Social Marketing Software

The biggest problem with social marketing is simple: It doesn't outsource well! So finding social marketing software for your business can be tricky, as you have to strike a balance between automation, and maximizing the social media services, and personalization, or messaging.

In my opinion, the part you or your team need to do is your messaging, the role of the software should be to get that message out there to as many places as quickly, easily, and efficiently as possible.

So what exactly should your social marketing software do? Well, that's a question you should answer before you waste your hard earned dollars on the next slick marketing piece that hits your inbox. Rather than wait for somebody to "sell" you on the services you need, why not make a list of your needs, then do your homework to find the service that will really hum for you?

To help you figure out your needs, here's a short list of vital social media components:

-Blogging
-Video marketing
-Facebook
-Twitter (micro-blogging)
-Social bookmarking
-Content marketing (Hubpages)
-Link building

These are the basics, but on top of that, there are hundreds of sites that could possibly be used in addition to these, all of which can add value to your social marketing campaign.

So the idea is that you create the messaging, and your social marketing software is your  tool to get that messaging out there as quickly and easily as possible, to as many places as possible.

Take Twitter, for example. Many small business people have a Twitter account, and are sending out short messages on a regular basis to their followers. But good social marketing software includes tools that will leverage that effort, distributing the same information to multiple sites at the same time, leveraging the entrepreneurs time and getting the same message to many places at once, without taking any more time for the entrepreneur.

To help you, here's the list I made before I chose social marketing software for my business. Obviously, your needs may be greater or smaller or simply different than mine, but hopefully this will help:

-Account set up. There are hundreds of social accounts (according to Don Crowther, there are now over 1,600!) This is mindless work that you really should have somebody else doing for you.
-Automation to get information distributed to as many places as possible. (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.)
-Providing blogging services such as auto-blogging, changing themes, adding lead capture boxes, Google analytics, or whatever else I want done.
-Social bookmarking. Every blog post and site I create needs to be bookmarked, but I don't want to do it! I include this in my wish list of things the software should do for me.
-Training on all the different social marketing methods
-Link building...

That's my list. I just want to get my message out there, I need software to leverage my time and energy so I do as little work as possible.

So my recommendation is that you make your own wishlist of services, then search the service that works best for you.