A marketing bundle or product bundling simply refers to combining products that sell separately into one bundle and selling it at a special price, while allowing the buyer the option of choosing the products individually or together as a bundle. You have probably purchased a bundle before; an excellent example is when your local fast food outlet offers you a “mega meal deal”, where you’re offered a burger, fries, and a coke for a fairly cheaper price as compared to when you purchase these items separately.
Types of Marketing Bundles
Even though as described above, the buyer gets an option of purchasing the product as a bundle or as an item; in the markets, there are still some products that do not offer this option. This breaks it down to two more kinds of bundling.
a. Pure Bundling
Adobe Photoshop is an excellent example. You only have the option of buying the entire marketing tools bundle and not just one tool. Microsoft Office Suit is another similar example; you can’t buy Word and leave out Spreadsheets. Simply put, there’s no option of purchasing a single item.
b. Mixed Bundling
This is the more successful type of bundling; it gives the buyer the option of purchasing an individual item or the entire bundle.
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What Makes a Good Marketing Bundle? – Main Qualities
In order to convince the customer that the bundle is indeed worth the effort, it should offer:
i. Monetary value – The buyer must see the value for his money, and the benefit of buying the bundle rather than single items.
ii. Functional – It must offer value to the customer as a combined set as opposed to individual items. It must meet a common need as a bundle.
So, What Makes Product Bundling a Brilliant Strategy?
Bundling always comes out as a win-win scenario for both the seller and the buyer, when done right, here are some benefits:
For the Seller:
i. It’s a Chance to Up-Sell
As a seller, you get to prompt the buyer to consider purchasing more products; this is especially interesting when you’re offering complementary products.
ii. Boost Your Average Order Value
This is a KPI that shows the average total of the orders placed over a specified period of time. When a buyer opts for the bundle instead of the stand-alone product, their overall order value goes up, meaning higher revenues for you.
Therefore when you’re able to convince the buyer to purchase more than one product, you increase your average order value.
iii. Inventory Management
This works in two ways, first, you can leverage bundling to raise the profile of a less popular or new product, this offers you a chance to have the product tested and you’re able to get feedback. Secondly, this would give you a great opportunity to clear slow-moving or old stock.
For the Buyer:
i. What a Bargain!
Buyers always like when they feel like they’re getting a good deal and saving money. Like a reward of some sort, and when this happens, they tend to associate your store with good deals. So, they become regular happy shoppers.
ii. Convenient!
What’s more frustrating than having to go through an entire aisle or list of complimentary products in order to choose the ones that make a perfect combo? This is how the majority of customers feel, but when you save them time by putting together such complimentary products or services, the versatility that comes with an easy purchase is not only convenient, but it feels good too.
iii. Time-Saving
This really is a no-brainer.
So, having understood the benefits and qualities of a good marketing resources bundle, how then can you go about making one that works?
Just like any other marketing strategy, you can employ, having a clear understanding of your customers is important. Before building your marketing bundle, get up-to-date data about their preferences on different demographics. This includes:
· The kind of advice or information that would be useful to your customers as to what to buy
· The kind of deals they’re looking for
· The amount of money that they would be willing to spend
· What products do they purchase simultaneously
· Which products would they be willing to spend a little more money for
· What products would give them value for money when included in the marketing bundle
For the market, find out the:
· Competing bundle offers and their pricing
· The estimated demand plus the marginal cost
· The supply-chain structure
· Possible risks.
With this data coupled with your own goals, you can make the offer as beneficial for both the buyer and the seller as possible.
b. Know How to Offer the Discounts
Make the benefit of this marketing bundle as obvious as possible to the buyer, this can be done by justifying the need to buy the bundle instead of the individual items. Remember the buyer may not necessarily require all the items in the bundle, but your discount may encourage them to pick the bundle anyway, this goes alongside the complimenting products, they really must be a great combo.
If this is not done carefully, you may risk not being able to sell anything.
c. Psychological Aspect in Pricing
Bundling your slow-moving or less popular products with the best-sellers is a smart strategy for both the seller and the buyer. The trick is in ensuring that the offer is irresistible and that it satisfies the customer’s needs. And as they say, a satisfied shopper is a happy shopper, they will spread the word.
Take Away
For a successful marketing bundle campaign, the seller must have up-to-date data on their potential customers’ needs as well as market dynamics. There are several types of bundling, pure and mixed bundling. Research has shown that mixed bundling performs better.
Bundling saves buyers time and offers them convenience while boosting the seller’s sales. So, go ahead and try bundling up, as a seller or buyer.
Successful companies are always sustained by strong lead-generation strategies and tactics. A booming industry such as Software as a Service (SaaS), expected to reach over $716 billion by 2028, will need the best SaaS lead generation strategies to fuel its staggering growth.
In our informational era, customers have easy access to all the data they need to make informed decisions. Research from Forrester explains that the customer journey is self-directed in a proportion that may vary between 66% and 90%.
Thus, the SaaS lead generation mission is to find the right customer, no matter where it is in its journey, and offer him the right content while educating and demonstrating how your software can help solve his problems. In other words, it has to find the ideal client and convince him to buy your software service/product.
Before establishing which SaaS lead generation strategies are the best for your business, you have to decide on a few fundamental aspects:
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For the success of your campaigns, it’s vital to correctly define your perfect market. Who is your ideal client, what’s his business, in which niche, which are his needs, which are his interests, which are his main pain points, which are his buying behavior, etc
SaaS companies usually have more than one buyer persona depending on their product/service offer.
What criteria should a lead meet?
Set scoring parameters to be able to quickly identify the qualified leads and renounce the others that are less lucrative. Concentrating the efforts only on qualified leads saves time and streamlines your lead generation activity.
Each company sets its own criteria considering its offer, goals, and strategies. For example, if your SaaS is dedicated to large companies with international operations, there is no point in contacting a national medium-level business.
Which are your lead generation goals?
Set clear, realistic, and measurable goals for your lead generation campaigns. Since SaaS is a data-driven industry by excellence, it’s obvious that SaaS marketing efforts should be heavily based on data.
Consider KPIs like site traffic, click-through rates, traffic-to-lead ratio, conversion rates, marketing qualified leads (MQLs), sales qualified leads (SQLs), cost per lead, etc. Track your KPIs evolution to know if your strategy brings the desired results or if you need to adjust it.
What tools do you need for lead generation?
B2B SaaS lead generation strategies and SaaS lead generation in general, need several tools for successful implementation and partially automate some tasks. Such tools might be:
Marketing planning system to manage all marketing campaigns, from content production to ads and promotion.
Landing page builder to help create pages that elevate the user experience and maximize conversions.
Software to manage payments – most often subscriptions.
Email marketing app for lead nurturing.
Conversion rate optimization app for split test and optimization.
Live chat software that allows instant interaction with site visitors.
Obviously, different strategies will have different results for various businesses. You just have to pick those that bring the best results for your own business, in your particular market and context.
Top Saas lead generation strategy: Put in place a site optimized for conversion and search engines (SEO)
Optimize for search all the pages of your site, landing pages included, for the keywords that you want to rank for in search engines.
Consider optimizing for the keywords used by potential clients when searching for a SaaS company like the one you have. Also, take into consideration the keywords related to the problems that your app solves. Keep in mind that people are looking to solve their problems and are tirelessly looking for the right solutions.
Organic traffic, when the SEO strategy is executed correctly, can be a great source of leads and is by far more cost-effective than paid traffic. It’s an opportunity small SaaS companies still have at their disposal if they don’t have massive advertising budgets to generate traffic.
Conceive your site pages with user experience and conversion in mind. Follow a logical flow, insert catchy call-to-actions, and lead magnets that attract the attention of your audience. And highlight the steps needed for the visitors to take action.
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Stay up to date with technical SEO and eliminate conversion barriers
The latest Google algorithm updates pay more attention to parameters like sites’ speed and mobile-friendliness. Thus, they have a heavier impact on search engine rankings.
Ensure that your site has a good loading speed, that’s usually under five seconds on a slow connection (3G) upon Google’s recommendation. Nowadays, users have little patience (under three seconds) with sites that are slow and bounce.
Research from Unbounce reveals that the conversion rate decreases by 12% for each supplementary second that your page needs for loading. Most landing pages do not have an acceptable loading speed. And even if marketers are aware of that, most of them do not treat it as a priority.
With the proliferation of mobile phones and features that allow users to surf the web, having a mobile-friendly site is a must. Thus, your site’s content has to adapt to the dimension of the device used. You can either hire a developer to make your site mobile friendly or upgrade to a theme that adjusts automatically.
Identify the elements that hurt your conversion funnel. Such barriers may be complicated forms, slow pages, onboarding problems, too many steps in the conversion process, UX issues, CTAs that don’t convert, etc.
Choose the right pricing model for your SaaS business
The pricing strategy is of paramount importance to attract leads and clients. Today, most SaaS companies work with monthly price subscription models and have elaborated pricing structures tailored for multiple buyer personas.
Some of the most used pricing strategies by software companies are:
Tiered pricing strategy – several pricing plans with different price levels considering factors like usage, features, etc.
Feature-based pricing strategy – usually three types of plans with different prices based on the features included.
Pricing strategy based on usage – a tiered system with price levels based on usage criteria – for example, number of subscribers, storage space, etc.
Pay-as-you-grow pricing strategy – a pricing system that considers the business size and provides upgrades as the business evolves.
Pay-per-user pricing strategy – a pricing model that takes into consideration the number of users needed.
Freemium pricing strategy – a free plan, usually providing a product/service with basic features and paid add-ons that can be added as needed.
One-time fee pricing strategy – a fixed fee is paid for the lifetime usage of a product as it is at the moment of purchase without future upgrades.
Each SaaS business will probably test several pricing strategies until identifying the one that works best for it.
Here is an example of a pay-as-you-grow pricing strategy combined with usage. Convertkit proposes three plans, and the price grows with the number of subscribers the client has in his database.
For most marketers, content marketing and SEO are two of the most successful lead-generation strategies for software companies. Some may consider them as separate strategies, but the reality is that they deliver the best results when done together.
According to a study made by mikesonders.com on a sample of the 50 most important SaaS businesses in the U.S., organic search is the major source of traffic and leads. It counts for up to 77% of their traffic. And on average it contributes 26.4%.
Creating useful content that is relevant to your ideal client and simultaneously optimizing it for search engines, is a winning strategy and a powerhouse for SaaS lead generation. A sort of gold mine.
Content marketing is a long-term game, you have to publish quality content, in a consistent manner to obtain the desired results. Meaning organic traffic and qualified leads for your business.
This is a long-term strategy, it takes time to bring results, but once your content ranks the results will be steady for a long period of time as long as you keep up with the search engine updates.
Create content catered to your customers’ needs and pain points, showing how your software application can work out their problems – they will take the time to research, inform themselves and make informed decisions.
Valuable and relevant content gains the trust of your audience and the status of an expert in your industry.
Create videos that present your SaaS product/service and its features.
Write specific content focused on user intent – what does your visitor want to know?
Match your buyer’s persona questions and needs in terms of knowledge and information with your business’s goals.
Craft content for each stage of the buyer journey, and offer each visitor the information he needs when he needs it.
Format your content for readability and insert visuals to support your text (images, screenshots, infographics).
Craft case studies to explain how your software helps your clients in a particular case.
Build lead magnets based on your best content and add interested visitors to your email list.
Insert clickable pop-ups to attract the visitors’ attention to an action you want them to take.
Repurpose content to make the most out of your content creation efforts and offer your clients the type of content they expect (i.e., merge a couple of blogs to create an ebook, take a blog and write a script for a video or a podcast).
Guest-post on prominent sites within your industry, that have similar audiences, to generate leads.
Email marketing is still a powerful tool for lead generation
There are many reasons why email remains a solid B2B SaaS lead generation strategy. For some SaaS businesses, it is even the main channel for gathering leads and moving them down the marketing funnel.
First of all, the email list is a channel owned by the business, it is composed of persons that have shown some interest in your business, content, product/services, etc.
Then, you have the possibility to segment and personalize your emails and enroll potential leads in personalized nurturing sequences. This approach will facilitate massively the sale process.
Put in place lead nurturing sequences
The huge majority of your site visitors are not ready to buy when they end up on your site. They have a certain interest and if they manifest it, it’s your chance to develop the relationship further and demonstrate you are a reliable provider.
Using lead nurturing sequences is a solid strategy to build credibility and convince potential customers about the benefits of your product/service. All this while increasing the conversion rate.
Engage your site visitors with chatbots
Answering instantly to your site’s visitors’ questions can be a great source of valuable leads. And chatbots can execute this task 24h a day.
Installing a chatbot that responds right away can improve your conversion rate and increase the number of signs up to the newsletter, demo sessions, or free accounts.
Organize webinars for your target audience
Webinars offer a great opportunity to interact directly with your audience and answer their questions and concerns in real time. To build relationships and nurture leads that are in a “decision” phase of their journey and showed interest in your software services.
60% of marketers consider webinars a reliable venue to obtain qualified leads. B2B marketing specialists may generate between 500 and 1000 leads per webinar.
What makes webinars a great tool for SaaS lead generation is the possibility to showcase your expertise and gain the trust of your leads while channeling them to conversion. Plus, it can be a great source for content repurposing.
Provide a free trial to prove the value of your software solution
Your software solution is your business’s best ambassador and has the highest impact on attracting new customers.
In the software world offering a free trial is a common SaaS lead generation strategy. And if your app is up to the challenge and delivers what it promises in a demo, it’s a sure way to win new leads.
Put in place a smooth onboarding process and showcase the full power of your soft during the free trial period. Include the premium features to convince your customer to buy. Conceive workflows generated by the user behavior to show how various functionalities work.
These days B2B journey is mostly self-service. Clients will read your content, the reviews of your software, your case studies, will check on your social media channels, and try a demo. And only after that will consider contacting your sales team.
In case you have a high-ticket service that implies knowing more details about your client’s business, you have the option to propose a personalized demo. Walk the client through the app and present it from the point of view of his pain points.
Generate leads via free tools that present interest to your customers
As a SaaS company, you can choose to capture new leads by creating a small tool that you can offer for free and that your clients find useful. A tool that has some connection with your main product/service.
Such a lead generation tool example is HubSpot’s Website Grader. It is a free tool to evaluate the performance of your site, but you have to give your email address in exchange for the results.
Even if nowadays the inbound strategy prevails when referring to SaaS lead generation strategy, there are cases when outbound strategies still bring the most value. Plus, statistics reveal that 51% of business owners prefer to be contacted by phone by a sales representative, than by other communication venues.
Outbound strategies, meaning reaching clients directly via various channels like LinkedIn, cold calling, and email, are the top lead generation strategies for B2B SaaS companies that have complex, personalized offers and long sales cycles.
For this type of SaaS company, ads are not exactly effective, and inbound might not generate a sustainable flow of leads, as needed. In such cases, using customized outbound brings better results.
Build or hire a SaaS lead generation company, specializing in SaaS, that has deep knowledge regarding the software offer and is able to present it in a personalized way, tailored to the client’s needs. A team able to do proper prospecting according to your buyer persona, identify the ideal potential leads, and set sales appointments.
Customized outbound enables opportunities to build brand awareness, shorten the sales cycles and generate more leads in a cost-effective way.
Profit on online communities to spread the word about your product/service
Another SaaS lead generation strategy that brings interesting results is posting on communities like LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, etc.
You have to identify the communities where your audience is present, and which are the most common questions and pain points your audience has. And answer them with a detailed response that addresses the respective problem. This way you can insert a link to an article you have on your blog on that topic, and redirect traffic and potential leads to your website.
Pay attention and provide a pertinent answer that solves the issue. And avoid just copy-pasting a link to your website, as the moderators will not approve such answers.
Identify partnerships that can support your SaaS business growth
Build a network of partners to help you spread the word about your SaaS and attract new qualified prospects. You may consider influencer marketing campaigns, guest posting, joint marketing campaigns with complimentary offers, partnerships with review sites (like Capterra, Software Advice, G2, Product Hunt), working with affiliates, etc.
For example, if you have an app that helps build landing pages, you could partner with marketing agencies and marketing experts to recommend your app to their clients. Or you could put in place an affiliate program that rewards with commissions the persons willing to promote your software solution and generate sales.
Building partnerships with SaaS influencers could be a great source of leads. Take into consideration that SaaS influencers don’t look like the typical influencers in other industries. They most likely have large followings on professional avenues like LinkedIn, not on Instagram or TikTok.
Having a recommendation or a feature from a SaaS influencer may generate a huge buzz for your SaaS accompanied by an important number of high-quality leads. A pipeline that will generate results in the long run.
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Exploit the power of referrals and make them work for your SaaS
When speaking about generating leads their quality matters more than their quantity. You may gain a plethora of potential leads, but if they don’t buy or buy and renounce your software solution shortly after that, it won’t help.
The best leads are those who generate constant business and became evangelists for your SaaS by recommending it to their connections. Happy clients are your SaaS’s best ambassadors. Thus, the word of mouth remains one of the strongest lead generation tools.
Potential clients will trust more the opinion of their acquaintances or that of your existing clients than any other marketing approach from your business, be it content, ads, demo, etc. Not to mention referrals convert better and quicker because they already trust your business thanks to the recommendation they received.
Establishing a referral program to reward loyal clients and the leads they referred is often a winning strategy.
Leverage on testimonials and reviews
For SaaS companies, having good reviews on comparison or app aggregators like Capterra or AternativeTo can be extremely lucrative. And a great source of reliable B2B leads.
Today SaaS clients know very well what their needs are and what type of solution they want in terms of features and functionality. They do their research, they test various apps, or they already have a solution that they are not happy with.
And they check these aggregator sites that compare features of various apps and allow clients to choose the best fit.
Even if having good reviews on such sites is a powerful source of leads, your marketing team can use them further to gain even more leads and awareness. Use ratings and reviews on other marketing channels like PPC ads, social media posts, case studies, email sequences, or other campaigns.
Take away
There you have it, a condensed list of the best lead generation strategies proven to be successful today.
Though the SaaS industry experiences exponential growth, it is still a highly competitive arena. That’s why SaaS lead generation strategies implemented can be a game-changer for the future of any SaaS business. Choose wisely, test, keep only the strategies that bring you the best results, and reiterate.
There’s no secret that the power of social media is incredible. Everyone knows about Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram. However, when it comes to LinkedIn, we are talking about a special case. This social and professional network is a powerhouse, ready to unleash its benefits to your business’s advantage.
LinkedIn is a great tool to help you strengthen your presence on the market and expand your network. There are various LinkedIn best practices you can use to increase your business development. Some of them can be implemented right away while others will take a bit of time to show their efficiency.
The way you build your personal brand tells a lot about yourself.
The events of 2020 have seen many people out of work. But as the world economies struggle to get back to normalcy, LinkedIn being the existing top platform for professional connections continues to see a remarkable increase, especially among job seekers. And other professionals trying to channel the next career move. LinkedIn has put more weight and relevance on its digital training tools to help job seekers and other professionals better align themselves with emerging trends and opportunities.
So, with all things going virtual, what are LinkedIn’s best practices to help you connect better?
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Have you ever wondered why is LinkedIn so powerful for B2B businesses? First, according to the latest estimations, there are approximately almost a billion people using this network. Therefore, it is easy to imagine that there are over 830 million people with whom you can connect and share your ideas. Part of them is your future clients and partners. Plus, over 55 million companies have Linkedin profiles.
It is worth mentioning that 61 million LinkedIn users are considered to be senior-level influencers and over 40 million LinkedIn users are in key decision-making positions.
Moreover, LinkedIn is appreciated as a high-quality source of content. This makes users become very engaged when using it and count on it in their business decisions. Even though it is a valuable resource for any type of business, this doesn’t mean that success is guaranteed.
If you really want to have a competitive advantage when using LinkedIn, you need a forthright strategy. Since it is a marketing channel that can change the face of your business, it should be granted special attention.
Before we dig more in-depth, here is a short list of LinkedIn best practices for business that you can implement today:
· Develop SMART goals for your LinkedIn marketing strategy. Just like in any marketing strategy, your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
· Reach the right target audience. LinkedIn offers you various demographic data which can help you develop specific audience segmentation. Therefore, it will become very easy for you to personalize your messages and grow your audience.
· Create the right messages. Your messages should give answers to your client’s questions and provide solutions to their problems.
Now that you got yourself familiar with what LinkedIn means and how it can help you, let’s dive into more details. Use the strategies below and get ready to revamp your business.
LinkedIn Best Practices 1: Strengthen Your LinkedIn Profile
The first thing your clients and business partners see when they want to know more about you on LinkedIn is your profile. It is your business card and it should show you in the best light possible.
So, you need to pay close attention to the way you present your business, your story, and your services. Your LinkedIn profile logo and background photo are extremely important for the first impression. LinkedIn best practices for profiles encourage you to use recent photos, not exaggerate with powerful colors and use symbols that represent you. As long as you don’t complicate things too much, there’s nothing that could go wrong.
Other useful tips when it comes to your company’s profile are the following:
· Your LinkedIn company page should be always up-to-date;
· Your summary section should talk about your fascinating story. People like to read about others. They feel immediately when you are telling the truth, or you are just writing nice words. So, be real and speak from your own experience;
· Use your company logo and keywords to help clients identify your LinkedIn company page faster;
· Optimize your profile for search on LinkedIn by using your main keywords;
· Highlight your most important products and services and rearrange sections to align with your strategy.If you really want to stand out, try a high-quality video or explainer video to present your products/services.
· Ask your clients to share their experience with your products and services by writing reviews and testimonials. This is how you show your future clients that you are reliable, and your products are exactly how you present them to be;
· Attach a ProFinder Badge to your LinkedIn profile if you are a solopreneur or just starting up.
LinkedIn Best Practices 2: Use LinkedIn’s Educational Nature
Another remarkable thing about LinkedIn is that it makes it very easy for its users to publish articles. However, if you think that you will write some promotional content that will sell your products immediately, you are totally wrong. The people who are using LinkedIn are not interested in just another promotional post that encourages them to spend their money on a specific product.
LinkedIn users are rather more interested in how your products will help them solve their problems. They have several questions for which they hope to find the right answers by reading your articles. So, you should focus on educating your customers and giving them practical solutions to their problems. This is how you build your brand’s credibility and show that you are an expert in your field.
Best Practice 3: Conceive LinkedIn Showcase Pages That Target a Certain Buyer Persona
You have the possibility to create niche pages related to your main Company Page via LinkedIn Showcase Pages, highlighting specific products or a targeting specific audience. This helps you personalize user experience and communicate more effectively, as users have the possibility to follow just a showcase page, not the main company page or other showcase pages that your company might have installed.
Best Practice 4: Optimize Your LinkedIn Page for Search
Optimizing your LinkedIn Company page enables you to target your audience better and thereby gain better visibility among relevant audiences. You can optimize your LinkedIn page by using keywords though the whole profile and mainly through the company description.
Keywords – You can incorporate specific keywords and phrases that your target audience is likely to use when searching for your product or services. Ensure to insert them in your “About” overview. This will better describe what your business is all about.
Link it to your page – another way to optimize is to link your LinkedIn page to your website. Clean up all your team member profiles often to ensure they’re always up to date.
Post relevant content – this cannot be emphasized enough. When you share relevant content using all the relevant keywords and key phrases, you boost your chances for your LinkedIn page to appear on search results.
There have been many studies revealing that humans react better to visual context. We are visual creatures which make us understand visuals a lot faster than any text. Thus, if we apply these findings to the internet world, it is already a fact that visuals get more views than content. So, this is one point you should focus on in your LinkedIn strategy.
One of the LinkedIn best practices in 2023 which will continue to be successful in the following years too, is using infographics and charts in your articles. Your readers will find it easier to understand the information and remember it when they need it in the future. So, if you already applied this strategy last year, you should continue using as many visuals as possible in your content.
LinkedIn Best Practices 6: List Your Relevant Skills/Business Offer
This sets you up for quick wins, there are many life skills/benefits, scroll down and identify the ones most relevant to you. This is the best way to validate your description under your Headline Summary.
It also gives an extra nudge to others to endorse you since you come out as a professional and an expert. Therefore keep relevance by listing only your most relevant skills, and this is one of the continuous LinkedIn profile best practices that you have to refresh every now and then.
LinkedIn Best Practices 7: Tell Your Story Using Videos
Keeping your audience engaged and enticing her curiosity concerning your products is a tough job. Taking into consideration the soaring popularity of videos, you can use them to convince your prospects to return. Furthermore, it’s easier day passing for your clients to be able to watch videos from their desktop or mobile devices, no matter their location across the globe.
Here are some ideas you can use to create new videos:
· Create a demo on how to use your products;
· Interview an influencer in your industry/niche who is open to sharing his/her opinion on your products or services;
· Interview customers and publish their video testimonials;
· Create a video story of your brand.
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LinkedIn Best Practices 8: Leverage on LinkedIn Live
As statistics reveal, video performed so well that LinkedIn has recently rolled out LinkedIn live. It has 24 times more engagement than regularly pre-recorded videos. The main difference between LinkedIn live and other social media live events is that the audiences on this platform are part of a professional network. Thus, their main goal is to network further, learn and discover more in their related fields.
The LinkedIn best practices for live include:
Be prepped – ensure you’re well-versed on your subject matter to be able to give a sufficient response. Also, prepare well for the whole show ensuring quality sound, light, and stable connectivity.
Be authentic – be as genuine and real as you possibly can. Offer your audiences relatable and fresh content.
Consistent – Once you pick this new format, ensure to be consistent. Pick an ideal time when most of your audiences are online and let them know of a regular specific time that you will be going live. Whether you choose to do it weekly or monthly, let them know when to expect new content.
Be interactive – engage your audience as if you were all in a real room. Moderate the whole session in a lively and engaging manner and respond to them as much as you can.
When these LinkedIn best practices are followed well, you can utilize this format as a unique and interactive way to directly show your services and products in a better way.
LinkedIn Best Practices 9: Be Consistent
No one sustains that LinkedIn is going to bring incredible results overnight. It takes a lot of consistency and hard work to show your clients that you are a reliable business owner who puts them on top of his priority list.Therefore, you should pay attention to keeping your content fresh.
The publishing frequency is also important. So, if you post a new article at least once per week, then you are on the right track. In addition, try to always be the first who announces your loyal customers when something new appears in your niche. You will see that all these efforts will pay off in the end.
LinkedIn Best Practices 10: Share Thought Leadership Content
You can consider it authority marketing or thought leadership, but this is one of the most important LinkedIn best practices for business in 2023. It’s the kind of content that you need to create in order to build credibility, impress hiring managers, or reinforce your brand.
It’s about leveraging your best knowledge and expertise and offering solutions and answers even to questions your audience is yet to ask. Here is a quick guide on how to approach thought leadership content:
Product – You know your products best; you can therefore show this product expertise in a context that offers help and solutions to your audiences’ problems.
Industry – Share expert knowledge about your organization or industry, and give your connoisseur a take on new trends and technologies making news.
Organizational – Create content about your organizational stand or approach on various business aspects. Talk about employees and how to treat them, talk about your shareholders or other stakeholders in your business.
LinkedIn encourages users to use thought leadership content on their LinkedIn company page because it’s a powerful way to grow your audience.
LinkedIn Best Practices 11: Know The Best Time to Post
Unlike the rest of the social media platforms, LinkedIn does not have a specified time that can be considered the best time. With this said, there are certain times of the week that are definitely better than others.
Posting your content between Tuesday and Thursday is considered ideal. The ideal hours in these 3 preferred days fall between 8:00 am to 2:00 pm in your time zone. While the less recommended time to post would be on weekends or outside working hours. This is typically 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.
To narrow it down a little further, depending on your business, the best time to post for B2C businesses is between 11 am to 2 pm. For B2Bs and most tech and software businesses should be mostly between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., obviously. For education and health care, the best times are between 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
But all the above suggested times are quite general, to really get that perfect time for your LinkedIn profile, use your personal data found in LinkedIn analytics. They will give you more detailed insights about your profile and how to best optimize it for excellent results.
Best Practice 12: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Employees
Your employees can become your strongest partners in promoting your business. Who else can better promote your products than your employees who know all details about them? LinkedIn best practices encourage entrepreneurs to listen to their colleagues’ ideas and publish them. Sharing your LinkedIn strategy with your employees will help you grow your business presence in your industry.
This is a good approach if you want to show your employees that you care about what they think, and you want to make them part of your business. They will become more loyal to the brand and be more open to contributing to your business’ growth.
So, adopt a smart strategy and accomplish a double goal: grow your employees’ productivity by listening to their ideas and strengthen your presence on the market.
Best Practice 13: Use LinkedIn Analytics to Measure Results
Even though you think you are doing things right, this doesn’t mean that you are really successful. You need clear data to show you how many people viewed your LinkedIn page, which were your most popular LinkedIn posts, etc. LinkedIn metrics will tell you everything you need to know when you analyze your LinkedIn marketing efforts, like:
· Your visitor’s demographics. You will know everything about the people who visit your LinkedIn page: where they live, which are their jobs, how old are they, etc.
· The number of page views during a specific period.
· How many unique visitors you had during the analyzed period?
· Identify what your competitors are doing and what their metrics look like.
· Engagement statistics.
· The number of new followers acquired.
If you belong to the LinkedIn Business Solutions category of clients you benefit from Content Marketing Score and Trending Content resources. The Content Marketing Score provides you with insights related to user engagement on your sponsored LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn pages, Linkedin groups, or Influencer posts if the case. And also showcase recommendation to implement in order to improve your numbers and the results of your LinkedIn content.
LinkedIn Best Practices 14: Study Other LinkedIn Company Pages
LinkedIn has a tool called Companies to Track. And no, this isn’t about snooping. This useful tool found at the bottom of the followers’ tab is great for helping you with your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
It shows you other businesses that are similar to yours and metrics such as their social engagement, number of followers, and follower growth. You can use this information as a yardstick for the performance of your LinkedIn company page. It can help you tell whether your company page growth is steady compared to other similar LinkedIn company pages with a similar average number of followers or if it needs tweaking.
You can use it to measure how well your content drives social engagement and the type of content that performs the best.
LinkedIn Best Practices 15: LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Updates
In case your budget allows it and you want faster results, then you can use LinkedIn ads to amplify the power of your content. LinkedIn offers you a bunch of features allowing you to target and refine the target audience you want to communicate your message to. For instance, you can target specific job titles or industries. Therefore, your messages reach exactly the type of people you need in order to grow your business.
You can find out in the video below more details why LinkedIn is a prominent channel for B2B advertising:
Best Practice 16: Create Your Own Group
Creating a group can be a smart decision only if you have a strong number of followers who will form a solid foundation. People look for evidence before they join a group. Therefore, you need to count on your connections who can convince new followers to become active in your group.
And of course, you need to be aware of your competition. There are many groups on LinkedIn, in fact too many, especially promotional ones. This means that you have a mighty competition. If you want your group to be successful you need to bring a new and interesting idea to the table. Moreover, apart from promoting your products, you need to create discussion topics and encourage people to share their ideas.
NowLinkedIn Groups integrate into the main site and mobile apps, they are more user-friendly, more engaging, and integral part of the prime LinkedIn experience. Groups benefit from an admin functionality and have the capabilities of being managed via Android or iOS apps.
So, if you are planning to have a group on LinkedIn this is a great moment to start.
Best Practice 17: Nurture Your Connections
If persons from your connections list take some minutes to say something positive about your business, then you should show them how much you appreciate it. Always leave a comment when you receive feedback from one of your connections. If the person who commented is not on your connections list, then this is a fantastic opportunity to connect with them. You can also stand out by replying to the people who send you a connection invite. People are so busy with their activities that they don’t pay so much attention to the power of these small actions.
There is no doubt that LinkedIn is a powerful tool that can boost your business. These best practices will help you use your talent to its fullest potential and show your clients that you have something to say in your niche.
If you use this platform for your personal profile, you can also apply the tactics listed above. LinkedIn is great when you want to stay updated with the latest trends in your industry.
Conclusion
Implementing a LinkedIn strategy is definitely not as difficult as it might seem at a first glance. It is a powerful tool for those who want to leverage their business. These practices show you that this is an achievable goal. The above-mentioned LinkedIn best practices for business in 2020 will help you build a stronger profile and reach more customers than ever before.
2022 is coming to an end and before you know it 2023 will soon be here, and with the arrival of a new year also appears the excitement regarding new promotional campaigns for your brand. But before you get to that, how about a quick content audit for 2022 to check the results of your content efforts from this year?
There’s no better way to start a new campaign than based on the results of an SEO content audit data because, from all the experiments you ran throughout the year, you’ll be able to replicate the strategies that worked and eliminate the ones that didn’t.
There’s no single score that can tell you whether your efforts were fruitful or not, this is why a search engine optimization audit uses various content audit tools (like SemRush’s content audit tool, Ahref’s, MOZ, etc.) to analyze the whole campaign and help you eventually improve the quality of your content which will lead to improved traffic.
So, this article will simplify it for you and leave you with a better understanding of the whole purpose of a content audit and why it’s important, especially now.
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Content Audit Definition and Why Is a Content Audit Useful
In very simple terms, it’s the process of tracking down all content produced by your campaign or company, or brand and organizing it to find out what worked and what failed. A much deeper content audit definition would be the process of obtaining a detailed overview of all content, following a comprehensive analysis using performance metrics from a variety of sources to determine which one is going to be improved, removed, or retained as is.
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Generally, it’s the only way to discover the options that will improve the overall quality of your site and in turn improve rankings and conversion rates. It also gives a boost to your SEO and content marketing efforts.
Here are 4 main reasons why you need an SEO content audit:
1. Identify What’s Working and What’s Not
As you already know, not all your content gets the same response, some will be a huge hit and others will just fill the space. So, how will you know which content thrived and which one was missed? By going through each of them, if you don’t do this, you might end up wasting so much time, effort, and money on dysfunctional content and campaign strategies.
2. Goals and Objectives
How good is your content from the point of view of achieving its objectives? Are you raking up any ROI? A content audit is the only way to track your content’s performance in terms of lead generation and conversions.
3. Update! Update! Update!
As time goes on, many changes impact the tech and marketing world. So, yesterday’s data and insights might not be useful today. And that’s valid for content as well: facts and data need accuracy and these changes very often lately. Running an audit ensures your content is updated and as relevant as possible to your audience.
4. Website Performance
Another key thing is to measure how friendly your website is to search engines and gauge how smooth it is for your users to navigate through it and its speed. The UX content audit has to be done to check the robustness of your website’s technical framework and infrastructure. A good starting point is to test your site with a tool like PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix, to have a clear overview of all aspects that impact your site’s performance.
Who Should Do a Content Audit?
Generally, the age and size of your site determine whether you need a content audit and how detailed it should be. A fairly new site may not require a content audit yet. However, if your site has been around for some time and has some old or outdated content, you may want to re-evaluate it to see whether it still aligns with the current status of your business.
Having established all the above information, the next question appears:
How Do You Go About Conducting a Content Audit?
Check the image below to find some Content Audit Strategies valid for the most common cases:
The process of a website content audit starts by registering all your content available for indexation in search engines. It is then analyzed through a variety of metrics. The actions taken after this analysis differs depending on your strategy or site.
The process can be divided into the following phases;
Content Inventory and Content Audit
Analysis and recommendations
Summary and reporting
A. Content Inventory and Content Audit
This phase starts by crawling your site and listing in a file all its content and all related metrics. Here are the metrics you’ll want to track for your content audits:
The whole idea of any content is to organically gain traffic, but this isn’t always the case. And therefore, it is of utmost importance to check your content strategy, your distribution channels, and the content itself.
Evaluating the organic traffic for each piece of content will offer you valuable information on your audience’s preference and which topics are of interest to her. And also, you will have the chance to identify which pieces of content do not perform and find out the proper explanation for this. Check your Google Analytics and Google Search Console reports to gather the necessary insights.
Backlinks
Backlinks are great to reinforce your domain authority, but some of them can be hazardous. Through auditing your content regularly, you will manage to identify and get rid of the dangerous ones that can affect your rankings. You can check on your backlinks with a free tool like Ahref’s Backlink checker.
Ideally, your content should lead a user from a search engine to your site where they will get more information as they navigate to the rest of your website, but if this isn’t the case, then it’s an indicator that there’s something wrong with your content.
Time Spent on Page
Depending on the type of your content, whether long or short form, by looking at the average time spent you will know if your content is right for your audience or not. For instance, if you have a long blog post of about 2500 words but the average time spent is 30 seconds, then this shows something is not right.
Pages Views Per Session
It’s also important to find what pages the users visited while they were on your website. This can offer you ideas and insights on how to improve your content in the future.
New and Returning Users
A returning user probably means you did something right, if they’re not a customer yet, they’re near to becoming one. But a new user is also a great thing! Therefore, your primary purpose should be to retain as many as possible of existing customers and gain more and more new ones.
Your Main Sources of Traffic
Pinpoint your main sources of traffic. If for instance, your largest flow of traffic is from Pinterest, then it will require you to post there more.
In general, the above metrics will give you insights into user behavior, engagement, SEO, and sales.
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Steps of the Content Audit Process:
1. Collect the URLs and Their Meta Descriptions
So, first, you need to collect all the URLs of the pages of your site you want to audit and list them all in a content audit spreadsheet. To make it easier for you, you can use a content audit tool from a plethora of tools available such as Ahrefs, Google Analytics, SEMRush, and many more.
These tools will easily audit your content based on your site map data and also list for you the web pages that are important to you. In case you don’t have a sitemap, you can use a sitemap generator tool like XML Sitemaps generator to create one for your website. Having a sitemap goes beyond facilitating a content audit, it enables search engines to understand the organization of your website and brings up all the important pages.
2. Categorize Your Content
After you’ve collected your URLs, you now need to categorize them into the following categories:
Author (if the case – when you have more authors or more teams creating content)
Content type e.g. web pages, landing pages, blog posts, ebooks, etc.
Meta description
Date of publication or last editing (helps identify stale data)
After categorizing all your content, organize all the information in a dashboard that can automatically generate a list of URLs using a tool like Screaming Frog, or create columns (using content audit spreadsheets) with your metrics to gather data for each web page. And before the very next stage of analysis, save yourself some headaches by removing any unwanted data, these may include:
Blank columns
Single value columns
Duplicate columns
Meta-keywords
B. Analysis and Recommendations
This is the second phase and here is the place you start to make sense of all the hard work you have been putting in. The goal of this entire procedure is to identify gaps and weak points, as well as the strengths of your content in order to build on them and improve on the weaknesses.
The content issues to evaluate in this phase can be put into these categories:
Relevance – Very old content that’s no longer valid.
Quality – Awfully written articles e.g. keyword bloated articles or simply inaccurate data.
Duplication – Internally repeated on other pages or externally e.g. through Review comparisons.
Remember the metrics discussed earlier? Well, this is where they come into play. Here they will help you evaluate the data and define a clear course of action with respect to what your content audit says.
The easiest way to start your analysis is by creating two columns next to each URL. One column is for labelling the actions and the next column is to list notes.
Here are some guidelines:
New Content
Leave this out because it needs some time to gain traction and make some sense.
Impressions
If you get a high rate of impressions from GSC, perhaps the metadata (title tag & meta description) and content should be improved. Label it “improve”
Page Views
Use your most valuable metric to filter your data, for instance: traffic or time on the page. You could start focusing on pages with fewer than 70 views.
Status Codes
Let the URLs that you’re looking through have a status code of at least 200.
Social Shares
Exclude URLs with a large number of social shares.
Objective Completions
Consider the number of objectives that are completed by each page and leave out any pages that are converting.
Backlinks
Redirect any backlinks or referring domains to similar pages and label that action as “Redirect” then note that under the notes list in your column.
Keywords
If you have articles with a big number of keywords from the analysis, label this as “improve”
Thin Content
You may have several pages with very thin or similar content; you can merge these together and then label them “consolidate”. You can also consolidate pages with similar topics or duplicate content.
Rewrite
Rewrite important pages such as the home page or the page with top products, pages with good links and social metrics, and pages with good traffic. Label “Rewrite/Update”
Remove
Now if there’s anything else left after this, label it as “remove”.
With your analysis completed, your next steps of action should be to carry out your action plans based on your objectives or goals. It should include how you intend to recreate your best-performing content as well as improve all underperforming content to be able to meet up expectations and your targets.
Here are a few actionable tips that you can follow:
Update your Calls to Action; Replace your old campaign content with something fresh and relevant to reignite your content marketing funnel that will eventually improve your conversion.
Re-use your content; recreate your pieces of content and try publishing them in different formats for a change.
Add images and videos; Videos can drive up to 200% organic traffic to your site. Therefore, make your content more captivating by integrating videos and images and you will see the traffic soaring.
Optimize your internal links; reduce bounce rates by adding internal links to new and relevant content.
Generally, align your website by avoiding common SEO mistakes and thus give your users a smooth experience. You can also take advantage of Google Search Console to update Google about your newest content.
Having gotten to this point, you’re now able to see whether your content is hitting the target or absolutely missing it.
For the high-performing content, make note of the content details audit, consider what the topic was, who produced it and the time it was published.
Replicating your success strategy can definitely help you create similar high-performing content. But for the ones that don’t make a hit, consider also noting the channels used, at times it’s not the content that is the problem, but rather a blend of issues such as the producer of the content, time of publishing, or the content type.
Final Thoughts
Going forward, the content audit doesn’t just stop here, a deliberate effort of keeping low-quality content away from Google’s index must be a continuous process.
There’s also no one-fits-all strategy or content audit template that you must follow always or that works for everyone; rather, audits can vary in type, size, scope, or approach. The key thing is how relevant is it to your goals and how it helps you improve your results
It is recommended to stay creative and logical while conducting your audit and come up with the most appropriate solutions that will improve your overall content strategy.
This is 2023, so it’s not an issue of whether your business or brand is on social media or not. It’s almost certain that it is. But the question of the moment is which social media platforms are you using and whether you’re using any social media management tool.
In today’s world, a social media strategy is a vital concern for any business that wants to stand out in its field and reach out to a wider audience. A social media strategy involves several steps that must be repeated daily in order to become an industry leader through engagement with current and potential customers.
That’s why a large number of agencies prefer to utilize specific tools to achieve these results.
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There are several useful tech solutions that ease the burden of juggling multiple social media accounts that are available for all types of businesses. Whether you’re looking to schedule, get analytics, design social posts, or research or all these put together, you’ll find a social media management tool to match your needs.
Remember an effective social media platform extends to planning, this means there’s a lot of collaborating with various people including the clients themselves. So, between creating ideas and getting approvals to creating workflows, you will find that some of these tools such as the social media calendar are very handy during planning and through the implementation stage of the strategy.
Why Use Social Media Management Tools
Imagine using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn for your social media and needing to post on each and every one of these platforms daily and at times several times a day. That would be tedious, to say the least.
So, here are a few reasons why you should use a management tool:
a. Organize Your Social Media Calendar with Ease
The best social media management tool will help you stay on top of your posts, what you have planned to do, your next post, and the type of content to create. It also brings support to building a social media strategy because it will help you observe what’s working and what’s not.
A good social media management tool will offer you data that you can use to evaluate your decisions based on what worked and what didn’t work in the past.
They will show you for instance who is engaging with your content the most, the kind of posts are performing best, the best time to post in order to reach most readers, and also the platform that performs the best overall.
These details will surely guide your next steps in your social media marketing strategy.
c. Monitor Multiple Accounts in One Place
So, as said earlier, rather than login into each social media platform individually, these social media management tools allow you to manage all your accounts from a single interface. On top of making your life a whole lot easier, it also improves your efficiency.
d. Boosts Engagement
Isn’t this the main scope of every marketer and business? Most of these tools will allow you to centralize all your messages into one place, where giving that single response might just be what you needed to gain another loyal customer. You’ll also be able to interact with them when they share, like, or even follow your account.
e. Team Collaboration
For most businesses, chances are that the social media strategy involves a team of people working together, so it’s important to find a channel through which everyone can stay in the loop. This will avoid scenarios where 2 or more people respond to the same message. Social media management tools are designed to streamline all team communication through the use of a shared inbox.
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So, How Do You Know What Is the Best Social Media Management Tool to Use?
There is a plethora of good social media management tools out there, so it is rather easy to get confused. But, as you go through the following list, you will be able to identify the ones that fit your unique organizational needs and integrate them better with your strategy.
Most people running their own businesses or social media managers first want to find out what is the best free social media management tool. Well, we all know that most often free means dealing with a limited version of a tool. Thus, there is no such thing as a best free social media tool, if you want to manage multiple social channels. And most social media management tools offer for free a trial period of 2 weeks or a month to test the services.
With that said, here are the best social media management tools to enhance your workflows and catapult your social media strategy to the next level:
Has a free plan, a 30-day free trial, and plans that start at $99.
This is probably the most successful social media management tool. This tool offers features that you can use to manage all your social media accounts from a single dashboard. Besides enabling you to create and schedule content and providing you with analytics, it also measures your ROI as far as your campaigns are concerned. Plus, it also runs your social media ads.
Some of the features that make it stand out include a limited free plan, compatible with the major social media platforms and it offers free training courses to help you get started. No wonder it’s most marketers’ favorite tool.
The analytics graph will show you the number of clicks per day, as well as the geographical locations of these people. It will also show you the top referrers and links and this is free for all plans.
Hootsuite will also enable you to follow topics that are relevant to you with their social media following feature. You can use it to filter conversations through the use of hashtags, keywords, and location, and even in multiple languages, in order to keep track of what’s being said about your brand, your competitors, and the whole industry in general.
It also offers a centralized messaging feature you can use to respond to messages by assigning this to the appropriate team member.
Has a forever-free plan, and a 14-day trial with the cheapest plan starting at $6.
This is an intuitive tool, featuring a clean and quite easy-to-use interface. Buffer enables content publishing, boosts engagement, and offers analytics. It also includes team collaboration features for smooth and effective functioning.
Buffer’s functionality works in three directions: Publish, Reply, and Analyze.
Under “Publish” the team members can contribute if they have full access, alternatively, the posts can be submitted to the managers for review since they have tweaking rights.
The “Publish” feature allows you to publish your content across all platforms and an overview of all posts scheduled.
The “Reply” function is all about engagement, as well as details referring to who is liking, sharing, following stats, plus location and sometimes the company they work for and management level they have. This function goes further to include old chats even fresh conversations for easy tracking. Managers are able to assign specific interactions to any team member they deem fit while internally adding notes to each task. It’s also very effective in upholding excellent customer service.
Buffer’s “Analyze” function offers a unique approach, where there is a feedback loop that spins back any content that stands out. This means while going through post metrics, the post that did best can instantly be shot back to the queue with just a click with the ability to edit it if need be.
In short, Buffer has a competitive offer and provides value to its users.
This tool sort of gives the other tools a run for their money, here’s why. Sprout Social integrates with Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest and has an all-in-one scheduling dashboard that allows you to seamlessly switch between these platforms for better management.
You’re able to queue your posts and optimize the captions and tags for each platform. It includes a ViralPost feature that guides you on the best time to publish your post, i.e. when your audience is highly likely to engage.
Sprout developed a smart inbox feature that instantly prompts you when you have a message from your followers; this immediate responsiveness is especially useful for conversions, people generally like responsive brands. The smart inbox compiles your incoming messages from your different platforms and allows you to use a tag or branded keyword filters to sort the messages in order of relevance. It allows you to assign these messages to the relevant team member to handle it and when done properly, this is really great for your customer service.
Moreover, Sprout Social provides you with a comprehensive analytics and reporting function. Besides giving you the most functional hashtags for your content, you access insights like audience growth, post engagements, impressions, clicks, and general performance of your posts on all platforms.
It highlights the most engaging content you created and that your audience likes as referral traffic plus conversions, therefore offering an opportunity that you can leverage. When used properly, Sprout Social features are a great place to start in developing your impact on your audience.
Price: From $792 per month Inclusive of the Marketing Hub Professional Tier
This tool is versatile and saves you lots of time since it schedules your content, integrates all your social networks with your blog, and keeps track of your messages and mentions all at once. Your marketing is integrated with your CRM, therefore you’re able to figure out the number of leads and customers you’re getting directly from your social media platforms.
The unique thing about Hubspot that makes it stand out as a social media management tool is that it works as part of the Hubspot Marketing Hub and therefore besides managing your social media, it facilitates your entire marketing effort through a very smooth integration.
So, what are some of its features?
You’re able to share posts and other types of content from the same interface you’ll be using to build your marketing campaigns. You will be equipped to automatically share any fresh content from your blog to your social networks as it gets published.
It enables you to schedule your content and suggests the best time to post for maximum reach. It monitors your social mentions and enables you to create and use keyword monitoring for relevant interaction.
It offers social reports that permit you to compare how different platforms or campaigns are performing, meaning that whether you will be publishing straight from HubSpot or elsewhere, you’ll still get a report on the effectiveness of your social strategy from one central point. And this ability to do all your marketing under one umbrella is the core reason why it’s a brilliant tool.
Zoho pricing starts at $10 per month and offers a free trial.
If you’re looking for team collaboration, this is another fantastic social media management tool. It has the (now almost standard) features that include a calendar for scheduling, as well as a feature for bulk scheduling where you can create as many posts as you like and then schedule them up in one go.
Here is a brief breakdown:
It offers unique timeslots for bulk scheduling your content and has SmartQ that can publish your content at peak times when your audience is active. Zoho includes a listening dashboard that can create columns through which you can track your mentions, keywords or reviews, or conversations around your brand.
You can view all incoming engagements as they happen and may respond in line to all your messages or assign them to a team member.
Zoho has a complete sphere of analytics and permits the creation of tailor-made reports for all your platforms, using appealing graphs and charts.
Later pricing begins at $18 per month and has a free version but does not offer a free trial.
If your social media strategy revolves around Instagram, then Later is the best social media management tool for you. It comes with a visual publishing calendar that is easily editable, with a drag-and-drop feature, it allows you to preview your posts before publishing in order to keep a consistent theme of your feed.
One key feature that stands out is the blissful content organization function that lets you sync your images and videos from any location, be it your mobile device, desktop, or Google Drive. Besides, it allows you to tag your content meaning you can find it with ease and repost it whenever you want.
Finally, Later has built-in analytics features to help you keep track of all your posts and have a global overview of your Instagram marketing. Even though Later mainly focuses on Instagram, you can also use it for other platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
This one starts at $65 per month and offers a 14-day free trial.
E-Clincher is packed with features as well, from a content scheduler, an inbox or social customer relations management feature, smart queues for auto-posting, suggested content including curation, influencer alert, keyword monitoring, and essential analytics reports.
The auto-post is the most appreciated feature that allows users to publish bulk content that could last for months! There is the possibility to recycle the content that performed well. It supports video publishing, animated GIFs as well as auto link shortening.
The social inbox enables you to manage your entire social media engagement from one single place. E-Clincher offers social listening features that help you monitor relevant conversations. And lately influencers’ discovery and engagement.
When it comes to client management, E-Clincher offers a clean workplace feature for each client. This means a separate calendar, analytics, inbox, and various assigned team players. And as said, it allows you to generate reports through fully customizable white-label analytics reports.
It supports all the major social media platforms including Google My Business and Google Analytics.
Pricing starts at $29 per month per user and offers a free 14-day trial.
So, what does Sendible offer?
Bulk content scheduling to as far in the future as you need. You can create bespoke posts for each client’s post for every social platform, taking advantage of hashtags or attachments that can boost your organic reach. Using the publishing calendar offered, you can get a view of your content and rearrange it through a drag-and-drop feature.
You can also enhance your posts with visual content since you’re able to upload videos and images from other sources; you can share your stellar content using the RSS feeds, preview your social media posts, and much more.
The analytics feature here allows you to track your social media efforts and get custom reports that can be delivered directly to your clients’ email daily, weekly, or even monthly. And finally, it enables social listening that can keep you in the loop of what’s being said about your brand. A unique feature is how it can sort your messages according to their sentiment: positive, neutral, and negative.
If you’re looking for the right tool to help you curate relevant content, then Social Pilot is the place to be. Their content curating function allows you to search for ideas based on relevant keywords and industries (e.g. hair and beauty industry) and this simply makes your content creation work a whole lot easier.
For agencies handling multiple accounts, there is a client management feature that allows access without requiring countless passwords and logins. There is an option of inviting your clients, so when they log into a social media account, they’re automatically added to your accounts lists.
The client management feature also offers white labeling, meaning you can add your company name plus logo to your emails as well as to the panel the clients see and therefore they don’t need to know the social media management tool you’re using.
The rest of the standard features Social Pilot offers include the possibility of connecting and managing over fifty social profiles from one place; an easy-to-understand analytics tool that tracks your efficiency and performance with the possibility of exporting the data into a PDF in a click; the use of social inbox feature that lets you reply, comment or send messages in real-time; a social media calendar that helps you visualize your content and a mighty bulk scheduling feature that can schedule up to five hundred posts for the coming days, weeks or months with a delete or edit feature.
Social Pilot works on all the major social media platforms.
What is the best free social media management tool? This list would not be complete without a tool that is reliable and free (at least for the moment)!
Unfold describes itself as a tool for storytellers, available on both Android and iOS. It is a great tool for bringing your creativity out to play.
On Unfold you can take advantage of the easy-to-use templates given to create engaging stories, you can edit your images, or use the videos filter and effects features provided. They have also offered curated fonts and styles to personalize your text and they let you export your stories and share them on other platforms with ease.
It’s worth noting that you can get extra features with Unfold+ for just $2.99. Such features include over 200 templates to create your stories, advanced editing tools, and early access to new collections.
Unfold is ideal for lifestyle brands as it offers an array of stylish collages that really draw an organic audience and engagement easily.
Barely Scratching the Surface
There are numerous high-quality social media management tools out there, this list does not sum them all, but it gives you a hint of what the best tools have to offer. The most important for you is to pick the tool that best fits your marketing needs, your budget as well as your marketing goals.
You can start by comparing your list of needs and requirements against what these tools offer in order to determine the tool that will make business sense to you. With some social media management tools free plans.
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