If you have followed me in my writing journey here on Hot In Social Media blog, you should know that I’m a huge fan of trying out new social media tools. As a matter of fact, I need to use social media tools to speed up the completion of my daily tasks.
But that’s not the case for today. Today’s article is all about “Should you be using social media tools?”
I hope you find this article useful and feel free to drop a comment at the end of this article.
Should You Use Social Media Tools?
1. Time is vital
I am sure social media marketers, like you, can relate to this. We just don’t have enough time and time that passed will not come back. Sadly.
We are often tied up with so many tasks and it felt like there is no end to it. Especially in social media, a simple task can take hours to complete.
If the time factor is something you consider dearly, then you need to use social media tools. With proper usage, they are able to save you time and a lot of money as well.
Don’t forget that, time is money!
When you use social media tools, you are pretty much able to save time through:
- Social media analytics
- Finding and reconnecting with others
- Scheduled publishing
If you take a moment to think about this, the above actions will take up a lot of your time on a daily basis. Hence, this is where social media tools come into play.
2. The cost wise
Need to find a reason to convince yourself that social media tools aren’t good? Here’s one: Social media marketing isn’t cheap and these tools usually come with a hefty price.
Sure, there are more affordable tools like: Buffer, HootSuite and Post Planner, but if you are looking for a comprehensive social media tool that provides a lot of features and is able to do ‘things’ humans do, it is going to cost you some money.
Generally, a good social media tool comes with a hefty price tag above $50 per month. You might think that $50 is an affordable price to work on but for startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses, they may feel that the price is not worth it and will just add more burden to the business.
However, there is one simple solution for this matter. You can easily reduce the cost if you have a firm understanding of your social media needs. You see, there are many different tools you can use for different marketing requirements. Here are some examples:
- Marketing on Twitter: SocialBro
- Marketing on Facebook: Post Planner
- All in one marketing: Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Meet Edgar, Sendible
3. Social media tools for (complete) automation
One of the biggest mistakes done by many marketers is considering social media tools as an alternative to social media automation. Now, they are partially right!
Social media tools can replace many human actions such as automatic posting but they certainly aren’t effective when you consider them as your complete automation tool. As a matter of fact, social media tools are only able to do a fraction of what human can do.
Therefore, you are going to affect your social media marketing strategies dearly if you have a wrong mindset.
What social media tools can do?
They can automate a lot of social media tasks from following, commenting, replying and scheduled publication.
What social media tools cannot do?
Do everything that a human does!
At the end of the day, it is important to understand that social media tools have their limitations. You should only use them if you are 100% aware of their strength and weaknesses.
See also: 5 Social Media Tools You Need To Be Using In 2016
4. Social media tools for replacement of employees
One of the best time to use social media tools is when you want to reduce the cost of employing a full-time social media employee. For example, a full social media marketer would easily cost you over a thousand dollars in pay and a freelance social media marketer may cost under a thousand per project.
Depending on their job and tasks needed to be completed, you can easily use social media tools to replace them instead. Using premium social media tools such as Sprout Social will ensure that you are able to get the best out of social media even without a marketer.
While tools are not sufficient enough to replace a person as a whole, these social media tools are able to take up a huge chunk of the workload off your shoulders.
In the long run, you are saving a lot more money if you are able to integrate social media tools into your marketing strategies.
Apart from replacing the employees directly, social media tools are also able to reduce their workload. Therefore, you can reduce the workforce and as a replacement, provide your team with social media tools to ease their work.
5. Understanding how social media works
Last but not least, social media tools are able to teach us many things about social media. I am sure that for some businesses, they would opt for digital marketing agencies or freelancers to get the job done when the company does not have the right skill sets.
But do you know that you can learn a lot from these tools?
Here’s one example you can use. Hootsuite has an automatic posting capability and this means that HootSuite will automatically publish a post based on times your followers are most active. As Hootsuite allows you to integrate many social media platforms, you can easily determine the best times to publish (without using Hootsuite).
This can be done by using the Hootsuite Publisher setting and check on the previously published posts. You can also download the report to your local devices.
Let’s do a recap!
Now that you have read the above, what do you think about this? The question that is commonly asked, “Should I be using social media tools” had been answered.
Long story short, you should use social media tools if you are affordable for it and need help with social media. Of course, the cost wouldn’t be an issue since you can even get free tools or low paying ones nowadays.
But if you are using social media tools just to completely replace your social media marketing strategy, then that’s a huge problem which you need to consider!
See also: Top Social Media Monitoring Tools You Need to Try
