While social distancing turns into physical distancing and the situation prolongs, marketers are faced with increasing challenges, such as real-time access to performance insights as they try to tweak and optimize campaigns. Let’s look at some social media tools that can help keep their activities moving efficiently with some special provisions during COVID-19.
Social media tools have been providing marketers the arsenal they need to perform day-to-day activities while tracking and measuring various verticals. Now, more than ever, such tools can help marketers navigate the changing landscape with insights and the right tools to get the job done.
As more people spend increased time on social media and the internet, it has become imperative to find and engage them to build brand awareness and loyalty while you have their attention. To do so, it is essential to have the right technology to run successful campaigns. We compiled a list of the top social media tools that have special provisions during COVID-19.
Learn More: What Is Social Media Marketing? Platforms, Strategies, Tools, Benefits and Best PracticesOpens a new window
4 Social Media Tools You Need Right Now
We’re analyzing a few tried and tested tools to help you make it through these extended uncertain times and drive marketing activities to come out of this on top.
1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a complete social media management solution, with capabilities to schedule posts, internally set up tasks, browse multiple feeds, repost or retweet, research keywords, and for reporting and analytics. It also has a smart inbox feature that displays all the messages received across platforms, enabling you to respond, engage in conversations, and organize messages in one place. Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial period so you can simply synchronize your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest social accounts, and get started.
To support businesses as they face the challenges brought about by COVID-19, Sprout Social created a Featured Listening Topic tool around all things coronavirus. The free tool gets users insights into what customers are talking about and looking for. This data can enable marketers to narrow down data based on their industry and create well-informed, effective strategies to remain connected with their community.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is another social media management platform with the interface of a dashboard and has integrations for over 20 social media marketing platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest. Popular among social media and community managers, the platform also provides tips about the best time to post with real-time updates on brand mentions and engagement.
Hootsuite’s CEO, Ryan Holmes announced free access to its professional plans to help small businesses and nonprofits respond to the COVID-19 situation and reach people in unprecedented ways. They also launched free online workshops for health care customers and similar workshops for all organizations dealing with communication problems.
Learn More: 4 Best Practices for Social Media Managers to Follow During a Global CrisisOpens a new window
3. Buffer
Buffer, another popular social media management platform, is used by professionals, globally. It offers small businesses the tools to save time and effort scheduling, publishing, and analyzing social posts. This social and content automation platform is easy to use and lets users schedule in bulk, while providing custom reports and enabling cross-team collaboration. It also lets you evaluate past posts to understand what works and what doesn’t.
To help out during the pandemic, Buffer has offered free 90-day trials for new customers, free upgrades and subscriptions for affected businesses, and the ability to pause a subscription for those cutting costs. Through these offerings, the company is committed to helping small businesses during the crisis.
4. Socialbakers
Socialbakers is a unified marketing platform for AI-powered social media marketing. The marketing software-as-a-service platform acts as a suite for marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more. Users can gain competitive insights, optimize ads, follow conversations through social listening, and more. The solution also supports research and planning, content strategy as well as the complete influencer marketing process.
Socialbakers rolled out COVID-19 related features as the brand noticed an uptick in content creation and released a COVID-19 dashboard for brands, NGOs, and government organizations. CEO, Yuval Ben-Itzhak made it clear that brands need to focus on communication during a crisis. The platform is now free for NGOs and is offering similar features to government institutions.
Learn More: The Marketer’s Guide to Choosing The Right Social Media ToolsOpens a new window
Into the Future
While there is no shortage of social media tools available today, these are some of the most commonly used ones, today. The special COVID-19 related provisions have helped them become an integral part of a business’ strategy. With changes in consumer behavior and mindset, social media has evolved further to become the go-to medium for advertising during COVID.
With the current state of the economy, small and medium enterprises might need to make an impact with social media marketing now, more than ever. According to a recent Facebook surveyOpens a new window , “31% of small and medium-sized businesses have shut down [entirely] in the last three months. The situation is worse for personal business (52% of which report shutting down), hotels, cafes and restaurants (43%) and services like wellness, grooming, fitness, or other professional services (41%).â€
Given the uncertainty that lies ahead, social media presents an opportunity in the current turbulent times. Brands and marketers will do well to focus on open communication and customer experience through data-driven intelligence that social medial tools enable.
Tell us in the comments about what tools you are leveraging to optimize social media. For the latest news and trends update in the world of marketing, follow us on TwitterOpens a new window , FacebookOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .