to having all the normal page management features, such as scheduling, insights, it also comes with a secret weapon. What separates Post Planner from other management and posting tools is their content discovery engine. This feature finds you the most popular, most shared content in your industry and then you can add that content to your queue to post later on.
By finding the best content to share, you will increase your engagement level, shares and social mentions with your audience and save time doing it.
Buffer
Buffer is really cool, but a bit on the pricey side if you have several accounts. Our favorite feature is the app and browser extension, allowing you to click on something(article, image, video), and have it add it to your queue to automatically be posted.
It works with all major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. You can selectively choose which ones you want to have your content posted to if you don’t want it to go to all of them.
Onlypult
Onlypult is the only site we know of that will schedule and actually post to Instagram. We have been using it for close to 2 years and have determined we cannot live without it.
Not only can you schedule and post, but you can add hashtags, perform hashtag research, use emojis, make the first comment for more hashtags and manage multiple accounts
Pricing starts at $12/month to manage 3 Instagram accounts.
NOTE: We have been told that while Instagram states this as a violation of TOS, Onlypult seemingly has a legitimate way to continue their service and they have not had a problem with Instagram about this service to our knowledge.
Recap
Social Media does not need to be a chore for the small business owner. By taking advantage of the social media tools available, it is possible to leverage the Internet and create a new stream of customers for your company.
Take the time to look over and look over our reputation, and imagine the possibilities. Reach out to these teams, and learn what can be done to improve your company’s image on the web, and see what new profits and opportunities can be had for those willing to take the plunge.
You do not even need to be fully digitized to benefit, numerous companies utilize social media instead of traditional websites due to costs and convenience issues. Seize the day!
What are your favorite social media tools to use? Feel free to share them in the comments section below.