What Makes a Good Social Media Tool?

Many of our clients are small business owners who are looking to grow their business and they recognize that social media is a great way to do that. However they struggle with setting up systems to manage it along with the millions of other business priorities they're faced with.

Searching for a Silver Bullet

There are so many tools to help manage social media and it takes time to learn each one. Jumping from one platform to another isn't reasonable but many business decision makers do because they're trying to find 'the perfect' tool; that one-platform that-does-everything kind of resource.

A long time ago I learned that 'perfect is the enemy of good'. The fact is, we'll find any excuse to find the 'perfect' solution while missing opportunities and falling behind the rest. We want something that 'checks all the boxes' before we invest have you even considered what those 'boxes' are?

Consider looking at the following when evaluating social media tools and platforms.

1. Easy to use - It's only a timesaver if you don't struggle using it each time. Every tool you use should feel intuitive to you and have a great knowledge base so you can quickly learn and teach others in your organization.
2. Saves time - The goal here is to streamline your social media management so you can focus on other aspects of your business. Scheduling and automation are functions that should be built in.
3. Increase brand awareness - You don't have time to do things simply for the sake of doing them. Choose where you spend your time wisely, if your target customers aren't using SnapChat then you shouldn't either.
4. Affordable - Gone are the days where everything is free on the internet so it's most likely that you will be purchasing a subscription to use the tools that are right for you and your business. Free tools exist but are often limited or restricted and will have you wishing you could do more in no time. Take advantage of the free ones as much as you can but make sure that when you're at a point where you need to upgrade that they have affordable options available to you.
5. Has longevity - There's nothing worse than investing time in an online system only to have it be bought out and shut down by a competitor. When selecting tools to invest in consider how long they've been on the market and if they're going to be around in a couple years.

There are lots of options out there for managing your social media. Determining which ones to use will depend on your business goals and capacity.

Need a way to set up some social media systems to make managing it all easier? We have an online workshop coming up that will help you get control of your systems and make life easier.

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