5 Trends to Note When Building Your 2015 Social Media Tool Kit

By Jill Kennedy of That’s the Idea

 

It’s challenging to keep up with the best resources and tools for your business with so many new apps emerging on what feels like a daily basis. Not only that, but if you’re new to the social media world, it’s intimidating to get started. How do you set time aside to test out apps and software to determine what’s best for your business? Learn more with this list of trends and affordable apps to check out as the new year approaches.

 

1.   Measurable Content

As the (very modern) saying goes, “there’s no use posting content if you aren’t measuring it”. Facebook and Twitter have integrated analytics that determine the best times to post, which demographics are viewing posts, and much more—thus creating a nice baseline to begin your journey into the wonderful world of social media.

If you want to take it a step further, check out LikeAlyzer. LikeAlyzer is great for an up-to-the-minute Facebook business page audit. It offers detailed analytics on the types of posts you create, the timing of your posts and suggestions on how to polish content for peak engagement. Create and share some content and run a scan on LikeAlyzer for helpful feedback. Similarly, Twitonomy allows you to view your Twitter presence in comparison to your followers in great detail, accompanied by interactive graphs and detail analysis.

 

2. Affordable, Eye-Catching Visuals

Customers want to see what businesses are up to on a social level. The typical business owner wears many hats—the accounting hat, the management hat, the writing hat, the parent hat—but the graphic design hat is not necessarily a common one. If this applies to you, check out Pixlr, an app that allows you to edit photos from the comfort of your devices. It can be used online across your devices and even has an offline Autodesk tool you can download. Pixlr can be used to add text and visual effects to the everyday image, making the most simple office photo marketable.

 

3. Listening Time

Many businesses push, push and push content that will get them sales without considering social media for what it is: a platform to converse with your customers directly with personalized responses. You can budget your social media time for researching content to post, or you can spend that short period of time listening to what your ideal customer is posting about.

There are many great ways to listen, but Tagboard and SocialMention make it especially easy. Tagboard provides a Pinterest-like experience with tweets, allowing you to see how they are used, how often they are used and whether the response is negative or positive. SocialMention allows you to search up any keyword across networks, giving you access to a plethora of resources to increase your knowledge on what others are saying about specific topics. Once you have spent your short period of time listening, you can create content that answers some of the questions people are asking online or addresses concerns they may have.

 
4. Social Buying

If you are selling products through an online shop, consider selling them through social media. It’s convenient as it saves check out time and unnecessary clicks from the customer. Not only that, but it allows you to reach channels where your target audience may spend a lot of their down time.

If this is a step you’d like to take, try out Soldsie, an app that allows you to sell products through Facebook and Instagram by connecting with your existing shop. Customers simply need to comment with the word “sold” and then they will be taken through the checkout process from there. Alternatively, there is BeeTailer, a Facebook selling app, for those who operate their online shop out of Shopify.

 

5. Community Building

There is a great value in an understanding of your local market—especially in the ability to take online connections offline. Listening can be taken a step further when you actively serve content to your community. Consider following local news channels and blogs about community initiatives. When you’ve immersed yourself in those communities, check out TrendsMap, an app that allows you to see what hashtags are being used in your local area. Utilize these tags to receive more local reach in your community.

 

By noting and working with these trends and apps, your social media strategy will come together more clearly. Test them out to learn what works best for your business. We’d love to hear what apps you’re using to make your social media time block more productive and efficient!