If you were looking to reach 2000 people today with your business, it would cost you up to $900 dollars through traditional marketing. But with social media, a considerably lesser amount of $75.
Yes, you read that right.
But with social media comes a whole bunch of buzzwords, management tools, posting tools, content creation tools, and many more.
So how do you weed out what's useful for you, and what isn't?
A social media aggregator tool can help you get your social media strategy working in the right direction. Keep reading to find out how.
Understanding Different Social Media Tools
Before we dive into the world of social media aggregators and what they can do for your business, let's take an in-depth look at social media tools and what their functions are.
If you simply type in, "social media tools" into Google, you'd be inundated with hundreds of results. These tools usually all have different capabilities and serve different functions:
- Some tools are used to manage the publishing of your social media content
- Other tools are used to manage multiple platforms
- Some tools are used to measure performance and analytics
- Other tools are used to help you create content
- And others are used for community engagement or influencer outreach
It's a lot to wrap your head around. When you're searching for a social media tool to help you, some of them can do more than one of these functions, others will work well in partnership with another.
Identifying what part of your social media strategy is a struggle for you, is the first part in realizing which of these tools may be best to assist you in streamlining your process.
So, what does a social media aggregator tool do?
What Is A Social Media Aggregator Tool?
It seems a long description of something that you'll see, is quite simple.
Aggregate: "a whole formed by combining several separate elements."
Combine the above explanation with social media and you'll get:
A social media aggregator is a tool that gathers together content already existing on social media from different platforms and creates a single feed for this content. The idea behind a social media aggregator is that it creates this single feed, of all your content, that you can display in other places or on other platforms for your audience to view.
When it comes to social media aggregator tools, you've got free options, you've got paid options, you've got tools that have added features, and you've got very basic versions of the tool.
Customer Curated Content
One of the greatest benefits of a social media aggregator is the fact that it can bring together content from your own social media as well as other people or places that have mentioned your brand or business online.
Effectively, your embedded social media that your aggregator has created becomes a source of 'almost-free' marketing for your brand. With the user-generated content that this tool can display for you, your marketing team may feel less pressure to create original content, and use the power of content created by your customers and audience to send a message.
By doing this, a social media aggregator can increase brand awareness and make an emotional connection with potential customers. It's the same as having a high review rating on Google or Facebook, the more people someone sees 'showing off' your brand, the more likely they are to view you in a trusted and reliable light.
How Can A Social Media Aggregator Increase My Leads?
Using a social media aggregator and then subsequently embedding your social media wall onto your website sounds all good and well, but how will that increase your leads?
User-generated content is much the same as word-of-mouth referrals but on a magnified level.
Imagine you're a brand that creates custom-printed trousers. Now, on your social media wall created with your social media aggregator, you've got content streaming in of happy customers who are wearing your products and are happily posting it for the world to see.
Now imagine the power of 10 posts, just like that, reaching a potential customer. That's how a social media aggregator is going to increase your quality leads, by creating a visual impact with potential customers who visit your website.
What To Look For In A Social Media Aggregator
Now that you know what a social media aggregator is, and what it can do for you, how do you go about shopping for one? Ensure that you look into the features. There are a few boxes we think you should check:
1. Be Reliable And Reputable
You're going to want to find a social media aggregator tool that already has a large user base, and visible reviews on the software, this shows they have a good reputation. Ensure that the tool you're looking at complies with social networks and that they have the right permissions in place to pull the content from these platforms.
The tool you choose needs to be above board, otherwise, you could find yourself in hot water for not having permission to use the curated content.
2. Moderation Ability
It's all good and well that you can create an embedded social media wall for your website and display your mentions all over social media, but what if you didn't want every, single post to show up?
Well, the tool you're looking into needs to have the ability to moderate the content that is displayed.
After all, it's your brand, and it's your website, you want to maintain a certain level of control as to what is displayed. It becomes even more important if your feed is going to display real-time content because there could be a window where someone displays something harmful to your brand.
This is incredibly vital, especially if you plan on sharing your feeds in real-time.
Ultimately, you are even able review and approve content before it goes live.
3. Managing The Content
Basically, you're not going to want to rely solely on user-generated content for your social media display on your website. You're also going to want to display your own custom content created and posted by your brand.
So you want to know that the social media aggregator tool that you use will allow you to tailor the content you pull in from your followers and customers while adding your own content.
4. Measuring Performance
There's no point in doing anything, in any marketing form or fashion, that can't be measured, right?
Why would you go through all the trouble of implementing a social media aggregator tool if you can't tell if it's working for your brand?
Ensure that the tool you select has the ability to monitor and measure performance, as well as report on it. You're going to want to know the numbers when it comes to your new feed's overall performance and your audience's engagement rates.
Why Display Social Media Content On Your Website?
You may be thinking okay, but I have a Facebook page, and an Instagram page, and a Twitter account, and my website: so what's the point of bringing it all together onto one platform, ie: my website?
Well, first and foremost, as it stands, your audience will have to navigate to different sites and platforms in order to 'digest' all your content from your different platforms.
Once you have an embedded, live social media feed wall on your website, you're taking the pain of this away for them.
The powerful impact that you'll be able to make to a website visitor by gathering all this social media content into one, seamless, visually-pleasing feed is immeasurable. In one simple glance, a potential customer can see the power of your brand and your product gathered from all around the web and displayed just for them.
Social Media Aggregation Success
Deciding to use a social media aggregator for your online marketing is a positive step in the right direction.
By using this tool you will be able to maintain creative control of what is displayed on the feed, and how your audience digests and views your curated content. Moderate the content in such a way that it fits in with your brand's personality and behavior, the more the content works together, the more powerful the impact you'll make with your audience and website visitors.
Don't get caught off guard though, be mindful of the pricing structure of social media aggregator tools. The features you want access to will largely affect the final pricing of the tool.
We approach transparent pricing for you because the social board tool offers scalable pricing, suited to you and your budget.
