How do you prioritize all tasks related to social media marketing? From publishing content to monitoring the marketing campaign’s progress, it could be challenging to think of all the work a marketer needs to cover every day. Luckily, there are several time-saving and easy-to-use social media marketing tools available to aid you in completing such tasks.
But, how can you determine which tool is the right match for your needs?
This article covers the points you must consider to choose the right social media marketing tool for your business. However, before selecting a tool that best fits your needs, it’s significant to design an effective social media strategy first. We have laid the most vital points below to help you with the same.
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How to develop a social media strategy?
Know your buyer personas
It is crucial to conduct thorough research on your customer base, segregate them into different groups and then create their personas. It will enable you to understand their demands better and help you target them on the right social media channels.
Identify the right platform to conduct social media marketing
Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook are among the most famous platforms for social media marketing. The key is to start with a few platforms and figure out which one works best for the content you plan to develop and the target audience.
Create a social media content plan
You are required to constantly develop compelling and high-quality content which can help build and grow your business. Posting random content makes this task challenging, so having a social media content plan is crucial. Ensure that your content planning strategy matches your buyer personas and goals well.
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Have achievable social media goals
Identify a few of the goals that you wish to achieve through social media marketing. It could be anything from increasing your email list to driving engagement with giveaways or competitions. Pick the goals that match best with your needs.
How to choose the right social media marketing tool?
If you wish to choose the best social media marketing tool, determine the central issues that made you start searching for it in the first place. The aim here is to look for a suitable tool that can help resolve these issues and let you do things you couldn’t do before.
Here is a list of the major challenges witnessed by most social media marketers:
Publishing on different social media platforms manually
It isn’t easy to log in/out of every social profile and also network each time you want to post anything new for the target audience on various social media platforms. However, social media marketing tools make it easy to actively leverage your content on several social media platforms because they are designed to upload, edit and schedule many social media posts in one go.
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Moreover, they also come with additional features like an inbuilt media library and content suggestion that help you curate quality content.
Engaging with the audience
People tend to like a business that engages with its audience on social media platforms. However, several companies avoid proper engagement on social media and miss out on future business opportunities.
Being proactive, listening, and responding to comments might sound easy, but it is challenging to do so regularly. That’s where a social media marketing tool helps you track conversations related to your business across all your social media platforms and even identifies what people are talking about you.
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Monitoring results
Monitoring results in social media is a challenging task for marketers in particular. Earlier, it wasn’t easy to obtain and understand social media data. However, there are several amazing tools available now that make it easy to access data for marketers.
These tools help get an encompassing view of your social activities and how your engagement helps you achieve success.
Lack of financial and human resources
In a survey conducted with over 300 social media marketers, about 26 percent of the companies say that their biggest networking challenging online is the lack of proper resources. Several organizations, especially the small ones, hardly have the funds and workforce to run their daily social tasks.
But now, you don’t have to worry if you don’t have sufficient funds or a workforce. There are numerous affordable, robust and free social media marketing tools to aid you in managing numerous social profiles, run contests, monitor analytics on several platforms, and schedule posts by yourself.
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Other things to keep in mind while making the final choice
Pricing and billing options
The tool you choose must match your budget. Some free tools come with limited features, while others come with advanced features and therefore have a premium price. Hence, once you have a fair understanding of your goal, consider the price and billing options of the tool you plan on using.
Team collaboration
If you plan on inviting the other team members for collaborating and increasing productivity, ensure that you choose a tool that comes with support for team collaboration. A good social media marketing tool will offer you this option and a lot more.
Where to search for good social media marketing tools?
Now that you have better clarity on your needs, it’s time to begin your research. Here are some resources that you can use to find the best social media marketing tools:
Google
Product Hunt
YouTube
AlternativeTo
Quora
Capterra
Which one to use- Single-purpose or an All-in-One Tool?
The answer to this question entirely depends on how complex your issues are. If you’re witnessing all the mentioned issues, no Single-purpose social media marketing tool will work right for you. However, if you face one or two of the above-listed difficulties, you can then use a Single-purpose tool.
Here is a list of some of the most useful tools to manage your social media marketing effectively:
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Sprout Social: It is a great tool for tracking all your social media activities, engagement, and content.
Buffer: This is an incredible tool to schedule, publish and analyze your content without any hassle.
Edgar: It is an ideal tool if you want to recycle your best quality content automatically.
Tweetdeck: This is an excellent tool to manage Twitter accounts.
The ideal way to determine which social media strategy would work best for you is by testing different tools and content first and then measuring the final results. That is how you can learn what is most helpful for your business.
Conclusion
Selecting the most suitable and appropriate social media marketing tool is a huge investment in a social media strategy. The right tool will spare you a significant amount of vitality and time. Hence, it is crucial to take ample time to be clear on what issues or challenges you are facing before you start doing the research.
Manvendra Chaudhary, with over 5 years of professional experience as CEO of Unique News and Megalent Marketing, shares insights on life, business, and health for your success.
Ontario Sunshine List is released every year and it reveals the salaries of public sector workers who take home a salary in excess of $100,000. This year the list features 300,570 names which is 30,000 higher than last year of public sector employees with salaries over $100,000. The Ontario Sunshine list also features five employees working at the Ontario Power Generation who are among the top 10 earners with the province’s highest salary nearing $2 million.
Ontario had passed the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act in 1996 under the Mike Harris government and the stated aim of the act was to make the government more transparent and accountable. The $100,000 limit was a big deal then.
However the $100,000 in 1996 in relative terms in 2024 will be equivalent to $180,564.97. If you remove 300,570 people on this year’s Ontario Sunshine List for that salary threshold there you drop 279,781 names. In other words there will be many people who will not be able to own a house without help from family or an inheritance.
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In a nutshell it means that employees who take home a six figure salary package will still feel the pinch of Canada’s affordability crisis. The soaring inflation and rising cost of living a $100,000 salary doesn’t guarantee financial security in many parts of the country.
Also, to maintain the $100,000 threshold today, the province should have adjusted it to $55,381.73 in 1996. Ontario has fixed a threshold of $100,000, while the threshold varies in other provinces. Alberta, for example, has set a threshold of $125,888 for government employees and $150,219 for people in public sector bodies.
Not much information is available for the federal government, but a Canadian Taxpayers Federation access-to-information request revealed that 110,593 employees in the federal public service earned $100,000 or more in 2023.
There are a couple of options for Ontario and other governments with non-indexing disclosure requirements. Resetting the threshold to a number that makes more sense today and then continuing to index the threshold going forward seems feasible.
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We also don’t need to reveal the names of all individuals. The government could report aggregated salary ranges by job title rather than disclosing specific names below a second, lower threshold. This would maintain government accountability and transparency by still disclosing who the highest earners are.
As it stands, we have a list that publishes the names and salaries of potentially hundreds of thousands of people who could not afford to buy a house. This doesn’t seem aligned with the original intent of the disclosure act.
Some features of the Ontario Sunshine List 2024 are as follows:
The highest paid employee took a pay check of $1.9M
Public sector employees were paid salaries in excess of $100K
The Ontario Sunset list top position is held by Kenneth Hartwick, CEO of the electricity Crown Corporation with a salary of $1.93 million followed by chief strategy officer Dominique Miniere $1.2 million and chief projects officer Michael Martelli drawing $1 million as salary.
Public sector workers were paid counting in Bill 124 compensation
2024 budget revealed that Ontario deficit will triple
CEOs of the Hospital for Sick Children and the University Health Network figured in the top 10 list and each drew a salary of $850,000 each while CEO of the provincial transit agency, Metrolinx drew a salary of $838,097.
17 professors or associate professors at the University of Toronto drew a salary in excess of $500,000
Caroline Mulroney, president of the Treasury Board, stated in a release,
“The largest year-over-year increases were in the hospitals, municipalities, and services, and post-secondary sectors, which together represented approximately 80 percent of the growth of the list.”
Andrew Dudum, CEO and founder of Telemedicine Company Hims & Hers is facing flak on the social media after his reported statement that he wants to hire students and protestors who are taking part in the protest in support of Palestinians in Universities across the US.
A number of tech sector founders has also condemned his statements.
Dudum had posted on X,
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“If you’re currently protesting against the genocide of the Palestinian people and for your university’s divestment from Israel, keep going. It’s working. There are plenty of companies and CEOs eager to hire you, regardless of university discipline.”
He also posted a link to a page showing open positions at Hims & Hers.
X users have expressed their disapproval and have even called for a boycott Hims & Hers, and others said they are selling their stock in the company.
Cofounder of Palantir Technologies as well as the managing partner of early stage venture capital firm 8VC Joe Lonsdale responded on X and said
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“Real moral courage doesn’t involve joining a mindless mob, chanting anti U.S. and other woke pablum, following instructions not to debate or discuss your positions at all yet being indignantly righteous, while large numbers in the mob chant for violence and block Jewish students.”
While Hims & Hers spokesperson said Dudum were not available for comments, old posts by Dudum have been unearthed which puts in context his actions. Days before the horrific attack by Hamas’ terrorist against Israel on October 7, Dudum had posted –
“In pursuit for peace: Our leaders need to embrace nuance.”
Dudum further explained that he is a Palestinian American and had roots in and family in the West Bank and Gaza and said Hims & Hers’ values are based on a respect for human dignity and life.
Dudum wrote
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“It is upon those values that I believe all leaders and CEOs should use their platform today to call for an immediate cease fire. To actively recognize Israel’s right to defense and also recognize the means and manner in which they are responding violates international law. I ask us to find nuance, and share our voice today to help save innocent lives.”
Deadly protests have hit U.S. college campuses through last month and protest encampments have sprung across more than 40 colleges nationwide.
Police crackdown is on and there have been more than 1,900 arrests or detainments following a wave of activism at universities across the country.
Hims & Hers is a Telemedicine Company that links consumers with licensed healthcare professionals, enabling access to high-quality care for conditions related to sexual health, mental health, and more. It also offers its own range of products and is in a partnership with Los Angeles-based Hustle & Co. on media relations.
Trouble for Microsoft and OpenAI over copyright infringement is not coming to an end, as they face several lawsuits for violating copyrights.
On Tuesday, eight US newspaper publishers sued Microsoft for illegally reusing articles in AI products.
The 98-page long lawsuit further accused the tech companies of attributing erroneous information to the publishers.
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The eight newspapers that have filed the lawsuits include the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune.
They allege that OpenAI’s ChatGPT used their copyrighted articles to perfect its language models without permission.
The lawsuit was filed in a New York federal court on Tuesday. The publishers claim that OpenAI’s large language models, GPT-2 and GPT-3, were perfected using datasets containing text from their newspapers.
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The language models are designed to produce text based on human inputs and reproduce copies of the publishers’ works. Microsoft has been indicted for using newspapers for its Bing search index but seldom provided links to the original articles. Four months ago, The New York Times also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the tech giant of using data from its past content. It also asked for consent for usage, criticizing the use of full article excerpts in chatbot responses.
The latest lawsuit filed by the eight news outlets also demanded consent and fair value for using their content to perfect the AI language models. The lawsuit alleged that the AI tools literally regurgitate their content without directing users to the content source.
The lawsuit filings stated, “This lawsuit arises from defendants purloining millions of the publishers’ copyrighted articles without permission and without payment to fuel the commercialization of their generative artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT and (Microsoft’s) Copilot.”
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The eight newspapers that instituted the lawsuits are as follows:
The New York Daily News and The Chicago Tribune, both owned by Alden Global Capital
The Orlando Sentinel
The Sun Sentinel
The San Jose Mercury News
The Denver Post
The Orange County Register
The St. Paul Pioneer Press
OpenAI’s Response
OpenAI did not directly respond to the accusations but stated that it takes great care to support the news and media outlets. It also stated it is in continuous partnerships and conversations with various news outlets around the world to explore new opportunities, discuss problems, and seek out solutions.
Microsoft also stated that OpenAI has entered into fruitful partnerships with a number of publishers, which includes The Financial Times, The Associated Press, Spanish conglomerate Prisa Media, and Germany’s Axel Springer.
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