ROCKS DIGITAL  BLOG

Stevan McGrath

Social Media for Business: 6 Social Media Marketing Tools You Need

Social Media Marketing
Lenka Horavova/shutterstock.com

Social media marketing is more important for businesses than ever before. Using social media has accelerated business, sustained companies, and upgraded the customer experience. Today, marketing has taken a giant stride with the help of social media platforms. It is now possible for marketers to reach out to a larger pool of customers, thereby creating a long-lasting experience for the consumer and leaving them with a good impression. To optimize the efficacy of social media marketing, social media tools must be used correctly.

The Rise of Social Media Marketing

Social media has been a fast-growing trend used by marketers and individuals for years now. Social media is a platform for interconnectivity between people made possible through technology; it’s where social networking occurs, and the various sites aid the transfer of information between individuals ­­— buyers and sellers included. Statistics show that people spend a lot of time on the internet using different social platforms and social media users increase every second.

Statistics on social media marketing also reveal that the number of active users in 2015 amounted to about 2.206 billion globally. In 2016, a report on internet users revealed that approximately 88.5% of America’s population alone uses social platforms.

Research shows that to understand social media marketing, the factors that influence customer behavior related to social media must be studied.

Everyone’s Going Social – Use Social Media Marketing to Reach Them

That fact that social media is undoubtedly a part of almost everybody’s everyday life makes it the perfect tool to reach any market segment you may be after. Social media marketing makes use of social media sites to raise visibility, and promotes products and services. You can make use of blogs, online videos, photo sharing, posts on social networking sites, and podcasts to reach out to a large, but usually specific, audience.

Social media marketing has contributed significantly to business growth through the use of different social media platforms. Marketers have been provided the opportunity to receive feedback on their brand, and to also give a rapid response to the needs and complaints of their customers. It has also provided business owners an avenue to monitor their business growth, sustain their brand identity, and attract prospective clients.

Through the use of social media, companies keep customers informed on necessary information, they upload and update postings, videos, news, and events, and they announce discounts and promotions on their accounts and pages on various social sites.

In addition to this, there are specific areas where social media marketing offers a great advantage to businesses. For example, the use of social media has come to be recognized as a strategy for both established and growing businesses to help increase customer loyalty to a brand. It is easier for sellers to use the feedback they receive to improve the customer experience, and advance their brand or product. It is also easy to keep an eye on the competition and work to meet the market gaps left by the other companies in the same field.

Types of Social Media

  • Social networking
  • Wikis
  • Photo-sharing
  • Blogs
  • Business networking
  • Collaborative tools
  • Video sharing
  • Social bookmarking or tagging

Benefits of Social Media Marketing For Business

Some of the benefits of using social media for business include, but are not limited to:

  • The ability to reach a larger audience without having to pay advertisement fees
  • It provides marketers with useful information needed to target a specific audience
  • It serves as a channel of connectivity between buyers and sellers
  • It gives a boost to traditional marketing, thus allowing the brand to reach a larger audience
  • It increases the page rank of a brand, thereby off-shooting it to the search engine

6 Helpful Tools for Social Media Marketing

For growing and sustaining businesses, social media is indispensable in the hands of business owners and marketers.

Social media tools are the various tools or software that help in the maximization and effective use of various social media. Some of these tools are free; some offer free trials of varying lengths, then require paid subscriptions. Some of the most effective social media tools that optimize work flow with ease are:

  • Buffer: It’s a well-known media tool among social-media marketers, and it serves as an access point to all of one’s functioning social platforms. It saves a lot of time, because this tool allows for your post to be published on your other social platforms, thereby driving traffic. It works with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and so on.
  • Canva: Canva is a visual tool that beautifies posts. Society has come to terms with the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Canva as a social-media tool provides users with an array of choices to design graphics with different colors and fonts. It gives marketers the ability to work with diverse photographs and Images to draw client attention. Hence as a marketing tool, Canva provides users the opportunity to create, edit, and modify pictures to suit their purpose — and their audience tastes — for effective marketing to take place.
  • Babbly: It’s another remarkable social media tool one cannot do without. It’s a give-and-take social media tool. In other words, when you share a post, it gets shared automatically.It has been a useful way of boosting content and making it go viral. With Babbly, you can control your post to determine what goes public and when. With this, one can reach a set target and maximize time.
  • CYFE: It is a monitoring and sharing tool. Businesses today spend up to 80% of their time dealing with data — that’s monitoring, collecting, analyzing and reporting data. This has been made easy through the use of Cyfe, as it provides the opportunity to manage a large pool of information easily within a reasonable time-frame to perform the necessary actions.
  • Secure My Social: It’s a social media security tool that scans subscribers’ use of the social media, warning them about activities that might expose them to harm. It addresses risk through the warning.
  • Google Trends: Google Trends is an analytical tool that tracks engagement. It helps you discover the conversation or topic driving traffic. With it, every time your keyword is mentioned on any forum sites or blogs, it alerts you. Best of all, it’s free!

Social Media Marketing Trend – from Text to Visual

Trend movement in social media invariably influences the shift in social media marketing. People are becoming smarter with every update of social media software. They strive to optimize the new use of social media platforms by using available social media tools. To stay relevant in business, it’s important to keep up with new digital trends.

According to a 2016 trend report, some of the latest trends have seen a sharp shift from text to visual. Visual interaction has taken center stage, with virtual reality and simulated reality creating experiences for audiences and consumers.

Another growing trend is towards reality, the trend of presenting an event just the way it is via live streaming. Presenting an event in a transparent form catches the attention of the audience more.

Social Media Marketing Can be Transformative

Social media marketing today not only complements traditional advertising, it has also transformed marketing to be customer-centered, with the help of various tools such as Buffer, Canva, Babbly, Cyfe, Secure My Social, and Google Trends.

Change in social media moves fast, and that’s why social media marketing has to stay current and up-to-date.

Do you have a favorite tool among the 6 above? How about another tool you rely on? Jump on in and comment below!

Stevan McGrath

Stevan McGrath is a marketing professional and a freelance writer. His specialties include digital marketing, SEO, and social media. Need a specialist writer to write on these? You just found the right person.

More Posts

Download Our SEO Guide

Created in a joint partnership with Advice Local, this guide — What You Need to Know About SEO — provides an introduction to SEO concepts, strategies and best practices for optimizing a website. Complete the form below and get instant access.

    ROCKING DIGITAL SERVICES

    Web Design & Development

    Your website needs to be aesthetically pleasing and functional. We build websites for desktop and mobile that are both.

    LOCAL SEARCH & SEO

    Your website needs to attract search engines and consumers. We are experts in local search and SEO, and can make that happen.

    CONTENT CREATION & MARKETING

    Anybody can write words on a page, but can they write content that integrates SEO best practices and converts? We can.

    PPC & Paid Search

    PPC & Paid Search

    Need more customers? We create paid campaigns to reach your target audience and increase sales.

    Tracking & Optimization

    You need a solid foundation for success online, and our tracking & optimization services get it done.

    Graphic Design Services

    Graphic Design Services

    From logo design to your business card, brochures – and everything in-between for print & web – we can help!

    Here’s What Our Client's Have to Say

    Their Local Business Websites Rock

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital knows how to build local business websites that convert prospects to customers. Not only do I recommend them to work on my reputation management client’s websites, but they work on the Reputation Sensei brand, too.
    - Chris Snellgrove

    They Customize Their Solutions

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital customizes to meet their client’s needs. We needed our existing website optimized for search. We are now placing for more industry keywords and continue to improve. They consult with our in-house team on content optimization, manage our GMB listing & more.
    - Greta Valenti

    Highly Recommend

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital manages not only the Association of Directory Publishers website, but our Trusted Local Directory. From helping us get our event information on the website to producing guides, blogs and new content, they have what it takes.
    - Cindi Aldrich

    Rocks Digital Is the Best Choice

    ★★★★★
    As a long-term client, when it was time to change the primary focus of my real estate business, and my website, I knew Rocks Digital was the way to go. They took my existing website, gave it a complete new look, and still managed to keep my existing content.
    - David Dorum

    Brought My Ideas to Fruition

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital came highly recommended. Once I started working with them I knew why. They took my ideas for a beautiful website and brought them to the screen. From the design phase to content creation, each component was thoughtfully considered and addressed.
    - Clay Adams

    Conversions Are on the Rise

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital manages two of my websites. They produce our blogs, our service pages and manage our paid search campaigns. Conversions are up and new patients are coming in the door. I highly recommend their digital marketing services.
    - Dr. Thomas Chacko

    Agency Services Are Top Notch

    ★★★★★
    We shifted to Rocks Digital agency services earlier in the year. We are so glad we did. Our website sessions are up, page views are up, and bounce rate is down. Now we can easily see how many form fills we have had at any given time through their real-time reporting.
    - Kristin Schafer

    Their Local Business Websites Rock

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital knows how to build local business websites that convert prospects to customers. Not only do I recommend them to work on my reputation management client’s websites, but they work on the Reputation Sensei brand, too.
    - Chris Snellgrove

    They Customize Their Solutions

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital customizes to meet their client’s needs. We needed our existing website optimized for search. We are now placing for more industry keywords and continue to improve. They consult with our in-house team on content optimization, manage our GMB listing & more.
    - Greta Valenti

    Highly Recommend

    ★★★★★
    Rocks Digital manages not only the Association of Directory Publishers website, but our Trusted Local Directory. From helping us get our event information on the website to producing guides, blogs and new content, they have what it takes.
    - Cindi Aldrich
    Name
    Email
    Review Title
    Rating
    Review Content

    LATEST BLOG POSTS

    Local SEO company strategies.

    What Does a Local SEO Company Do?

    Local SEO is a digital marketing strategy focused on boosting a business’ local search visibility within a particular area. With the successful implementation of proven

    Hire a digital marketing agency.

    Why Hire a Digital Marketing Agency

    Staying ahead of search engine updates and marketing trends is a constant challenge, so it’s no surprise that businesses frequently turn to digital marketing agencies.

    LOCAL VISIBILITY REPORT

    Is your Google My Business listing helping or hurting you? Is bad data causing consumers and search engines to lose trust in your business? This is information you simply must know.

    To get these answers right now, just enter your business name below to run our FREE
    visibility report.


    Need a facelift
    for your website? More search traffic? Need to blog, but don’t have time?

    Our Digital Services Could Be For You
    Get a Free Local Visibility Report Now