Tag: social media management tools

Top 4 Social Media Trends for 2022

Post author By Rallio
Post date August 26, 2021

It’s hard to believe, but the new year isn’t too far away. Now is the time to look at the top social media trends we can expect to see in 2022. A good place to start is by looking back at the blur of a year we’ve had thus far.

Look to the Past to Predict the Top Social Media Trends

When the pandemic first hit, businesses were forced to pivot in the face of lockdowns, local mandates, and an overall seismic shift to business as usual. Franchisees and other small-business owners that relied on a physical presence, as opposed to online operations, quickly discovered they had to implement major changes in order to survive and continue thriving.

Those that refused to shift, or that perhaps had no means to implement rapid changes, may have learned hard lessons about business continuity in the face of a crisis. Some have had to close their doors permanently. Some are still struggling to get back to pre-pandemic revenue levels. Still others have been able to make positive changes that are now contributing to their bottom line.

With the pandemic still ongoing, it’s important to stay agile. Take a look at the top social media trends you can expect to see in 2022 and beyond, and continue your efforts to prepare for any unexpected twists and turns.

#1: Digital Options Will Continue to Grow

Businesses that have implemented curbside and delivery pickup options were able to continue operating even if in-store traffic dipped. Although these contactless services might have thwarted efforts to attract impulse purchases in store aisles and at the checkout, they’ve also created new lines of business.

Think of it this way: If your customer wants to place an order from your sandwich shop, they expect they’ll be able to place an order online or through an app. They want a seamless pickup or delivery experience. They don’t necessarily care about the extra bag of chips at the cash wrap.

If they can’t order how they want to order, they’ll move on to the next sandwich shop. You’ll have lost a sale while your competitor gained a customer.

The takeaway: Give customers what they want through digital ordering. And promote your easy ordering options on social media. Not only will you better serve your current customers, but you’ll most likely gain new ones, too.

Rallio product: Post Creative. If posting is falling to the bottom of your priority list, leave the weekly posting to a Rallio professional. A Rallio social media professional will create up to four unique posts per week for your social pages.

#2: Your Online Reputation Is Key

Along with digital ordering options, people are more inclined to leave online reviews when they have either a positive or negative experience. Expect that trend to continue ramping up in 2022.

In addition to online reviews, usage of social media as a customer service channel will continue to grow. Customers and followers might interact with your page via comments and direct messages, and you need to reply to them all. When you respond to customer feedback, you show you’re listening and care about what your audience needs.

Without that interaction, customer comments and messages go into a black hole, leaving them feeling neglected — maybe even inclined to complain about you elsewhere online.

The takeaway: Be in the know about what your customers are saying. Even positive comments need a response, but especially negative comments require your immediate attention.

Rallio product: Online Reputation Bundle. A Rallio social media expert will ensure all of your online reviews on Facebook, Google and Yelp are responded to within 24 business hours. Plus, a Rallio social media expert will ensure all your Facebook and Instagram comments and messages are engaged with within 24 business hours.

#3: Video Remains Popular

Even though in-person experiences are starting to return, there’s still an opportunity to go online with your events, classes, tours, how-to explainers, and other video and live content. With virtual formats, you can connect with audiences just about anywhere while also catching the attention of social media users who gravitate to videos as they’re scrolling.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram make it easy with Stores, Reels and live streaming. Even if your business is mainly brick-and-mortar, these videos can help to draw in your online visitors and attract people to your location.

You don’t have to be a videographer to get into video. Take out your phone and film a 30-second video of you giving a tour of your shop, or a how-to video for your homemade cinnamon rolls, or a series of workouts for your personal training business. Boost the high-performing posts with a few ad dollars, and improve your reach.

The takeaway: Video is here to stay, and you need to get on board.

Rallio Product: Premium Bundle. With this bundle, your entire social media marketing efforts will be handled by a Rallio Social Strategist, including weekly boosting.

#4: Advocacy Is More Important Than Ever

New Apple privacy changes are making it harder to track customers across apps and gain insights from third-party data. One way to combat the changes is by looking toward other social media marketing methods that don’t rely on tracking.

Employee advocacy is one such method. With advocacy, your employees do some of the work to promote your brand by either posting your branded content, or simply posting about your business, on their own pages.

People are more likely to trust the recommendation of a third party over the brand itself, meaning there’s a huge opportunity to integrate advocacy and influencers into your strategy.

Try spotlighting employees on social media and engaging them in the process of posting. Provide brand-approved content, and encourage them to share their own photos and videos about your business. You can also work with micro-influencers who have a smaller following and will share about your brand on their channels.

The takeaway: Activate your employees as your best brand ambassadors.

Rallio product: Rallio Activate. Leverage the power of your employees to reach your customers like never before. With Rallio Activate, your employees become your built-in brand ambassadors. Create reward programs to your exact specifications, and incentivize your workforce to submit their own images and videos for brand content or share your message across their own pages.

We’ll continue to update this page as we see more trends unfold closer to 2022. For now, however, implement the strategies above — and reach out to us for help getting it all done.

Tags social media management tools

Social

Top 4 Benefits of Using a Social Media Management Platform

Post author By Rallio
Post date June 30, 2021

Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a life without technology in it. For businesses in particular, it’s essential to make use of technology tools in order to run leaner, smarter and faster. Having a social media management platform to organize all your social media posts, comments, reviews and messages isn’t just a nice thing to have; it’s a necessity.

Still not convinced? If you’re in the camp that’s logging into multiple platforms to manage your social media presence, let’s just say you’re wasting a lot of time — and potentially losing out on business. It’s easy for things to slip through the cracks when you don’t have everything right in front of you in one tidy dashboard.

That’s what Rallio can be for you and your business: a place where you can log in once to our social media management platform and take care of posting, replying to engagements, advertising your business and building an audience. Take a look at the top four benefits of using a social media management platform — specifically, Rallio — and we think you’ll be convinced to make the switch.

Benefit #1: You’ll Have Business Continuity

The pandemic has revealed the need for technology to step in and take over when real-world interactions are not possible. The businesses that were able to pivot and take their businesses online are the ones that have survived and, in many cases, thrived. Those that did not? Well, sadly, many of them didn’t make it.

Consider the case study in which we discuss our client Pet Supplies Plus and their response to the pandemic, with Rallio as their social media management platform: “As more and more people took to social media and platforms like Google My Business to discover their local PSP’s latest operating hours and updates, PSP knew they couldn’t rely on foot traffic alone to connect with their neighbors; they had to entirely alter certain methods of operating their business so they could accommodate their neighbors’ needs while hitting their own numbers. With Rallio’s help, the brand has been able to address these obstacles and even exceed their neighbors’ expectations.”

Benefit #2: You Can Cut the Clutter

Ever feel like you’re on technology overload? We all do. It’s everywhere, and it’s incessant. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all unless you have a way to streamline your processes.

With the Rallio social media management platform, you have one central location where all of your brand assets live. You’re able to syndicate, publish or schedule social media content with just a few clicks — whether to a single location or an entire network of locations.

It’s also easy to view analytics, respond to your online reviews and social media engagements, run ad campaigns, and control your brand message. Using one dashboard with a single login lets you cut the clutter and focus on the things that matter most in your business.

Pair our social media management platform with our Rallio Local services, and you can free up your time even more. You have a ton of responsibilities as you’re running a business, yet social media content and reputation management are crucial to your success. Our Rallio Local team will automate the process of creating engaging local content as well as respond to all your social comments and online reviews. How’s that for time management?

Benefit #3: You Have a Way to Activate Employees

If you’re not getting your employees involved with advocating for your business, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to rapidly scale. Digital Marketing Consultant Neil Schaffer cites Nielsen data, where 84% of consumers say they value recommendations from friends and family above all forms of advertising. In addition, 77% of consumers are likely to make a purchase after hearing about it from someone they trust (such as your employees, aka regular people doing regular things).

Toward that end, our Rallio Activate platform allows you to leverage the power of your employees to reach your customers. Turn your employees into your best brand advocates, with built-in reward programs that incentivize your workforce to submit their own images and videos for brand content or share your message across their own pages.

Benefit #4: You Can Easily Update Your Business Listings

Another cool feature of Rallio’s social media management platform? You can easily manage your digital profiles across global business locations. Whether you have a change of hours, or you want an easy way to reach more consumers and promote your brand across social media, traditional search, mobile marketing and voice search, our Business Listings service makes the process simple.

With Business Listings, you can deliver a more engaging customer experience, instantly update your key business content across locations, and control and optimize your data across third-party digital platforms. Take a microscope to the channels you’re using to measure, optimize, and improve your brand-wide discoverability and search rankings.

Choose the Top Social Media Management Platform: Rallio

With digital marketing, businesses have multiple ways to communicate with customers and prospects even when they’re not seeing them face to face. Rallio simplifies the entire process with our award-winning social media management platform and services. Reach out to sales@rallio.com to learn more.

Tags social media company, social media management platform, social media management tools, Top Ranked Social Media Company

Social

4 Big Reasons You Should Outsource Your Social Media Marketing

Post author By Rallio
Post date March 26, 2021

As a business owner, eventually you may come to the realization that you can’t do everything yourself. Late nights, early mornings and a nonstop busy schedule catch up with you at some point. That’s when you might decide to outsource your social media and certain other responsibilities.

Why outsource your social media? The real question is, why not let the experts do the heavy lifting of curating, posting, advertising, and engaging with your social media content?

To give you a better understanding of what exactly is entailed with creating an impactful social media presence, we’ve outlined the basics of each step in the process. The key point to keep in mind is that posting on social media is no longer a “nice to have” for any business today. Your customers expect to be able to find you, engage with you, and report customer service issues on social media platforms. So it’s imperative that you do it right and deliver on their expectations — or they’ll head over to one of your competitor’s pages instead.

Curating Content

In order to have a vibrant, engaging social media page for your business, you need great content to put on it. Photos and videos featuring you, your team members, your customers and your community are all perfect types of content that you should be curating.

These real, authentic assets are what give life to your social media pages and distinguish you as a brand that people want to follow. It’s important you have someone dedicated to taking these types of photos and videos. It could be you or a team member — just make sure it gets done at least a few times a week.

Tips to make sure it gets done:

Put it in your calendar with a reminder to snap photos.
Make a habit of pulling out your phone anytime you have a workplace celebration or a special event at your business.
Delegate the task to someone on your team, and ask them to carve out time to take photos.
Create an employee advocacy program that gets your whole team involved in crowdsourcing photos. Rallio Activate allows you to set up employee logins on our mobile app, so they can upload photos, post them on their personal profiles, and even earn rewards.

Posting on the Major Platforms

Now that you have all that great content, what do you do with it? Get it on your pages, of course!

It sounds simple enough, but the truth is that many business owners simply get too busy to think about posting on social media. As important as it is, social media marketing might get pushed to the back burner if you’re busy with sales, hiring, inventory management, customer retention and other areas of your business.

Yet in reality, many other parts of your business can function more smoothly if you get your social media pages working the way they should be. We’ll get into that more in the next couple of steps, but for now let’s just talk about how you can make sure the assets you’re compiling are getting onto your pages.

Tips to make sure it gets done:

If you can’t do it yourself, delegate the work to the same person you’ve tasked with snapping photos and videos.
Again, use employee advocacy programs to outsource your social media “in-house.”
Use technology like the Rallio platform, and the Rallio Local team of social media gurus, to schedule your content ahead of time, compile your assets in one database, and keep track of your content calendar. In this way, you can outsource your social media to a technology platform.

Advertising Your Content

Don’t let all that hard work of curating and posting content go to waste. Make sure people actually see your posts by allocating ad dollars toward your content.

Every social media platform has advertising options to let you get your content in front of more people. That’s because having followers doesn’t equate to people actually viewing your posts. By advertising, you ensure more people see your content.

You can learn more about advertising in this article, but in the meantime, you’ll want to make sure you budget for ads.

Tips to make sure it gets done:

If you can’t do it yourself, delegate the work to the same person you’ve tasked with snapping photos and videos and posting your content. They’re already working with your assets, so they might as well promote your posts.
Engage the Rallio Local program to outsource your social media boosting and creation of ad campaigns.

Engaging With Your Audience

The final piece you need to make sure you have covered is engaging with your followers. As you curate, post and boost your content, you’ll hopefully get more people interacting with your posts. Their likes, shares, comments and direct messages shouldn’t be ignored, nor should their online reviews.

Tips to make sure it gets done:

Delegate the work to the same person you’ve tasked with snapping photos and videos, posting your content, and promoting your posts. The added benefit here is that they’ll get a good idea of what’s working and what’s not in terms of engagement, so future posts can get even better.
Engage the Rallio Local program to get help responding to your engagements and online reviews.

Ready to Outsource Your Social Media?

Looking over the steps above, by now you might be drawing the conclusion that you need someone dedicated to your social media marketing. You could do it all in-house, but then you have to consider:

If you delegate the work to a team member, that person might not be an expert in social media marketing. For example, asking your receptionist or human resources manager to handle your social media might not get you the results you desire.
If you choose to hire a social media manager, you’ll be taking on the responsibility of adding someone to the payroll.
Even if you hire someone, you need the right technology to streamline the process.

Now consider the flip side of bringing in the experts at Rallio:

You won’t be taking time away from other team members, and you won’t be in charge of the work yourself. Everyone can do the jobs they’re best suited to do.
You’ll pay one flat fee, and it’s customized to what you need in terms of technology and services, as well as how involved you want to be.
You can lean on our expertise to amplify your social media results, potentially leading to more leads and sales. Remember what we said earlier about other parts of your business running more efficiently with proper social media marketing?

As a top-ranked provider of social media technology, employee advocacy and local social media services, Rallio not only lets you outsource your social media, but also bring in the technology and team you need. If you’re ready to outsource your social media and focus on other parts of your business, contact sales@rallio.com and visit rallio.com.

Learn more: Should I Outsource My Social Media? 6 Questions to Ask Yourself

Tags social media management tools, social media marketing

Reputation

How’s Your Customer Response Time? 6 Simple Ways to Step It Up

Post author By Rallio
Post date September 4, 2020

If your customer response time is lagging on social media, your followers and customers are going to notice. Whether they’re looking to get questions answered or to leave a review, you can count on customers using social media as a customer service channel.

Is your customer response time fast enough for them? The typical recommendation is a customer response time of less than 24 hours. However, if you really want to impress them, you’ll want to pick up the pace even more.

Additionally, make sure you’ve got all your bases covered as far as responses go. Below, we’ve outlined six simple ways you can improve your customer response time and keep your customers happy.

But first, let’s look at why you should care about customer response time in the first place.

Why Customer Response Time Matters

It’s no secret that responding to your customers is important. If you have a successful business, naturally you have some type of system for customer support. For instance, maybe you have a support email and phone number for customer service inquiries.

However, it’s not enough to provide only email and phone support. The influx of support requests during the pandemic has led to a spike in customer service inquiries, and social media is a part of that equation.

With pandemic-related extended wait times over the phone and, sometimes, a delay in email response time, it’s critical that you enable your customers to reach you and have their issues resolved via social media. Whether they’re checking on shipment status, inquiring about refunds and exchanges, or looking for information on a product or service, customers are putting on the pressure to get answers, fast.

Intercom explains, “As the virus spreads around the world, many support teams are experiencing significant shifts in customer requests. In our survey, nearly half (47%) of support teams report that inbound volume has increased since the outbreak and by an average of 51% above their normal volume.”

Pandemic aside, a fast customer response time is one of the best ways to build customer loyalty. According to Gartner, customers are significantly more loyal when their expectations are met versus when their expectations are not met.

With loyalty, you increase the likelihood of customers sharing about their experiences on social media. From there, you increase your reach and the chances of acquiring new followers and customers.

It all begins with your customer response time and the quality of your responses. So, yes, it’s pretty important that you get this aspect of your business squared away sooner rather than later.

Automate Your Customer Responses

One of the first ways to improve customer response time on social media is to automate responses. Facebook will allow you to set up auto-responses to your frequently asked questions.

Think about the questions you field over and over again. Maybe they include:

What are your hours?
How do I make an appointment?
Where are you located?
Can I see a menu?
Do you deliver?

With Facebook auto-responses, you can fill in the answers to FAQ and handle many customer service inquiries without having to lift a finger. Here’s a quick walk-through from Facebook to help you set these up.

Facebook points out that these instant replies are not included in your page’s response rate and response time. These are measures of how quickly and consistently you respond to messages. With a high response rate and fast response time, you earn a “Very responsive to messages” badge that you can display on your page.

Still, though, giving your customers quick answers will help to improve their satisfaction with your brand. In their eyes, you are providing a fast customer response time — even if Facebook isn’t officially recognizing your instant replies as part of your response metrics.

Did you know? 54% of social browsers use social media to research products. GlobalWebIndex

Respond to Direct Messages

The DM feature on your social media pages — Facebook and elsewhere — is a great way for customers to contact you directly without picking up the phone. And while instant replies can handle some of the incoming questions, they won’t cover every single issue.

That’s why it’s important to check your DMs and make sure you’re responding to them. It takes real humans to manage this task. You can either assign this job to someone in-house or outsource the work, but make sure you have it covered.

Responding to DMs quickly not only ensures optimal customer response time, but also improves customer satisfaction. Your customers will be less likely to leave a negative review if you handle their inquiries promptly and professionally.

Improve Your Library of Help Content

Within your auto-responses and any other automated customer service mechanisms such as live chat, you can also direct customers over to your help library online. That is, of course, if you have a help library.

If not, now is a great time to create one!

Help libraries are useful for answering any common questions, providing how-to tutorials, and explaining your customer service or shipping policies. You can keep this library continually updated, adding to it anytime you see a new customer service need.

In addition to providing text-based tutorials and answers, it’s a good idea to add video content to your help library. Many people prefer to watch a video rather than read something, and videos are another way to support your customers and improve your customer response time.

Respond to Social Media Engagements and Reviews

Yet another way that customers will seek out customer support is through your social media posts themselves. In some cases, customers are simply commenting on a post with something positive. Other times, they may actually be posting a question or a negative comment about your brand.

And in still other scenarios, customers may be leaving reviews of your company on a review platform like Google My Business or Facebook.

In any of these cases, you should respond to your customers quickly. For positive comments, express your thanks and let them know you’re eager to serve them again in the future. For anything negative, offer to help resolve the problem and make it right for the customer.

Avoid getting into back-and-forth arguments or being defensive. Try to take the conversation offline. Don’t fear negative feedback, however. It can be an opportunity to:

Take the high road. Show that you’re willing to resolve problems quickly.
Avoid having your comments and reviews appear “fake.” It’s rare that a brand never gets criticized.
Consider the criticism as an opportunity to grow if the customer has a valid concern.

Utilize Social Media Management Tools

This is perhaps one of the best ways to ensure a better customer response time: Have everything housed under one roof.

Rallio technology gives you a single login to one central dashboard that will pull in all of your likes, comments, messages, reviews and other engagements. It also allows you to respond to them. Rather than having to log in to several different platforms and keep up with all of the above, you can keep everything organized.

Not only will you reduce your customer response time by having everything centralized, but you’ll save yourself a lot of time, too. You’ll also reduce the chances of anything slipping through the cracks.

Always Look to Improve Your Customer Response Time

The quicker you can respond to customers, the happier your customers will be. With a blend of personalized responses and speedy response times, you’ll gain customer loyalty and build your online reputation.

In addition to Rallio technology tools, you can work with our Rallio Local division if you’d like us to handle all your customer responses. Whatever your needs may be, we can find a solution that works for you.

Tags coronavirus, social media management tools

Social

12 Secrets to Social Media Success: Part 2

Post author By Rallio
Post date August 28, 2020

If you read 12 Secrets to Social Media Success: Part 1, you might have already started changing things up on your social media pages. Today, we’re rounding out the series with part 2, revealing the final six secrets to social media success.

We recommend reading up on the first six, but these secrets to social media success are not listed in any particular order. You can implement any of these 12 changes and instantly improve your pages.

Let’s dive right in to social media secrets 7 through 12.

Secret #7: Do Some Light Housekeeping

If you haven’t touched your profile picture, cover photo and profile information in a while, it’s time to dust off the cobwebs. Make sure your logo is current, your pictures are high-res and all your contact information is up to date.

For multi-location franchises, it’s important to present a consistent image across your organization. Many franchises choose to keep the same profile and cover photos across the board.

The cover photo provides a good opportunity to showcase seasonal specials, too. It’s like having a static billboard on your page to highlight any current promotions. Side note: You can also pin any promotional posts to the top of your page to make them more visible.

Having up-to-date business information also ensures anyone can find you easily when they search for you or businesses like yours. Statista reports, “In July 2020, over 98 percent of active user accounts worldwide accessed the social network via any kind of mobile phone.” That means you have an opportunity to connect with users and help them find you as they’re browsing on-the-go.

Want to make sure your information is accurate anywhere it appears online? Rallio’s tools allow you to update your business listings everywhere to keep them consistent across the web.

Secret #8: Be a Detective on Your Competition

No list of secrets to social media success would be complete without a little light spying, don’t you think?

It’s fairly easy to perform a little detective work on your competitors. Once you know what they’re up to, what they’re doing well and who their customers are, you can apply some of that knowledge to your own business. How?

Visit the social media pages of your competitors. Read the comments on posts, so you can see what types of content resonate with their audience. Look under Page Transparency to see what ads they’re running. Get a feel for the customer service questions that tend to pop up over and over again. You can address these very questions in your own content.
Visit competitors’ websites. Sign up for their email newsletters (you might want to use a non-company email to remain covert). Get a feel for the kinds of offers they’re promoting and whom they’re serving. Walk yourself through the site through the eyes of a customer. What are they doing well that you could improve on your own site? What are you doing better than they are that you can capitalize on through your own marketing?
Do a little SEO hunting, too. What keywords is your competitor targeting? Check page titles, meta descriptions and on-page copy. Open a private browser and search for some of the keywords you want to rank for. Any competitive sites that appear in search results gives you an idea of blog articles and other SEO copy you can create to help improve your chances of ranking.

Secret #9: Surprise Them

Have you ever won something? Or been surprised with a special gift? Hopefully, the answer is yes, and the experience put a big smile on your face!

That’s what this social media secret is all about: surprising your followers and your employees, too. There are many inexpensive ways to show appreciation for the people who support your business:

Host contests on social media. Give away something for free! It could be a product or a service, and it doesn’t have to be something huge. Even a small gift, a free session or a complimentary service will impress your followers. It may help you get new followers, too. Ask your followers to like your post and tag friends to enter, and you’ll expose your business to new people.
Apply the same logic to recognize and reward your employees. Spotlight an employee on social media and give them a gift card or some kind of reward. They’ll appreciate the kudos and might even share the post on their personal pages, too.

By the way, activating your employees on social media is a great way to reach new audiences. With an employee advocacy program, you can incentivize employees to post about your company. It’s a win-win for you as well as the employee getting rewarded.

Secret #10: Leverage LinkedIn

Don’t forget count LinkedIn among your biggest secrets to social media success. According to LinkedIn research, its platform is considered the most effective for B2B lead generation. Some 80% of social media B2B leads come from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is largely a professional platform connecting businesses to each other and helping job seekers locate opportunities. As with any kind of networking, you never know what kind of valuable contacts you might make on LinkedIn.

New connections who don’t appear to have anything to offer your business might actually be the exact people you need to make an important introduction to someone they know. Other connections might open you up to their customer base — people who may be interested in what you have to offer.

The important thing to remember about LinkedIn is that you can’t spam your new connections with referral requests. Just as you would take the time to build a relationship with your followers on Facebook, you must do the same with new LinkedIn connections.

The big mistake many professionals make is sending a connection request and then firing off a sales email as soon as the request is accepted. That’s the quickest way to get ignored and even removed as a connection.

When you send that first message, send something short and friendly. The easiest approach is to take an interest in some aspect of their profile. Examples might be:

“Thanks for connecting, Joe. How did you like attending UCLA? I’m a huge Bruins fan!”
“Happy to connect with you, Marie. How did you get into financial planning?”

In other words, start off with an open-ended question targeted at getting to know the person. Avoid the tired “How can I be of service to you?” — people aren’t likely to respond. Instead, build rapport and find out what they may need.

LinkedIn needs to change the button on connection requests from "Accept" to "I'll be added to this person's crappy email list within 30 minutes if I click here."

— Peter Shankman (@petershankman) August 24, 2020

Secret #11: Analyze Your Results

In order to keep creating the kind of content your audience likes, you have to know how it’s doing. Reviewing your analytics on each platform will help you understand your audience, who they are and how well your posts have performed. You can view analytics on all the major social media platforms, or look at them in your one central Rallio Dashboard!

Based on this data, you can tailor your posts to suit your audience’s interests and preferences. If they tend to react better to video content, for example, you can create more of this type of content for them.

Review your analytics at least once a month to fine-tune your strategy periodically. Your frequency will depend on your personal goals and what you want to get out of social media.

Secret #12: Have fun!

All the secrets to social media success in the world can’t help you if you aren’t having a little fun on social media. Think of it as a place where you can get to know your followers, post something funny or inspiring, or just connect authentically with your audience.

Your enthusiasm will shine through when you’re speaking from the heart! And you’ll find the process to be much more enjoyable when followers engage positively with you on social media.

Think about the accounts you follow and why you follow them. The product or service itself might have been the initial draw, but it’s the great content that keeps you coming back for more.

Want More Secrets to Social Media Success?

If you’d rather not DIY your social media and these social media secrets feel a little overwhelming, we can help. Reach out to us to discuss your specific needs — and we’ll let you in on even more social media secrets, too.

Tags social media management tools, social media marketing

Social

12 Secrets to Social Media Success: Part 1

Post author By Rallio
Post date August 26, 2020

In case you didn’t notice, it’s about to be “pumpkin spice everything” season. Fall is in the air, and the holidays aren’t far off. And in the spirit of giving, we’re handing over a few secrets to social media success.

No thanks necessary.

You see, social media can be an incredible tool for reaching your customer base and new followers. It also gives you multiple touchpoints along the customer journey — one that invariably takes customers to online platforms.

However, tackling your social media management can feel overwhelming as a business owner. The secrets to social media success can feel elusive, to say the least.

We want to help demystify social media and make it accessible for any business, from franchise social media managers to independent business owners.

So grab yourself a pumpkin spice something, roll up your sleeves and prepare to have a fantastic fall. Just follow our secrets to social media success we’ve outlined in our two-part series, starting with part one below.

Secret #1: Be Social

Among the secrets to social media success, this one is hiding in plain sight. The word “social” gives you a clue as to what this secret may be.

To be clear: Social media is for socializing. Yet many businesses don’t start with the “social” part before the “selling” part. There are certainly ways to leverage social media to sell your products or services. However, the sales pitch shouldn’t comprise the entirety of your social media strategy.

Instead, focus on building relationships with your followers. Earn their trust and their willingness to devote some of their time to paying attention to your business.

When you have their attention, they’ll be more receptive to your occasional sales messages and promotions. It will also make any investment into social media advertising — which we recommend to all our clients — much more worthwhile.

Read more in our “Social Media Myths, Debunked” article with Myth #5: Social Media Should Be Sales-Focused.

Secret #2: Engage With Your Followers

As you grow your social media following using the strategies above, you’ll start to get engagements on your posts. Comments, messages, questions and reviews may start to roll in at all hours of the day. It’s imperative that you respond to them quickly.

Getting back to your customers in a timely manner furthers the trust you’re building through engaging, social content. It’s no different than a customer standing in your store and having a conversation with you or asking a question. Could you imagine ignoring someone under these circumstances?

Be helpful, be friendly, be courteous, and aim to get back to your followers within 24 hours, max. Even if the engagement requires nothing more than an acknowledgement on your part, your response matters.

“80% of companies online are under the impression that they deliver exceptional social media customer service, while only 8% of their customers say they agree.” — Smart Insights

Secret #3: Use Cross-Channel Marketing

You probably already have other marketing channels in place, such as email marketing. What are some opportunities you can identify to integrate your social media marketing into these other channels?

We’ve written about this topic in-depth in 5 Ways to Integrate Email Marketing With Social Media Marketing. Give the article a read for more ideas of how to maximize your marketing efforts.

Don’t stop with email, however. Look for ways to cross-promote from one medium to the other. Your emails, targeted social media ads, blog posts and website can all be working together for your marketing strategy. This way, you’re not only presenting a clear brand image, but also giving your customers a seamless experience with your brand.

HubSpot writes, “With cross-channel marketing, you’re bringing each of these venues into unison with each other so that they build off of each other and amplify their impact. For example, if a lead reads a blog post you wrote about the pitfalls of an issue that your business solves, the marketing email they later receive might provide a customer testimonial from someone who overcame that same issue using your product.

“Then, when the lead gets on social media later that evening, they’ll see an advertisement with a catchy headline about how your products or services completely remove the issue they were initially reading about.”

Secret #4: Share Different Types of Content

Having a page with a variety of content makes it more appealing for your followers. What do we mean by “variety”?

Different types of images that authentically showcase your business, such as photos of owners, employees and customers
Video content with how-to tips, employees explaining why they love your company, or events at your location
Occasional shared content from a complementary business, with that business tagged
Themed and/or hashtagged content that commemorates holidays, days of the week like #tbt, or national “days” that naturally tie in with your business

Not only will this approach keep your page interesting, but it’ll also help you come up with content ideas. Check out a few other articles from our blog for inspiration:

Secret #5: Use Technology to Get Organized

Would you rather have one dashboard for your social media, with one login — or multiple logins for multiple platforms? We’re guessing you’d prefer just the one.

Shameless plug alert: The Rallio Dashboard is one such single-login technology designed to simplify your social media management.

It’s great for businesses with multiple locations that need to syndicate content or keep tighter controls over their locations’ social media pages. However, it’s also great for small businesses that want one central location to post to their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn pages.

In addition to posting, you get scheduling options, analytics, boosting, and various management tools like image and video libraries and inbox/outbox. You can also unlock other advanced features, including employee advocacy, to get your employees involved with your social media.

Whatever technology you choose, the point is that technology can help you manage, well, other technology.

Secret #6: Hire Humans to Add Personality

Along with technology, you need humans to help with your social media. Although technology can help automate and organize everything, humans are the real secrets to social media success.

What can humans do that technology cannot?

Write your captions with appropriate hashtags
Engage with your audience
Offer customer support
Respond to inquiries and reviews that go beyond your auto-responses
Infuse your pages with personality
Boost your content and decide what to boost
Make sure your content matches your brand voice and messaging

Our Rallio Local division was born out of the need by many businesses to have someone taking care of these everyday tasks. Because social media is always “on,” 24/7, you can’t take a break from it. Having a team like Rallio Local ensures nothing slips through the cracks — and you’re that always growing on social media.

More Secrets to Social Media Success to Come

This was part 1 in a two-part series with the top 12 secrets to social media success. Watch for part 2 coming later this week for the final six secrets.

Tags franchise social media, social media management tools

Uncategorized

Top Social Media Management Tools from Rallio

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 29, 2020

When you consider the number of social media management tools available, it can feel overwhelming trying to choose the best ones for your franchise. Especially right now when you may be dealing with new challenges related to COVID-19, you need to know that any money you’re spending is being put to good use.

Rallio’s social media management tools are specifically built for franchises. We’ve taken the guesswork out of finding the best technology and services to help your business grow. As a Top Franchise Supplier on Entrepreneur.com, Rallio is the preferred supplier for franchise organizations in a variety of industry sectors.

Below is a quick rundown of the various social media management tools and services we offer. You might find you need just one of these tools, or you might need all of them. It varies from business to business. But regardless of what you may need, you can get started with any or all of them quite cost-effectively.

Rallio Dashboard

This is the technology behind everything we do. The Rallio app gives you both a desktop dashboard and a mobile app to manage every aspect of your social media pages.

Built for franchises and multi-unit businesses, the Rallio dashboard lets you control your brand’s social and review pages from one simple spot. As a franchisor or multi-unit owner, you can also syndicate content to different types of franchisees and set permissions. The powerful platform also gives you access to robust analytics, like your engagements and high-performing content.

In the database, you can see all the content you’ve created, schedule it, syndicate it, delete or edit it, and view and upload all your assets like images and videos. The Inbox pulls in all your incoming comments and direct messages and lets you reply directly within the Rallio app. Meanwhile, the Outbox shows you everything you’ve published.

You’ll also find the Sandbox, a one-of-a-kind feature with content pulled together from all your many locations. Franchisees can see which local content is performing the best in their brand — and either get ideas to create posts or even reuse content on their own page!

After all, you’re in business for yourself but not by yourself. The Sandbox gives you a virtual space to come together and gain inspiration among fellow franchisees.

Another unique feature is the Reviews tab, which pulls in reviews from the major review platforms and lets you respond directly to Google My Business and Facebook reviews.

If you like healthy competition, the Leaderboard keeps a running tally of how your locations are performing on their social media pages — from assets submitted to engagement on posts.

Once you start using the Rallio Dashboard, you’ll no doubt find it addicting — and so will franchisees. Get everyone in sync for a consistent, powerful brand presence from corporate down to the location level.

https://www.facebook.com/TutorDoctor/posts/10157235049042374:0

Rallio Local

Rallio Local combines the power of the Rallio technology with the creativity of real people. With Rallio Local, you work with actual humans on every aspect of your social media. You also get all the bells and whistles of our technology to make management and measurement simple and streamlined.

Our team creates and schedules weekly, custom, local posts to your social media pages. We pair you with a Social Strategist to deliver hyper-local content that gets seen by your audience through fully managed ad campaigns. It’s this type of engaging, real-life content that gets your audience in your business and your pages.

You also receive custom responses to your online reviews, social media comments and direct messages. If you prefer to have someone else manage and grow your social media presence, the Rallio Local program would be the best for you.

https://www.facebook.com/PetSuppliesPlusGoshen/posts/2875486582487415:0

Rallio Activate

Your employees are already on social media all throughout the day. Flip the switch with Rallio Activate, and you can leverage the power of your employees to reach customers like never before.

Incentivize employees with rewards programs that you create, and collect assets into your brand’s image library. Have them submit their own photos and videos to earn points, and publish your brand-approved content on their personal profiles.

With Rallio Activate, you build confidence in your brand. It’s human nature to trust the recommendation of a third party over the brand itself. Rallio Activate builds upon the positive experiences that employees are having with your company to light up your social media presence even more.

Revv

Ever wish you had an easy way to get more positive online reviews? Revv is the tool for you.

Easily send out quick surveys after a sale to ask customers about their experience. Positive feedback sends customers to the review platform of your choice. Negative feedback gets taken offline so you can contact the customer directly and resolve the problem.

With Revv, you not only get more positive reviews, but you also get a chance to handle any issues and make your business even better. With online reviews being so important right now — more so than ever — it’s imperative you have a way to connect with customers after the sale and make sure everything is just right.

Which Rallio Social Media Management Tools Do You Need?

Goldman Sachs predicts the pandemic will force “an acceleration toward an e-world.” In that world, social media and your online presence will play even more important roles in your business’ success.

Rallio’s suite of social media management tools and services are designed to help you navigate that “e-world” with greater ease. Whether you want to be fully involved or take a hands-free approach and let us handle it for you, we have a solution for every need and budget.

Now that you’ve read through the options, the next step is to schedule a demo. It takes less than 10 minutes and the rewards can be exponential if you get started today. Give us a shout at sales@rallio.com and we’ll get you plugged in.

Tags social media management tools