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Powered by SOCIAL MEDIA # # SHARE LIKE A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media Tools

A marketers guide to social media tools

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This paper aims to help you understand the four main types of social media tools, their key features, main benefits, and the value they can bring to your social media marketing efforts.

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Page 1: A marketers guide to social media tools

1

Powered by

SOCIALMEDIA

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#SHARELIKE

A Marketer’s Guideto Social Media Tools

Page 2: A marketers guide to social media tools

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Introduction

Social Listening Tools

Key Differences Table

Social Media Management Platforms

Social Analytics Tools

Social Media Advertising Platforms

Conclusion

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7

4

9

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Page 3: A marketers guide to social media tools

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As social media continues to grow, it is a necessity for marketers to keep up with their social profiles. Because of this growth, however, it is also more difficult to maintain an advantage over one’s competition. Being able to understand your social marketing performance, and optimizing your efforts is more critical than ever.

This need leads marketers to search for tools that can help them maximize their social media presence. There are four main types of social media tools, but many suppliers of each which can make the mar-ketplace seem confusing. This paper aims to help you understand the four main types of social media tools, their key features, main benefits, and the value they can bring to your social media marketing efforts. We will look at the following types of tools:

Social Analytics Tools

Social Listening Tools

Social Media Management Tools

Social Media Advertising Systems

Each type is very different, both in terms of purpose and the features they possess, and this will be discussed in greater detail below.

The tools are listed in the order that they might be used. This refers to our recommended Social Media workflow:

Analyze - Engage - Promote

Introduction

EngageInteraction is everything that hap-pens as part of an online conversa-tion. From making original wall posts to answering comments and sharing. Fan interaction -- aka, engagement -- is critical to social success, and using social media management tools helps you do this efficiently. Social media management tools also allow you to improve your customer services response time and quality by allowing your team to work in a more structured and efficient way.

AnalyzeThe tools are listed in the order that they might be used. This refers to our recommended Social Media workflow.

PromoteIt is becoming increasingly difficult to remain visible and reach your fans with your content, as competition for attention increases. The ability to boost reach using advertising is hugely important for getting ahead of the competition, and using social media advertising tools to get smart with which posts to promote and to who is invaluable.

Page 4: A marketers guide to social media tools

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Listening ToolsSocial Media Management Tool

Social Analytics Tools

Social Media Advertising Tools

Dashboard

Demographics

Text Analytics

Industry Based Benchmarking

Keyword Search

Reporting

Manual Sentiment Analysis

Follower / Fan Growth

Posting & Scheduling

Comeptetive Analytics

Alerts

Influencers

Ad management

Engagement

User Rights Management

Automated Sentiment Analysis

Ad Analysis

Customer Service Metrics

Third Party Software Integration

Geo Based Benchmarking

Auto-biding

Workflow Management

Key Differences between Social Media Tools

Page 5: A marketers guide to social media tools

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Social Analytics ToolsSocial analytics tools help you easily interpret a wide range of metrics, primarily based on your content and audience. Socialbakers Analytics, for example, helps you to understand and compare metrics across platforms and brands, allowing you to intelligently benchmark your activity.

Social analytics tools will lay out a range of key metrics such as audience growth, engagement rates, response rates, reach and more, such as:

By understanding current performance, a number of actions can be taken - from optimizing content strategy, to changing focus entirely, all of which would be done blind without the help of effective social analytics tools.

One of the key benefits is the ability to get a clear view of engagement and interaction over time. Seeing the trends gives valuable insight as to where to improve, and which days and content efforts are reaping the best results. Again, understanding data helps to optimize content strategy for better results, as well as providing clear data for reporting throughout the business (picture 1).

This wealth of data aids in optimizing social media strategies and ultimately in improving results.

Fans/Followers/Subscribers

Fans/Followers/Subscribers Growth

Interactions

Interaction Types

Engagement Rates

The most engaging type of content

Response rates and times

Volume of user posts/questions

Key influencers

Top performing posts

Shareability

Views and view time

Like/dislike ratio

Post sources

Aug01,2013-Aug31,2013

AstonMartin vs. Jaguar AutomotiveLabel

RelativeFanGrowth FanCountOverview TotalFans

LocalFans LocalFans LocalFans

AdminPagePosts PostsOverview

AdminPostTypes

MostEngagingPosts

PostTypes: Activity Album Link Offer Other Image Question Status Video

PagePosts

MonthlyExecutiveReport

Week32

(05.08.)

Week33

(12.08.)

Week34

(19.08.)

Week35

(26.08.)

0%

0,25%

0,5%

0,75%

1%

2,5M 2,2MTotalFanCount

56,1k2,16%

52,2k2,28%

FanCountChange

+21,3kWeek35(26.08.)

+20,4kWeek35(26.08.)

MaxFanCountChange

1,8k 1,6kAvg.FanChangeperDay

12,2M

142,9k

10,8M

195,8k

5,9M

120,1k

5,8M

83,1k

2,5M

56,1k

IN 15%

US 9%

GB 8%

FR 8%

Other 60%

IN 32%

US 5%

EG 5%

PK 5%

Other 53%

IN 13%

US 9%

MX 7%

IT 6%

Others 65%

Week32

(05.08.)

Week33

(12.08.)

Week34

(19.08.)

Week35

(26.08.)

0

10

20

30

40

86%

13%

1%

0%

100%

0%

0%

0%

98%

2%

0%

0%

100%

0%

0%

0%

106

95

68

3429

Page1/3ReportgeneratedbyAnalyticsPRO,Copyright©2013Socialbakers,www.socialbakers.com

Picture 1An example of an Executive Report from Socialbakers Analytics. This excerpt compares Aston Martin vs. Jaguar, focusing on Fans and Fan Growth. As we can see from the report, Aston Martin has a bigger Fan base. But while Aston Martin has grown more in absolute numbers, we can see that Jaguar has grown faster n relative numbers.

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Another key aspect of social media analytics tools is the availability of competitive analysis. It’s not enough to know how your posts and interactions are performing, you also need to know how the compe-tition is doing. It is essential to monitor your competitors and also benchmark yourself against the market and region. Publicly available metrics for other business profiles and Pages available in Socialbakers Analytics allow you to contrast and compare their key metrics and activity with your own. (Picture 2).

For anyone responsible for social media accounts, a social media analytics tool is a must in order to be successful. It may be cliche but knowledge is power. And social media analytics platforms empower users to improve their social media presence by knowing what is going on across all channels and compared to competitors in a user-friendly way. This is absolutely core to the ‘understand’ element of our social media flow.

Abs. Change in Fans 119 950 117 524 259 898,17

Rel. Change in Fans +0,96 % +1,89 % +3,26 %

PTAT 98 903 54 747 130 269,83

Admin Posts 163 23 73,17

Avg. Page ER 0,17 % (+0,01 %) 0,18 % (-0,14 %) 0,33 % (-0,19 %)

Avg. Post ER 0,03 % (+0,00 %) 0,12 %(-0,09 %) 0,16 % (-0,10 %)

Total Interactions 652 594 178 806 554 697,00

User Posts 1 653 645 1 152,00

RR for Questions 0,00 % 4,69 % 4,50 %

LamborghiniFerrari Luxury Cars Label

Abs.Changein Fans

Rel.Changein Fans

PTAT

AdminPosts

Avg. PageER

Avg. PostER

Total Interactions

UserPosts

RRfor

Questions

Picture 2An example of the KPI check feature from Socialbakers Analytics, comparing Ferrari to Lamborghini and a custom-made label, Luxury Cars. Labels like this one can serve as custom-made benchmarks that create a comparison with a group of competitors, or any segment of the market. From this comparison alone, we can see that when it comes to Fans, both brands are falling below average for their category. Ferrari is more active when it comes to posting and absolute interactions, and Lamborghini is more successful when it comes to relative Fan growth and Engagement Rate.

Picture 3An example of the dashboard from Socialbakers Analytics, showing analyzed pages with labels “automotive” and “luxury cars”, sorted by the number of fans. We can see from the dashboard that while Ferrari is the largest brand in this group, Aston Martin is the fastest growing, Lamborghini has on average the most engaging content, and Mercedes-Benz was able to collect the highest number of interactions.

Page 7: A marketers guide to social media tools

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Social Listening ToolsSocial listening tools are one of the most common social media tools. Social listening tools allow a company to listen for mentions of their brand, and focus on metrics such as share of voice. These tools generally work via keyword search, so the data that’s provided depends on the input to find the right data. In other words, just as keywords are important for good search results on the web, choosing the right keywords when listening definitely affects the quality of what’s found.

Businesses involved in social media need to listen for mentions of their business name, or other key terms related to their product, service, industry, region, etc. There are a number of reasons for this, which will be discussed below.

Picture 4 Picture 6Picture 5

Why Listening is Important

The first reason is the need to be proactive in social customer care. Just as in everyday life, if a customer says negative things about a brand on Twitter, tools like Socialbakers Listening allow these brands to detect these comments immediately and respond - providing an opportunity to diffuse the situation publicly before widespread complaints start. After all, customers are listening too and the faster a brand responds, the better the chance of recovering from a potential disaster.

Alternatively, being proactive in listening to discussions about your business can allow you to generate sales - someone may be querying how your service works or what your delivery times are for example - this allows your team to dive in and give the relevant information to guide the user from being a prospect to becoming a customer. You can generate sales by responding to the way Fans are reacting and engaging on a macro level with your content and about your products or services. Listening gives you the power to be proactive instead of reactive.

Social listening tools also often allow you to measure brand sentiment, defining a percentage of positive vs. negative conversation about a brand (picture 6). Some tools work by automatically analyzing the words in the conversation. This isn’t completely foolproof due to reliability issues, language variations and appropriately measuring irony and sarcasm, but it gives a reasonable indication of how a business is being talked about online. Many brands measure this on an ongoing basis and try to ensure that the sentiment is at least consistent, and preferably improving, at all times.

An example from Socialbakers Listening showing the three different social listening features. In Picture 4, we can see a map showing the geographical source of mentions. Picture 5 shows us a word cloud of phrases associated with the keyword, "Socialbakers". In Picture 6, we can see the split between positive, neutral and negative sentiment.

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With social listening tools, there is also the ability to generate engagement, not only by jumping in on conversations that are relevant, but also by analyzing the conversation trends over time. Monitoring trends helps predict the performance of the next post, and possibly provides clues for what needs to change.

Listening in on a wide range of topics and about specific businesses, and getting a feel for their overall sentiment enables a marketer to more easily identify the key influencers on a topic. By knowing who the influencers are, marketers can begin to develop relationships, which could lead to mutually beneficial promotion. A sign of a truly social brand is one that engages with the key influencers as well as the grassroot fans, and also attempts to convert detractors into brand ambassadors over time.

Picture 7

Picture 10

Picture 8

Picture 9

An example from Socialbakers Listening showing the process of keyword-based searches on Facebook and Twitter. In Picture 7, we can see adding a keyword with appropriate search parameters. In Picture 8, we can choose between which platforms we’d like to see results. In Picture 9, we can choose a country and language options. Finally, in Picture 10, we can see the results according to selected criteria.

Page 9: A marketers guide to social media tools

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Social Media Management PlatformsSocial media management programs have been around for almost as long as businesses have had a presence on social media platforms. Currently, there are a host of relevant tools to aid marketers in this area.

A social media management system in this context is defined as a tool that focuses on page or profile management. This primarily relates to content posting and response monitoring.

A tool like Socialbakers Builder is essential for agencies and businesses which manage multiple profiles. Whether running multiple platforms for a business, or for numerous client accounts, a social media management system is vital for effectively managing workload.

Typically, social media management systems will provide a column-based layout where users can see multiple profiles next to each other. This allows you to see all content and interactions across profiles and platforms in one easy view. Likewise, some tools also show exactly what the competition is posting and who is interacting with their posts (Picture 11).

For agencies and larger brands, this provides scalability as these dashboards can be shared between users, allowing more social media managers to create content and monitor customer interactions whilst responding.

Where social media management tools also add value is in their scheduling and automation function-alities. The peak time to publish content may not necessarily be during office hours. A lot of social engagement happens in the evenings, for example, when users are on their phones while running about town, or relaxing at home after work. These tools allow the user to work around these issues, as well as schedule posts by timezone and more.

Picture 11An example of the dashboard from Socialbakers Builder, with tabs covering competitors, incoming, sent & direct messages, outbox and unpublished posts.

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Like Socialbakers Builder, social media management tools allow you to organize team management in a highly efficient manner. The job of managing social media often involves various departments, and external agencies typically. So these are powerful collaboration tools that enable user rights, approval and internal performance reporting (Picture 12).

Social Media Advertising PlatformsSocial media success is becoming increasingly driven by paid social advertising. With Facebook in particular, organic reach is decreasing, leading marketers to boost their content within the native news feed. At present this can be difficult to set up, and knowing which posts to promote can be hard to determine.

Social media advertising systems are growing in the number of tools available, and in terms of the number of marketers using them. The number of social media advertising tools will continue to grow as the need for paid social activity increases throughout 2014.

Advertising systems like Socialbakers Ad Analytics incorporate social advertising campaign creation, management, optimization, post boosting and reporting.

Picture 12An example of a report on team performance from Socialbakers Builder, showing interactions, conversation content distribution, and the most engaging admins.

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There are a number of benefits of using social media advertising tools. The first is the ability to set up complex campaigns quickly, particularly with Facebook. Many of the tools offer bulk uploads for advert creative and targeting options, allowing the user to test multiple variants from the beginning of a campaign. This is a huge time saver in terms of set up, and puts you in a strong position to be able to optimize campaigns for better results over time.

Another key benefit would be the ability to set auto-bidding and optimization rules. Setting auto-bids and optimization rules means that a company can run advertising campaigns without having to worry about the budget. Once set up, the system will decrease bids as needed, or pause any poorly performing adverts. Socialbakers Ad Analytics can also boost the impression share of the best performing posts, and continuously optimize different versions of adverts to strengthen their performance—all based on live data. Not only does this give the marketing team some breathing room, it also allows them to optimize much quicker. As as soon as performance hits the specified level in the rules, optimization takes place.

With paid reach becoming even more important for your content, particularly on Facebook, some social media advertising systems also allow you to automatically promote your best performing posts. They view interaction levels, and when they find a post that is performing above average, they can automatically boost it to a relevant audience (Picture 14). This ensures that any strong engagement performance is capitalized on quickly and efficiently in an automated environment. Organic reach of posts is naturally declining on Facebook due to the competition for NewsFeed placement, so placing your best content in the NewsFeed on a sponsored basis is key.

Picture 13This picture shows the impact of correct timing on organic, paid & viral impressions, as well as engagement.

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Social media advertising systems often enable you greater targeting capabilities and flexibility too. They often allow you to choose more audience targeting types such as custom audiences (based on emails, user ID’s or phone numbers), lookalike audience (users with similar profiles to those in your custom audience), and partner categories in the USA (which is based on external consumer data) (Picture 15). Many tools allow access Facebook Exchange (FBX), Facebook’s re-marketing solution that allows remarketing (re-posting) to users based on their cookied browsing histories.

Competitor:Pilsner Urquell

Country: Czech Republic

Overlap:19%

Competitor:Budweiser Budvar

Country: Czech Republic

Overlap:16%

Staropramen

Pilsner Urquell

Staropramen

Budweiser Budvar

Many social media advertising systems will analyze advertisements as well, in terms of the audience targeted. Socialbakers Ad Analytics, for example, lets the user overlap their target audience with that of competitors to see the uniqueness of their targeting set (Picture 15).

No matter whether the goal is to achieve fan growth or boost content on Facebook, or dabbling with promoted tweets and accounts on Twitter, social media advertising systems are crucial to scaling adver-tising operations and adjusting budgets.

At Socialbakers, we’ve predicted that social advertising will become bigger than digital advertising this year. Whether this happens or not, it’s important that social media marketers have the flexibility in their budgets to boost posts at different times to make the most of their strongest content.

Picture 14An example of the auto-boost trigger from Socialbakers Ad Analytics. This feature enables automatic post promotion at the moment when the posts reach a pre-set organic reach level.

Picture 15An example of Fan Overlap from Socialbakers Ad Analytics, showing to which extent competing breweries share the same fans.

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Regardless of the level of social media expertise in your organization, it is essential to understand the different social media tools available in order to effectively manage your social media presence. At Socialbakers we believe that businesses need to analyze, engage and promote on social media, and that tools are required to be able to achieve success at each of these three key stages.

No matter what your business is, or which industry you are in, social analytics tools are an essential starting point. Without a social analytics you will be unable to understand your performance in context of your industry peers and competitors.

If your strategy is based on reputation management or social media based research, then a social listening tool is definitely needed to enable you to find the data you need around what people are saying about your brand or business outside of your extended networks.

With social media management tools, these become more important the bigger your organisation becomes. The more pages you control, and staff you have managing your social, then the more value you will see from having a social media management tool to control workflow, save time, and measure performance. Social media management tools can also ensure you deliver a higher level of customer service.

The social landscape has now changed, and being smart around boosting your content into the Newsfeed on Facebook can make or break your campaigns. Facebook is a more challenging environment, and organic reach is harder to attain, making the boosting of posts essential for all. Knowing which to boost, and being able to do this quickly and effectively through social media advertising tools is essential for gaining competitive advantage.

Consider your options carefully, but be realistic about your needs - can you really manage the social media side of your business without the extra data and capabilities these tools give you? Social media tools give you a much higher chance of success as you can follow our workflow of Analyze > Engage > Promote in an efficient and insight driven way. Good luck!

Conclusion

Page 14: A marketers guide to social media tools

Our vision is to become worldwide standard for the way,

social media marketing is measured and optimized.

www.socialbakers.com