How to Choose the Best Enterprise Social Media Marketing Software

Enterprise social media marketing software is designed to meet complex social media marketing needs. This software provides a single interface for all social media content creation, posting, and analytics data across all key social media platforms like Facebook, Google My Business (GMB), Instagram, and Twitter. Throughout this blog, you’ll learn more about enterprise social media marketing software and how this tool streamlines your workflow, boosting your marketing efficacy.  

What is Enterprise Social Media Marketing Software?

Enterprise social media marketing software is software designed to manage the complex social media needs of large, multi-location businesses. Companies with a large reach, 100s or 1,000s of business locations, or multiple teams may struggle with social media management. The needs of these companies include managing on-brand content creation, approving content at-scale, and synthesizing corporate and local messaging. Social media campaigns for such companies also frequently deal with scalability issues as the social media software may not readily allow a company to reflect changes to company structure or brand offerings on social media.   The right enterprise social media marketing software will solve all these challenges and more. Marketing teams can enjoy a scalable and streamlined content creation and scheduling process that aligns with branding goals. Additionally, such software will feature centralized and user-friendly social listening, analytics, and reporting systems to help inform your marketing strategy. A valuable enterprise social media management software will also allow for integrations with other systems like customer relationship management (CRM) software or content enhancement apps like Canva.

5 Key Features to Look for in Enterprise Social Media Marketing Software

 

1.   A Centralized & Flexible System for Consistent Brand Messaging

Companies with strict brand guidelines need social media marketing software that serves as a central command over content creation and distribution. Yet, enterprise social media management software should also allow collaborating teams the flexibility to change or share roles during content creation, approval and posting.   For example, some companies may need content originating from corporate headquarters which can be distributed both from corporate or individual locations. Other times, locations may produce their own content independent from corporate oversight. Finally, a hybrid approach may be taken with corporate and satellite locations co-creating or posting content.   Given this range of content responsibilities across companies, the ideal enterprise social media marketing software balances centralization and flexibility at the local level. For instance, local teams can create content that requires approval from corporate, or corporate can create pre-approved content that falls within brand guidelines. This provides for transparency as well as clarity of expectations and responsibilities throughout every step of the social media content creation and posting process.  

2.   Dynamic Tokens and Localized Tags for Blended Corporate-Local Content

A company with multiple locations will often post content originating from corporate headquarters that has local information blended into it. For example, corporate headquarters may supply the image and text for a social media post about sales across all locations, with each location’s phone number and address included in the post. Traditionally, this requires local contacts to incorporate their unique information and publish the content to the separate local account. This piecemeal approach uses up the time of countless employees and lends itself to content error, not to mention the possibility that content will not be posted to each profile.   An enterprise social media marketing software that offers dynamic tokens and localized tags is a great solution in these scenarios. Users create a single post from a central command that is published at the local level, while incorporating components like local office addresses, phone numbers and store manager names. The content is automatically posted to all relevant accounts without the need for additional team members to do extra work.  

3.   A Scalable System that Moves with Your Company

Companies aren’t static; they are ever expanding or contracting. There are product launches, new location openings, mergers and acquisitions, and brand awareness initiatives always happening. These are just a few of the reasons why companies need an enterprise social media marketing software that can scale with them.   Enterprise social media management software that hits the marks in the scalability department will have features that allow for content that is expandable and contractible with a company’s needs. Some such features to look out for include libraries of pre-approved content and an option that suggests the peak times for publishing, both of which ensure that content is quickly published at scale, while being aligned with branding and marketing expectations.    

4.   Social Listening for Crisis Management and Data-Driven Marketing

It’s not a secret that consumers rely on reviews and social media feedback in choosing products and services. Today, brands can grow and thrive based on conversations happening on social media.   To stay ahead of social media trends, winning companies are investing in social listening. Also known as sentiment analysis, social listening highlights conversations circulated on social media about a given brand, product, or industry. With social listening, brands can move faster with reputation management if a potential problem or crisis arises. Social listening data can also inform brand messaging and marketing initiatives.   For example, sentiment analysis can analyze an increase in social media mentions following a new ad campaign. This provides insight into how people responded to the campaign, which can in turn guide future marketing campaigns.  

5.   Integrations that Work Seamlessly with Your Workflows

A company with complex social marketing needs will likely rely on various types of software to manage different aspects of the business. For example, CRM technology is found in most company settings. This technology manages all relationships and interactions with current and potential customers. Specifically, CRM helps with contact management, sales management, and productivity.   Given the multi-faceted nature of CRMs and their importance to most businesses, enterprise social media marketing software with CRM integrations simplifies workflow for improved customer interactions. Combining CRM software with social media streamlines customer interactions at every stage and provides richer contact data.   Besides business integrations, a good social media management system will allow for app integrations that among other things, improve content quality and the user experience. For example, Canva is a popular graphic design program that allows non-graphic artists to easily create eye-catching logos, social media posts and more. It is invaluable for some enterprise social media teams. On the user experience side, there are Google My Business integrations, for example, that facilitate a rapid, on-brand response to customer questions.    

How to Choose the Best Enterprise Social Media Management Software

  There are plenty of enterprise social media marketing software options on the market. To match the right enterprise social media management platform with your organizational needs, consider the following three points:  

1.   Who is Managing Your Social Media Profiles?

How many local social pages your business has and who is managing them is of key importance when choosing a social media marketing software. A few social media profiles managed by a single person or team will likely have their needs met with a social media platform that features basic scheduling and analytics tools.   On the other hand, a company with 100s or 1,000s of social profiles that are managed by a large team, or dispersed teams with varying levels of interaction, will need robust enterprise social media marketing software. Ideally, such an organization will choose a system that balances a centralized command with flexibility for both local and corporate teams to alternatively collaborate on content, or to create and post content separately as needed.  

2. Online Customer Interaction Needs

Online customer interactions can vary from minimal customer support questions to customer concerns expressed via multiple channels like business websites, social media, and Q&A forums to name a few. On social media platforms alone, a company may field customer questions or comments via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Google My Business. The complexity of this is multiplied by the number of social media profiles a business has on each platform.   A strong enterprise social media software can transform the liability of inadequate responses to online customer feedback into a win by enhancing the customer experience. Some social media management tools provide timely notifications, task assignments, and smart rules. SOCi’s Google My Business integration, for instance, empowers local teams to rapidly prioritize, assign, and respond to customer questions, while enabling corporate oversight at all locations.  

3.   Localization Requirements

You might have noticed that a running theme in this article is balancing centralized needs with localized ones. This is for good reason; one of the main issues a company with multiple locations face is blending corporate and local messaging on social media, while still following brand guidelines.   A company with integrated corporate and local social media strategies will need local and corporate users to post content across various accounts. Franchises, independent owners, authorized realtors, co-ops, property managers and other local employees often post content about their local brand, but in a manner that meets corporate branding expectations. This is where a flexible, centralized social media management system that allows teams to collaborate with flexible levels of control is essential.   Another complication, as noted above, is when corporate content is posted to the local profile and incorporates local information. This problem of creating localized-corporate messaging is solved with features like dynamic tokens and localized tags that allow a post originating from headquarters to be uniquely contextualized for each location by pulling in local data.    

Learn More About SOCi, the Central Command for Enterprise Social Media Management

  SOCi is an award-winning social media marketing software company that was created to fill a specific niche: multi-location enterprises with complex social media needs. Find out why so many national and regional outfits have turned to our enterprise social media management software for smart, easy social media management.