For any business, the social media space is a lucrative and very appealing environment to not just do direct marketing but also build and enhance a brand. Successful social media campaigns are mostly conducted using social media management tools which offer a plethora of advantages. By using these tools, brands stay a step ahead of their competitors because these tools are not only effective but they also help save a lot of time.
However, by using these tools and consequently increasing the visibility of their businesses, there are also some inevitable disadvantages associated with these tools.
In this elaborate post, we are going to go through both the advantages and disadvantages of using a social media management tool so that as a business owner who wants to harness the advantages of social media you can stay informed to effectively enhance your businesses visibility, presence and reputation online in order to improve the conversions and sales.
Advantages of Using A Social Media Management Tool
A Social Media Management Tool Can Help Increase The Online Visibility Of Your Brand
One of the core advantages of using a social media management tool is that it effectively helps increase the visibility of your brand. The ease of use and efficiency in posting that comes with using social media management tools heavily improves your consistency and builds trust with your users.
Under normal conditions, you would have to otherwise post manually, which costs you a lot of time and sometimes even money because you have to use the services of a human assistant. The best social management tools are the ones that take all this tedious work out of your hands and automate such tasks as making posts, responding to your clients, and offering customer support.
Social Media Management Tools Effectively Help You Improve Your Online Reputation
A good online reputation is the basic foundation of any thriving business; especially if you are running it online. In the online space, people have the unique ability to leave you negative feedback which is visible to your other prospects thus damaging you and costing you financially.
However, by using a social media management tool to help you, you can build your reputation and even have that much-needed advantage over your competitors. One of the ways you can do this using a social media management tool that automates your social customer service. With the right tool, you can respond to messages about your service or product on the fly without wasting any time or keeping your prospects waiting. This will not only cement your trust with them but will also directly grow your sales positively.
The Right Tool Will Help You Scale Your Business
When you start a business, you want to grow and take it to new levels. For this reason, one of the things you should focus on is automating most of your tasks and delegating them at the minimum cost without compromising on efficiency.
This is where social media management tools come into play. With just a click of a button, you want to automate all your posts and schedule them without having to spend hours doing it manually. By taking the time off your hands, the social media management tool is helping you scale your business so that you can focus on other areas such as production or marketing.
Moreover, these tools when used well can help you save money that would have otherwise been used for hiring someone to do the posting for you, allowing you to allocate it to other departments of your business.
Social Media Management Tools Provide You With Useful Data
Now, like never before, and thanks to social media management tools, you are now able to determine how your posts are doing. This is one of the most underrated functions of a social media management tool. When you are able to view the data on your posts, you are able to know what your audiences and users like and what they do not like and thus you are able to tweak your posts accordingly. With factual data, you are even in a position to make better business decisions. This can be cemented by the words of former C.E.O of the computing giant Carly Fiorina who was once quoted saying that; the goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.
You Can Know What Your Target Audience Wants By Using A Social Media Management Tool
When selling a product or a service, having the ability to know exactly what they want helps you sell to them better. The social media space is an ideal place to take the pulse of what your target audience demands and consequently get some feedback from your current users and clients. Using a social media management tool gives you the unique ability to listen to what your prospects want by conducting a survey or even by analyzing how your content is performing.
For example, if your brand includes a number of products and you often post an image, the more engagement a product generates means the more popular it is. With an elaborate dashboard that presents this information to you in a palatable and easy-to-understand manner, you can focus on that product and maximize your sales and returns. This is exactly the advantage a social media management tool presents you with.
Demerits of Using Social Media Management Tools
As we have listed above, anything good usually comes with an inevitable downside. The same applies to social media management tools. Although these may not completely be deal breakers for you as a business owner, they are important to put into consideration. Below is a list of the most common disadvantages associated with using social media management tools.
Social Media Management Tools Require Skills To Configure and Operate
As with any other application or software, you require some skills to effectively use social media management tools. Although these may be minimal, you need to know your way around the platforms to perform your tasks effectively. To solve this problem, you can spare some time to train your staff using the elaborate manuals that come with the social media management tools.
Social Media Management Tools Require Some Investment
If you are a startup, you might find that you are engaging the use of many applications, and it’s causing some form of financial burden before you even start recording any profits. But if you want to stay a step ahead of your competition when running your social media campaigns, the use of social media management tools is inevitable. Although it might cost some money, it is important to plan for a good social media management tool that will help ease your work and achieve the results you need.
Social Media Has the Risk Of Exposing You To Your Competitors
Social media management tools enhance your activities online and this can pose a risk for your business. This might work against you because in business you want to keep the cards that are the foundation of your success as close to your chest as possible. With this in mind, when you post about your products and your ideas online on your social media platform of choice, you inevitably risk exposing your secrets to your competitors. This is an inevitable risk, but you can counter the same by learning more tricks of the trade by following your competitors and improving on their ideas.
When Using Social Media, Your Errors and Mistakes Are Exposed To Everyone
What this indicates is that social media can be your best friend or your most destructive foe when it’s in the hands of the wrong person. This is because just as the lucrative and vibrant social media environment gives visibility to your business and its products, any of the mistakes you make will also be exposed, especially if you do not manage your posts well.
There is a common saying that the internet never forgets. This could never be more true when it comes to your social media posts. Since the posts are visible to your users and available for criticism, this may at some point work against you and maybe even dent your reputation.
In this post, expert blogger and celebrated internet marketing icon Neil Patel shares 50 Ways Social Media Can Destroy Your Business.
Concluding Remarks On The Advantages and Disadvantages Of Using a Social Media Management Tool
In this post, we have covered both the advantages and disadvantages of using social media management tools for your brand as a small business. It should however be clear that as a small business, the importance of using a social media management tool to boost and promote your business is inevitable.
We already know the advantages and disadvantages of social media management tools, but the best thing that any of them has is that they open your windows to new horizons and help you interact with your potential customers. Therefore, and to avoid the dreaded disadvantages, it is best to bet on good professional social media management. You can achieve this easily using a social media management tool like Hipsocial. This is an advanced and integrated social media management tool that goes beyond just helping you publish and schedule your content; it helps you monitor and manage and analyze your users using intelligent algorithms presenting you with useful data so that you can make informed decisions.