Exploring New Social Media Tools

Social media is everchanging, not only the technology but the features social networks and social media tools offer. But which new tools should you adopt for your social media marketing efforts? And when do you give up some tools that you’re using and start using something else?

Before exploring a new social network or social media tool, ask yourself the following:

Is there a strong business need that the new social network will address? One reason adopting a new social network could make sense is to reach a new audience. In other cases, you may want to replace a social network that has gone out of business or one that no longer provides value to your company.

Is there a strong business need that the new social media tool can address? Make sure the tool is useful. Adopting a new social media tool, such as a social media dashboard or an AI-powered design app, can help to streamline your social media marketing process and increase efficiency-but only if it works well.

When adding a new social network or tool into your marketing mix, keep in mind the learning curve for adopting new technology. Build time for familiarization and resources for training into the roll out of any new tool to ensure you get the most out of it.

New Social Networks

New technology can be something that is new to you and your team but can also be entirely new to the tech industry. Threads and Bluesky are two newer social networks that came onto the scene in response to the tumultuous ownership transition at Twitter and the hostile environment that resulted after management changed.

Threads was developed by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and it is integrated with Instagram. Bluesky is the new social network developed by one of Twitter’s creators, Jack Dorsey. Both social networks have many features similar to Twitter, so the learning curve for adopting them should be fairly short.

Many business owners have considered shutting down their Twitter accounts and setting up accounts at Threads or Bluesky instead. While there is no single reason to leave a social network or not, some questions to ask yourself in the decision-making process include:

• Are you still getting value out of the social network you’ve been using? Is it enhancing your brand, augmenting your customer service, or generating traffic, leads, or sales?
• Are you receiving more spam messages or harassment on the network that increases your workload or causes undue stress?
• Is the audience you’re trying to reach or serve still on the social network and interacting with you regularly?
• Are other companies or professionals in your industry still actively using the platform or have they moved on?

Once you set up your account on a new service, one way to let people know is by posting a message on the network you’re leaving to inform your following of the change. However, certain social networks, like Twitter, do not allow these kinds of posts and will block your account so be careful.

A more direct way of notifying your customers of the social network change is to announce it in an email to your list. You can also post the message to other social networks you’re using and change the URL, handle, and social media icon on your website and marketing collateral. If you already use Instagram and set up a new Threads account, some of your followers may have already opted in to follow you there once your account is live, and you won’t be building a following from scratch.

New Social Media Tools

Using a new feature on a social media tool you’re using is typically less labor-intensive than setting up an account on a new social network. New technology is developed at a rapid pace and social media tools companies work hard to integrate new features into their offerings to maintain and grow their user base.

An example of this is Canva, the online graphic design tool and app. The fast-growing company added a free AI image generator and AI-powered design tool called "Magic Design" to their already robust suite of image and video creation and editing tools. Because design tools utilizing AI are still in their infancy, the results can be strange, to say the least. If you are planning on adopting AI features or apps to help with your design tasks, test several of them out to see what kind of output you receive.

New social media tools may not improve what you’re doing online as quickly as you’d like, and getting them on board and working for you can take longer than you might expect. Over time, the newest technology tools or social networks may become standards and staples in your social media marketing mix. Until then, adopt them with a clear business strategy in mind and plan for enough time and resources to ensure you are benefitting from them in the long run.