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Increasing sales isn’t necessarily the best way to improve your bottom line. A better solution may be to reduce your Cost of Goods Sold.
Paying less to acquire the products you sell can result in higher gross revenue figures and bigger profits, even when the amount of product you sell stays the same.
If you’re ready to make more money without selling more products, here’s a recap of COGS and specific strategies to lower expenses.
A Quick Recap of Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
What Is Cost of Goods Sold?
The Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is all the costs of producing and acquiring the products you sell. You can separate COGS into two parts: direct costs and indirect costs.
Direct costs are the expenses incurred when producing the products you sell. They include:
raw material costs
labor costs during production
other production overheads
the cost of wholesale products
Indirect costs are all the other expenses incurred when you manufacture products that aren’t tied directly to the process. They include:
storage
shipping
labor
custom duties
software
packaging costs
It’s also worth clarifying what COGS is not.
Your COGS is not the same as your operating expenses, for example. Both are expenditures, but operating expenses (also known as OPEX) are not tied to your products’ production. Instead, they include costs like rent, utilities, marketing, and legal.
They also aren’t the cost of sales either, as this infographic from EDUCBA shows.
How Do I Calculate Cost of Goods Sold?
Businesses can calculate COGS using a standard formula that considers inventory levels and all of the direct and indirect costs listed above.
COGS = Opening Inventory + Purchases During a Period – Closing Inventory
Opening Inventory is the value of inventory you hold at the start of a given period (like a financial year.)
Product purchases and all resulting costs (as listed above) are added to the opening inventory.
Closing inventory (the value of products that aren’t sold at the end of the period) is subtracted from that total to calculate the final Cost of Goods Sold.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say we want to calculate an e-commerce brand’s COGS during the 2019 financial year. The opening inventory would be the inventory recorded at the end of the 2018 fiscal year. Let’s say it’s $2 million.
The closing inventory would be the inventory recorded on the company’s balance sheet at the end of the 2019 fiscal year. Let’s say that is $3 million. Finally, the company purchased $5 million worth of inventory during the 2019 fiscal year.
The COGS for the 2019 financial year is:
2 + 5 – 3 = $4 million
The COGS is $4 million.
If you want to see what calculating COGS looks like in the real world, Investopedia provides an example using J.C. Penney’s 2016 financial report.
The calculation can also change depending on how you define closing inventory. There are three options:
FIFO (first in, first out): The first item you add to your inventory is the first item that gets sold. This option will minimize the COGS as long as the price continues to rise.
LIFO (last in, first out): The last item you add to your inventory is the first item that gets sold. If prices are rising, this will maximize the COGS and reduce profit.
Averaged costs: Costs are taken as an average, offering a balance between FIFO and LIFO.
Why Should I Think About COGS?
COGS is a crucial line on your balance sheet. By paying attention to it, you can:
Identify profitable products. Calculating your COGS will help you determine which products are most profitable and which aren’t.
Price accurately. Knowing your COGS will help you price your products. When you know the cost of every product you sell, you can make sure you’re pricing in a healthy margin.
Get taxed appropriately. COGS is a business expense that is deducted from your total revenue. In other words, you won’t be taxed on it because they are business expenses. This might be the only reason you’d consider a higher COGS to be a good thing. Remember, however, that higher COGS means less revenue and, therefore, less profit.
7 Tips to Reduce COGS
Now that you’re up to speed, it’s time to get to the heart of the matter and look at how you can reduce your company’s COGS.
I’ve outlined seven strategies below that almost any business can leverage.
1. Stop Making Products That Don’t Sell
Do you have a large amount of deadstock sitting in your warehouse? These are products that haven’t been sold and are unlikely to sell in the future. If so, they could be killing your margins and contributing massively to your COGS. Remember, the COGS calculation takes into account the inventory you have at the start and end of your accounting period. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been sitting there: it’s going to be in the calculation.
Deadstock isn’t great, but there’s an easy way to make sure it doesn’t increase your COGS going forward: Stop making products that don’t sell.
Of course, no business owner starts out intending to make a product consumers hate, but it happens. Even the biggest businesses have flops now and again. New Coke, anyone? I didn’t think so.
Don’t worry about creating the wrong products, only worry about identifying ones that aren’t selling well. Use inventory management software to identify products languishing at the back of your warehouse.
Encourage customers to review your products to drive real-time feedback from the people that matter most. Then act quickly. As soon as you identify an under-performing product, take steps to decrease production or cease selling it altogether.
2. Find Lower Cost Materials
Material costs are probably one of the largest components of your COGS. Typically, there’s no shortage of material suppliers, which means you may be able to find cheaper products somewhere else.
Shopping around for materials from different suppliers is one solution, but you could also consider whether a part of your finished product could be replaced with a cheaper alternative. You may think that your customers love the sturdy metal used in your product, for example, but they could be just as happy with a plastic substitute.
It may also be worth revisiting technology used in production to identify whether new processes mean cheaper materials can be used.
Whichever strategy you use, be careful of using cheaper materials at the expense of your end product. Providing a consistent experience is one of the best ways to build trust in your brand, and customers expect to receive the same product every time.
Even loyal customers can quickly switch to competitors if your products are not up to their expectations. A drop in sales can be far more significant than any savings you’ve gained by switching materials.
That’s not the only downside you need to consider, however. Inferior materials can also reduce the durability of your product. Changing materials may necessitate a change in the manufacturing process. This could increase production overheads or labor costs to such an extent that they nullify any costs saved.
3. Eliminate Costly Waste
There’s bound to be waste somewhere in your supply chain. Your manufacturing process may be inefficient, for example, and waste a lot of raw materials. You may even need to pay to dispose of them. Shrinkage may also be significant. This is when products are damaged, stolen, or go missing.
Waste doesn’t have to be physical. There could be plenty of time wasted in the manufacturing or shipping process that could be reduced to improve your COGS. Downtime can be expensive, whether that’s on the factory floor or when products are at sea.
Investigate all instances of waste in your supply chain, physical or otherwise, and take actions to reduce or eliminate the most expensive culprits.
One strategy could be to redesign the manufacturing process if material waste is significant. Another could be to alter transport arrangements if shrinkage is high and many products are arriving damaged.
4.Automate Parts of Your Business
Labor can be a significant part of your COGS. Luckily, you may be able to automate some of those expenses away. Every part of the manufacturing or shipping process that you can replace with a machine can save huge costs. Machines are typically cheaper to operate in the long run, there is less risk of error and have practically no downtime.
Once you’ve done your part, ask the same of your suppliers. Request they invest in automation to reduce costs if they haven’t already. You may even be able to use this as part of a negotiation strategy as discussed below. If they’re not willing to play ball, consider switching to another supplier investing in automation. If they aren’t cheaper right now, they could well be in the future.
5. Investigate Offshore Manufacturing
Manufacturing in the U.S. (or your country of origin) can often be a huge selling point. It can also be incredibly expensive. That’s why so many of the world’s biggest brands outsource manufacturing operations to countries like China, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Both raw materials, labor, and utility costs are often much cheaper in these countries than they are at home, meaning your business stands to save in multiple ways. Even when you factor in increased shipping costs, your COGS could still plummet when you outsource manufacturing.
Only large enterprises should consider this strategy, however. The upfront costs can be substantial, and there are a lot of risks involved.
Quality problems may arise, for instance, and you may have to deal with PR issues as a result of labor conditions in these countries. Currency fluctuations and customs duties can complicate matters further.
For some businesses, however, the opportunity to drastically reduce their COGS will be well worth it.
6. Consider Manufacturing on Demand or Dropshipping
One of the biggest contributing factors to COGS is inventory purchases made throughout the year. The more products you buy, the more costs rise.
Rather than stock products that may not sell, brands could reduce their COGS by using a manufactured on-demand strategy. In essence, you only make or order products when a customer has already paid.
Print-on-demand sites like Printful and dropshipping are two of the most-common ways to leverage this strategy.
With Printful, products are printed in real-time as soon as an order is made. There’s not even a minimum order limit.
It’s the same with dropshipping. Businesses only pay for products when the customer pays for them. In both cases, items can be shipped directly to customers, meaning stores don’t need to hold any inventory.
7. Negotiate With Everyone
You can and should be regularly negotiating prices with every company in your supply chain. The prices you pay suppliers are a core part of your COGS. Reduce them, and your COGS will decrease, too.
When I say every company, I really do mean all of them. Manufacturers, raw material providers, logistics companies, storage facilities, and wholesalers are all able to give you a lower price if you ask.
Here are some deals you could ask for:
lower per-unit prices
bulk discounts
lower prices in return for quicker payments
lower prices in return for upfront payment
lower minimum order requirements
Remember, negotiation is a two-way street. While some companies will be willing to lower prices just to keep your business, others will require something in return to sweeten the deal. Improving their payment terms, for instance, is always a useful bargaining chip.
It’s also important to remember your negotiations may have unintended consequences. Asking for bulk discounts will require you to store more products, for example, and come with a cost increase that may eclipse any savings you made. Asking for lower prices in return for faster payments may require you to improve your cash flow.
Think carefully about what you are asking for and make sure you can handle the consequences of your negotiations. The last thing you want to do is renege on a deal because you negotiated poorly.
Conclusion
Boosting your sales is essential, but so is reducing your company’s COGS. Whether it’s negotiating hard with suppliers, reducing waste, or automating your processes, look to reduce costs in every way possible.
I’ve given you seven strategies to get started with, but there are always more ways to reduce costs.
What innovative ways to reduce costs have you found?
Consider Business Credit Cards No Annual Fee and What They Can Do for Your Business
Looking for business credit cards no annual fee? Look no further. We’ve got you covered.
We looked into lots of company credit cards for you. So, here are our selections.
Most of these have an ongoing annual fee of $0 (versus just an introductory fee). You can get a lot of cash with business credit cards.
And you will not need collateral, cash flow, or financials to get small business credit.
Company Credit Card Benefits
Benefits can differ. So, make sure to choose the benefit you prefer from this choice of options.
And always check rates on the appropriate site.
Business Credit Cards No Annual Fee for Fair Credit
Capital One® Spark® Classic for Business
Take a look at the Capital One® Spark® Classic for Business. It has no annual fee. There is no introductory APR offer. The regular APR is a variable 26.99%. You can earn unlimited 1% cash back on every purchase for your company, without any minimum to redeem.
While this card is available if you have average credit, beware of the APR. Nonetheless if you can pay on time, and in full, then it’s a deal.
Business Credit Cards No Annual Fee for Jackpot Rewards That Never Expire
Capital One ® Spark® Cash Select for Business
Take a look at the Capital One ® Spark® Cash Select for Business card. It has no annual fee. You can get 1.5% cash back on every purchase. There is no restriction on the cash back you can earn. Also earn a one-time $200 cash bonus as soon as you spend $3,000 on purchases in the very first 3 months. Rewards never expire.
Pay a 0% introductory APR for 9 months. Then pay 13.99%– 23.99% variable APR afterwards.
You will need great to outstanding credit scores to qualify.
Business Credit Cards No Annual Fee (Introductory) for Cash Back
Flat-Rate Rewards
Capital One ® Spark® Cash for Business
Take a look at the Capital One ® Spark® Cash for Business card. It has an introductory $0 annual fee for the first year. Afterwards, this card costs $95 each year. There is no introductory APR offer. The regular APR is a variable 20.99%.
You can get a $500 one-time cash reward after spending $4,500 in the initial three months from account opening. Get unlimited 1.5% cash back with Cash Select.
You will need great to superior credit to qualify.
Look into the Discover it ® Business Card. It has no yearly fee. There is an introductory APR of 0% on purchases for one year. After that the regular APR is a variable 14.49– 22.49%.
Get unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases, with no category restrictions or bonuses. They double the 1.5% Cashback Match ™ at the end of the initial year. There is no minimal spend requirement.
You can download transactions rapidly to Quicken, QuickBooks, and Excel. Keep in mind: you will need great to exceptional credit scores to get this card.
Check out the Ink Business Cash℠ Credit Card. It has no annual fee. There is a 0% initial APR for the first year. After that, the APR is a variable 13.24– 19.24%. You can get a $750 one-time cash bonus after spending $7,500 in the first 3 months from account opening.
You can get 5% cash back on the initial $25,000 spent in combined purchases at office supply stores and on internet, cable, and phone services each account anniversary year.
Get 2% cash back on the first $25,000 spent in combined purchases at gasoline stations and restaurants each account anniversary year. Earn 1% cash back on all other purchases. There is no limit to the amount you can earn.
You will need exceptional credit scores to get approved for this card.
Bank of America ® Business Advantage Cash Rewards MasterCard ® credit card
Look at the Bank of America ® Business Cash Rewards MasterCard ® credit card. Get an 0% introductory APR for the initial 9 billing cycles of the account. Afterwards, the APR is 12.24%– 22.24% variable. There is no annual fee. You can get a $300 statement credit offer.
Get 3% cash back in the category of your choice. So these are gas stations (default), office supply stores, travel, TV/telecom & wireless, computer services or business consulting services. Earn 2% cash back on dining. So this is for the initial $50,000 in combined choice category/dining purchases each calendar year. Afterwards earn 1% after, with no restrictions.
Bank of America ® Business Advantage Travel Rewards World MasterCard® credit card
For no annual fee while still getting travel rewards, check out this card from Bank of America. It has no yearly fee and a 0% initial APR for purchases during the first 9 billing cycles. After that, its regular APR is 12.24– 22.24% variable.
You can get 30,000 bonus points when you make a minimum of $3,000 in internet purchases. So this is within 90 days of your account opening. You can redeem these points for a $300 statement credit towards travel purchases.
Get endless 1.5 points for every $1 you spend on all purchases, everywhere, each time. And this is no matter how much you spend.
Also earn 3 points per every dollar spent when you book your travel (automobile, hotel, airline) with the Bank of America ® Travel Center. There is no restriction to the number of points you can get and points do not expire.
You can earn up to 75% more points on every purchase if you have a company checking account with Bank of America and qualify for Preferred Rewards for Business.
You will need superb credit scores to get this one (as in, 700s or better).
Flat-rate Travel Rewards: No Annual Fee for First Year
Capital One ® Spark® Miles for Business
Check out the Capital One ® Spark® Miles for Business card. It has no annual fee for the initial year, which after that rises to $95. The regular APR is 20.99%, variable due to the prime rate. There is no introductory annual percentage rate. Pay no transfer charges. Late fees go up to $39.
This card is terrific for travel if your costs do not come under basic bonus categories. You can get unlimited double miles on all purchases, without limitations. Earn 5x miles on rental cars and hotels if you book through Capital One Travel.
Get an initial bonus of 50,000 miles. That’s the same as $500 in travel. But you only get it if you spend $4,500 in the first 3 months from account opening. There is no foreign transaction cost. You will need a good to exceptional FICO rating to qualify.
Earn 50,000 bonus miles if you spend at least $4,500 within 3 months of your rewards membership enrollment date.
Business Credit Cards No Annual Fee for Fair to Poor Credit Scores, Not Calling for a Personal Guarantee
Brex Card for Startups
Look into the Brex Card for Startups. It has no annual fee.
You will not need to give your Social Security number to apply. And you will not need to provide a personal guarantee. They will take your EIN.
Nevertheless, they do not accept every industry.
Also, there are some industries they will not work with, as well as others where they want more paperwork. For a list, go to https://brex.com/legal/prohibited_activities/.
To establish creditworthiness, Brex checks a company’s cash balance, spending patterns, and investors.
You can get 7x points on rideshare. Get 4x on travel. Also, get triple points on restaurants. And get double points on recurring software costs. Get 1x points on everything else.
You can have poor credit, (even a 300 FICO) to qualify.
Company Credit Cards with a 0% Initial APR– Pay Zero!
Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express
Take a look at the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express. It has no annual fee. There is a 0% initial APR for the first year. Afterwards, the APR is a variable 13.24– 19.24%.
Get double Membership Rewards® points on everyday business purchases like office supplies or client dinners for the first $50,000 spent annually. Get 1 point per dollar after that.
You will need good to exceptional credit scores to qualify.
Also have a look at the American Express ® Blue Business Cash Card. Note: the American Express ® Blue Business Cash Card the same as the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express. Yet its rewards are in cash as opposed to points.
Get 2% cash back on all qualified purchases on as much as $50,000 per calendar year. Afterwards obtain 1%.
It has no annual fee. There is a 0% initial APR for the first 12 months. After that, the APR is a variable 13.24– 19.24%.
You will need great to outstanding credit to qualify.
Find it here: https://creditcard.americanexpress.com/d/business-bluecash-credit-card/
The Very Best Small Business Credit Cards No Annual Fee for You
Your straight-out perfect business credit cards no annual fee will depend upon your credit history and scores.
Only you can pick which features you want and need. So, do your research. What is exceptional for you could be terrible for another individual.
And, as always, make certain to establish credit in the recommended order for the best, quickest benefits.
Social media is often your customer’s top choice to try and solve any issues they are experiencing with your site or your product. This brings up a few challenges for big and small businesses: Customers …
With more than 3.6 billion social media users worldwide, social media marketing cannot be ignored.
Savvy marketers know social media is a vital part of every marketing campaign. For businesses, every social media platform is an opportunity to engage with their target audience.
Even marketing stars know that strategizing and managing even a few social networks can be overwhelming without the right management social media tools in place.
Consider this:
60 percent of company mentions on Twitter occur when you aren’t in the office.
How can you keep up with your Twitter account when you haven’t even checked Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok today? What about all those new social media sites that are popping up every other day (or so it seems)?
How do you know which ones to target for your brand and which to skip?
Take a deep breath.
Managing your social media shouldn’t be overwhelming. Social media tools can help:
Save you time by doing the posting, social listening, and hashtag research for you.
Save you money by allowing you to allocate resources to other tasks.
Maybe even save your brand’s reputation by catching a negative post in time for you to run interference and resolve the issue quickly.
I’ve done the research for you and organized the top social media marketing into five categories. We start with tools that help with the four stages of social media marketing: discovery, creation, monitoring and scheduling, and analyzing. Then, I added a fifth miscellaneous category at the end.
If you find yourself stuck in a particular stage, just head down to the relevant section.
Are you ready to get productive, optimize your social media marketing, and become an expert social media marketer?
Let’s begin.
Content Research and Discovery
According to Statista, users post 347,222 stories to Instagram, and 157,000 share messages on Facebook every minute. It can be overwhelming to find value-added content in all that noise.
Let’s look at content curation social media tools that help filter meaningful content so you can find images, posts, and conversations that will resonate with your audience.
This tool organizes stories shared by friends and followers on Twitter, Facebook, and other social apps. It’s available as a web, Android, and iOS app.
It displays aggregated stories from your social media circle as easy-to-read links in a feed. You can also add influencers in your niche.
You can catch up on news from the last hour, or go through the past week using the “Sort By” option. You can tap into content shared by your second-degree connections, as well.
Finally, you can also curate content from your newsfeed into an email newsletter.
Feedly aggregates the top content in your niche from industry blogs and other publications. Their AI bot, Leo, acts as a research assistant that learns your reading habits and delivers articles you’ll be interested in.
It then “reads” each article and annotates them with relevant summaries, analyses, and links to relevant content.
Leo learns from your behavior. If you save an article, it will show you more like it. If you click “less like this,” Leo will remember and show you fewer articles on that topic.
You can also set up priorities within topics. Choose a sub-topic, and Leo will include those articles under a Priorities tab.
There are several reasons I love this tool. On top of content discovery, you can use it to research keywords, track online trends, and even find influencers within your vertical.
Use it to dissect your competition, understand your audience, and find content with the most social network shares.
The Chrome extension lets you do your research while you browse, as well. To use it, enter your keyword or phrase to discover the top-performing content.
You can use the filters to customize your search by language, time frame, country, and a number of other parameters.
You can find the popularity of content on a particular social network by using the “sort by” feature.
You can also plug a blog URL into the tool to find its top-performing content pieces.
According to Venngage, 49 percent of surveyed marketers rated visual content as very important, but 43 percent said producing it consistently was their biggest challenge.
Social media has become undeniably visual, and having a presence on Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and other visual platforms is paramount.
Here are a couple of social media tools to help you create videos, images, diagrams, Pinterest boards, infographics, and more.
This is a simple graphic design web tool with pre-made templates for all kinds of social networks and uses.
It combines some of the best elements of Photoshop with a drag-and-drop functionality.
For every template, there are a variety of layouts, fonts, and backgrounds to choose from. And if you find yourself having trouble with a particular functionality, there are free tutorials to help you design better graphics.
For example, if you’re considering repurposing your most shared content for an infographic, there’s a tutorial for creating simple infographics with Canva.
Here are ten websites to source free and premium stock photos you can use in your designs.
Biteable allows you to create videos, animations, motion graphics, and a number of other visuals for social, ads, and even presentations. You can use any of their templates to get started.
You can sync your marketing calendar with theirs to get tips and ready-to-go video templates for relevant seasons, holidays, and events.
Pixlr is a freemium service with a lot of the functionality of Photoshop.
Its free services include Pixlr X (for express) with essential tools for quick editing. Pixlr E (for editor) offers a more extensive selection of tools for more sophisticated content creation and Remove BG, an AI-based background removal tool.
If you need even more photo editing capabilities, they offer a subscription-based plan that includes more stickers, overlays, and visual effects, as well.
Pixlr offers templates, as well, some free and some part of the subscription service.
Pro Tip: One-Pixel Pinterest Image
The images you share on Pinterest should be vertically aligned. But, if you insert a tall image directly into a blog post, it’ll take up a lot of real estate.
The solution is uploading the tall Pinterest image below the first picture of your post. Then, change its height and width to one pixel each.
Now, the image will appear when you click on the “Pin it” button to share on Pinterest. The alt text of the Pinterest image automatically serves as the caption for the image.
Monitoring and Scheduling
It’s impossible to manage your brand’s social media accounts 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But the world of social media doesn’t turn off at 5 p.m.
Social media tools for monitoring and scheduling can help. They can save you hours every week by combining your brand activity from multiple social media networks into one dashboard.
8. Hootsuite
Hoot is a full-service social media management tool that lets you track mentions, engagement, and other metrics across all of your social platforms. You can schedule and track posts using their analytics tools and respond to mentions via your dashboard.
Hopper HQ connects your brand with top content creators in your vertical. Once you choose from a list of recommended creators, they deliver content you can share in posts and paid ads.
CoSchedule is a simple, integrated social media and blog publishing calendar.
It also includes a suite of organizing tools for social media, brand assets, work, and content. Schedule your blog posts, collaborate with different authors on a post, and assign specific tasks to different people.
It has an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface, as well.
In the calendar view itself, you can also keep track of the most shared and engaged with content.
If This Then That is a fantastic social media tool to connect applications and automate social actions. IFTTT offers a series of applets that allow you to connect platforms and streamline your work.
For example, you can send your Instagrams to Twitter as native tweets. You can also get a weekly notification email of all of the people who followed you on Twitter. You can also archive tweets to a Google spreadsheet.
You can create your own applet from scratch by choosing a trigger and appending an action to it.
Or, you can use applets created by other people.
In this article, Kristi Hines explains a killer recipe to directly schedule social media updates from your Feedly account.
You can schedule the articles you choose to read later in Feedly on your social network accounts through Buffer. You only need Gmail and Buffer accounts to set up this applet.
Social Media Analytics
The best way to find the most effective social network for your business is by tracking your social media marketing efforts.
The right data allows you to calculate ROI from your social media marketing campaigns. It’ll help you find your top-performing content, so you can tweak your campaign and optimize your marketing efforts.
Let’s look at a few social media tools to measure and analyze your social activities.
Google Analytics is one of the most widely used analytics tools to track user behavior on websites. But, you can also track social reports under its reporting tab.
To access your social network standing, log into your Analytics account. Then, head over to the Reporting tab. Click on Acquisition > Social.
Set up goals inside Analytics to access these social reports. There are standard templates inside analytics you can use to set actionable goals for your social media marketing campaigns.
There are eight reports you can see under social analytics–Overview, Network Referral, Data Hub Activity, Landing Pages, Trackbacks, Conversions, Plugins, and Visitors Flow.
Once you set up goals, you’ll be able to see your social media impact in Overview.
The most important report is conversions.
You can break down your social media campaign by network and find out the most successful platform.
If you’re interested in the user behavior–the like and share buttons your visitors are clicking–you’ll need to set up social plugins.
Although setting up this report might take time, the end results are worth the effort:
A clear picture of the social network that provides the best ROI and the kind of content you should create for it.
HubSpot has a number of tools, from marketing automation to a full content management system. Their Marketing Hub allows you to create and manage social media posts, video for social, and conversations from their platform.
Olapic is a great tool to add to your visual marketing arsenal. You can use the tool to discover, curate, and schedule user-generated content across Instagram, Pinterest, and all your other social accounts.
Use it on your site, in your social ads, and in your emails to lift engagement and increase conversions.
Not only does Semrush allow you to create, schedule, and track your own posts, it also lets you track and analyze your competitors’ posts, too. You can also use it to optimize your social ads.
SEMRush is also helpful for general keyword and content research in your vertical (or you can also use Ubersuggest for this).
Miscellaneous Tools To Increase Social Engagement on Your Website
You are already equipped with the best social media tools to research, curate, plan, schedule, monitor, and analyze your social media marketing efforts.
What about social engagement on your website? The end goal of most social campaigns is to increase your website’s engagement and traffic.
Here are some tools to power your website and drive social media interaction.
A simple way to increase the number of tweets on your blog post is by adding a link to every actionable comment. When a reader clicks on the link, it automatically adds a tweet to their Twitter account.
You can track all of your embedded links from the dashboard.
You can also analyze their performance using their analytics tool.
If you’re on WordPress, there is a simpler alternative–Better Click to Tweet plugin.
Floating share buttons can either help or hurt your engagement and conversions, according to BigCommerce. For example, sharing buttons with counters can hurt conversions if the number of shares is low, while adding share buttons to product pages can actually distract users.
The best way to find out when and where to use share buttons is through extensive testing.
If you’re on WordPress, you can start with Share Buttons by AddToAny plugin. It has the option to activate share buttons in the sidebar, as well as above and below every content piece.
You can also customize the number of social networks you want to show your visitors, from the ones below.
Influencers are a trusted source of information for your customers. A recommendation from them can lift your product sales and brand visibility.
But, how can you find influencers interested in your post, service, or product?
That’s where Onalytica comes in. It finds relevant influencers for your brand based on your article link or uploaded file.
It scans an article, then generates a list of targeted influencers in under a minute. After reverse-engineering relevant influencers, you can connect and start building a relationship.
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is a great tool to ensure headlines attract attention—and clicks.
Using it is simple:
Head over to www.coschedule.com/headline-analyzer.
Plug your headline in the “Type your headline here” bar.
Press the “Analyze Now” button.
You’ll get an overall score for your headline and a grade for the variety of words you’ve used, top keywords in your headline, and the sentiment your headline evokes
If a large section of your audience hangs out on Facebook, then activating Facebook Comments on your website can increase engagement and bring you closer to your social media marketing goals.
But, beware. There is a risk of comment scams that easily pass spam filters. You’ll need to stay on top of comment moderation.
Conclusion
Social media can become a huge distraction, even if it does help drive your business. Manually logging in to post blogs and business updates can eat up valuable time you could use to build a new product, take care of vendor orders, or handle customer concerns.
Start incorporating the above tools in your armory to automate repetitive tasks and batch your social media posts.
They’ll save you time every week. They’ll also improve your ROI from social media marketing and your bottom line.
Have I missed any of your favorite social media marketing tools? Can you share your social media productivity secrets? Please let me know in the comments below.
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