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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.
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 five little-known social media tools that are very useful to smaller business.
Imagine you are sitting in your car. In the dashboard are dials showing the status of nearly all of the systems in your car. Oil pressure? Gasoline? Miles? Check, check, and check.
Hootsuite takes this philosophy and applies it to social media. On a single screen, you can see all of your social media profiles, and delegate certain accounts to different people or departments (if your company is getting big enough for that sort of thing.)
Beyond delegation, this service enables you to see which profiles are garnering the most views, allowing you to see with a single glance, which is worth continuing to invest in. This saves you time and money by eliminating the need to run annoying feedback programs asking clients to take time from their schedules to inform you how they found your company.
The digital equivalent to the old-fashioned mail campaign is unknown, unimaginatively perhaps, as an email campaign. There are numerous companies out there promising to help create the best email campaign for their clients, though few has the track record for success as VerticalResponse.
As a company dedicated to helping small businesses succeed, it will guide you through every step of the process. Appearance is vital for these messages to be successful. VerticalResponse takes this responsibility seriously, designing some of the most beautiful and informative email advertisements possible.
VerticalResponse even works with you on social media, by formatting these advertisements to work with popular social media sites such as Facebook. Finally, it will create sign up pages designed to attract new people interested in learning more about your company.
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.
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Up until now we have only dealt with traditional social media, email and sharing sites. However, there is another arm of the digital tree that needs to be carefully cultivated if a company is to survive in this digital age.
Like with the tools listed above, Postling monitor social media sites for new messages and demographic trends. What sets this company apart is the expansion of this monitoring to product review sites, such as Yelp.
Knowing what customers are saying about your company on these review boards is vital in order to maintain a positive company image in the local market. More and more people are going online first, to see which companies are worth their time and money.
Do not allow your firm to be ruined by a bad review. Receive notification of it immediately, and take action before it becomes widely read.
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.
Social Media does not need to be a chore for the small business owner. By taking advantage of the 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!