How to Encourage New Social Media Tool Adoption

With Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn founded in 2004, 2006 and 2003 respectively, social media is fairly new to the world wide web. More new is the adoption of social media networks in business marketing practices as 77% of Fortune 500 companies are now using social media to attract consumers, clients, and even potential job candidates. With the big 3 social media networks comes a myriad of tools that enable businesses to automate, market, and sell their products to targeted customers all around the world. Social media tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite that allow you to schedule and automate messages making this process easier can still be hard for new social media users to navigate though.

Whether you’re working for a small business trying to get your company on the social media map, or working for someone who believes in the old fashioned posting method, i.e. casual posting by hand each day, changing your social media strategy is inevitable. Getting someone to change the way they do a process is a process in itself, so let’s go through it step-by-step…

Step 1 – Show

There are so many proof points that show how automating and scheduling constant social media updates is beneficial to your marketing strategy. Especially if you find yourself doing a part of your job that you consider to be simple and mindless, then it can most likely be automated. And why not automate something if you have a chance? Then you can focus more time and attention on other projects.

It is estimated that 18-34 year olds spend an average of 3.8 hours a day on social media sites. Those almost 4 hours could involve traffic to your website if you’re using social media tools to get your stuff out there regularly throughout the day. Using these tools can also tell you when the prime time is to post for your industry, also helping to contribute to more traffic.

The best way to do this: Make a presentation with Canvas and send it in an email. Be sure to show how other companies or your competitors are using social tools to improve social strategy, etc.

Step 2 – Sign Up

Sign up for the free demos and trials of different social media tools. This is a great way to show everyone how these tools work and what your company or department specifically could benefit from by using them. That way you don’t have to fully commit until you’ve seen how it can make your day more productive.

Another way to see the tools in use and find out more about them is to sign up for different webinars in the social media realm. Many focus specifically on certain  aspects of the tool and how to utilize it according to your business strategy.

The best way to do this: By just going to the homepage of the different social tools, you can sign up for a free trial right then and there. You can get notifications for different social media tool focused webinars by signing up for the newsletters of different social tool companies, such as Hootsuite and Hubspot.

Step 3 – Compare

Does price matter? How many users do you need to be able to have? Or accounts? What about the amount of times that you have decided to post? These are all essential questions to ask when you are making the decision on which tool to use when you’re trying to boost your social media strategy. Making a comparison of all the different social tools that you are considering as an option and then presenting it to the people involved in the decision making process is a great idea. Especially if you’re the one pulling the most for this new tool, going through the effort of making this will show how invested you really are in this decision.

The best way to do this: Make a matrix of all the pros and cons of each tool you may be considering as well as what features tools have that another may not. Most importantly though, be sure to put what you as a company are looking for most in a tool somewhere on the document so you’ll able to see who has what you want and who doesn’t.

If you’re having trouble deciding on a tool to help your social media strategy or convincing others to bring one on, try using these different steps to help you! Do you already use a social media tool? Which ones are your favorite?

The Branchers

We build the best damn marketing campaigns on the planet. And we do it for industries and companies you might not identify as easy to market (right away). Working here takes a very special kind of person.