A Crowded Fire or an Octopus named Edgar?

Two Tools of Social Media Trade You Might Be Considering

Every industry uses technology to improve their productivity and digital marketing is no exception. Most marketing departments have used social media management tools for years to organize and schedule content publishing for their company’s social media platforms.

For small businesses, some of the biggest names in social media management tools are Hootsuite, Buffer and Sprout Social. However, I wanted to peruse the services offered at two lesser-known companies to see how many common digital marketing tasks they could assist with and I found their company names to be interesting. The first management tool I explored was Crowdfire. The company of about 50 employees was founded in 2010 and is based out of Navi Mumbai in India. They boast that their tool drives social media engagement and growth, so they are a favorite among social media managers around the world. The second management tool I found to be of interest was Meet Edgar. The company was founded in 2014 and consists of 13 remote employees. They vow that their tool allows professionals to manage their social accounts with more consistency in less time.

There are many reasons why social media management tools like Crowdfire and Meet Edgar have become commonly used in the digital marketing world. For businesses, every social media platform that a company is actively using is an opportunity to engage with their target audience. But, it’s a double-edged sword because without the right management tool or tools in place, strategizing and managing even a couple of social networks is a daunting task. So, the foundational feature that marketing professionals are looking for in a social media management tool is its ability to eliminate the added work of having to log into each social website or application to post content. Both Crowdfire and Meet Edgar have the capability of streamlining the posting process, allowing their clients to post to multiple social platforms using only their software application. These tools are able to work with many popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and much more.

The next task category I examined was the management tool’s ability to allow businesses to follow their competitor’s social media presence. This technique is used by many companies the world over to glean information from their counterparts including great industry ideas or topics, new trends, and which social media stumbling blocks to avoid. Unlike Meet Edgar, Crowdfire is the only one of the two companies that has a competitor analysis feature. With it, Crowdfire clients can get an overview of their competitor’s digital marketing performance and are able to analyze their competitor’s top content posts to better understand what is working for them. Knowledge is powerful and this feature provides their clients with one powerful strategic advantage.

Speaking of analyzing, another valuable benefit expected from the best management tool on the market is its ability to help prove a company’s return on investment (ROI) from social media marketing. One of the necessary tasks marketing departments face is proving that the time, effort, and money they devote to social media is outweighed by the rewards earned for their company. Both Crowdfire and Meet Edgar have an analytical reports feature that emails their clients weekly, presenting them with key performance indicators that show them just how effective their team has been at reaching their set goals. With Crowdfire, marketing teams can build their own report by deciding which data points, such as website traffic, reshares or retweets, are of interest to them. Their tool even provides their clients with the ability to combine data points from all their social networks into a single report to display an overview of their social media brand presence.

It’s not easy to create a social media presence without a tool that enables you to quickly and efficiently save or file content ideas for future use. Another advantage expected of a social media management tool is its ability to enable marketing professionals to organize and schedule content as they discover and develop creative ideas for their brand. Crowdfire and Meet Edgar have Google Chrome extension features that allows their clients to either add assets of interest to their content library, such as an article they think their audience would enjoy, or the ability to immediately post them to any of their company’s social channels. However, Crowdfire also offers an alternative to organically searching for your own content. Their tool also provides content curation features, meaning it consistently recommends articles and images to their clients for them to share with their audience based on the topics of interest they select.

One last feature that is commonly expected from a highly useful social media management tool is its ability to assist brands with increasing community engagement through social listening. Social listening is defined as monitoring digital conversations to determine what consumers are saying online about a brand, company and industry. More companies are now realizing the importance of engaging in social listening in order to hear more conversations, widen their audience, attract new customers, expand in new markets and gain valuable customer insight.

This technological listening feature is worth its weight in bitcoin and gold by providing marketing professionals with the ability to see who is mentioning their company and products and what they are saying. Since 73% of consumers are likely to buy from brands that are responsive on social media, listening is only half of the objective. Whether social listening results in a list of complaints or compliments, marketers use this feature to then join the conversation and offer their insight, gratitude, or any other necessary input to engage with their audience of customers and followers. Providing this added feature in a social media marketing tool will ensure that a company can increase their brand and product loyalty by ensuring that their audience feels valued and heard. Of the two tools I’ve examined, only Crowdfire offers social listening, which they call the mentions feature. It allows marketing professionals to track mentions and comments by forwarding them to a team inbox.

Although at times it seems the hours in each day just fly by, all of us get the same 24 hours. In order to keep up with today’s world of business, the best way to spend these hours wisely is through the use of technology. In digital marketing, when less time is spent on completing certain tasks of the job, greater efforts can then be applied to the strategic and creative quality of the social media content. Of the two companies reviewed, Crowdfire’s social media management software would win my business since they seem keenly aware of the exact assistive qualities a social media management tool must have.