The internet has influenced the business world tremendously. Today, businesses require internet-marketing services for growth. Social media marketers need to promote their products and services and witness the growth of social media presence and engagement through the internet. Social media provides your product or company a chance to engage and interact with potential buyers in a big way. The purchasing power of online buyers highly depends on the internet for social media, product and company information. When a brand takes advantage of social media, consider using social media bots to boost your social media marketing.
What Are Social Media Bots?
To begin, social media bots are software programs that controls social media account(s) by posting content automatically. A social bot, socbot or social network bot acts like a real human when interacting with the other users on social networks including Twitter and Facebook. As the name suggests, the word ‘bot’ comes from the word ‘robot.’
How Do They Work?
You can easily mistake a social media bot for a real human. Artificial Intelligence (AI) powers social media bots. They are engineered to perform tasks the way human beings do. For instance, sending messages, following and unfollowing, and replying just like the sleep/wake patterns of a human being.
Nonetheless, social bots use data mining text-mining software to make other users think they are interacting with a human being. This software has access to the current happenings and general information that help them identify and customize undoubted messages.
What Is Their Use?
Both small business and large business can take advantage of social media bots at a cost or no cost. There are a number of social bots available in the market. Social Media bots are programmed to perform different tasks depending on the tailored niche and specific social media channel. They assist humans in retrieving data faster and easier, answering and replying messages, follow and unfollow other users, like, view video, pin, share, retweet, comment, etc.
They can perform the simplest task to the most complex task perfectly without other users noticing that they are interacting with a robot. Socbots are mostly used by brands for marketing purposes as they can fake positive reviews of a particular product to increase the popularity the product is in the market.
Although some apps are tailored to perform the same function as a social bot, they are not as efficient as social bots. Since social bots interact and engage with other users while an app uses a menu, users will interact with the app through a number of answer options.
Choosing the Best Social Media Bot For Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
There are quite a few social media bots in the market, such as Followliker, Followinglike, Dominator Series, Instadao, etc. Messenger chatbots are probably the most popular bots due to their urgency. Some perform the same task while others vary in use. If you are looking for the best bots for social media consider the following:
1. Account management
There are two things to consider before the purchase of any social media bot. Lay down specifically what you need, which could be;
- A social media bot for a small number of social media accounts management
- A social media bot for a large number of social media accounts management
You can always try different social bots and choose which suits your needs.
2. Reliable and secure to use
Not all social bots are trustworthy; some are a scam, and can lead to your account being closed. Choose one that provides efficiency and safety.
3. Easy to set-up and install
Choose a social bot that is easy to set-up and install to save time and cost.
4. Supports multiple social media channels
Choose a social bot that will enable you to connect with different people around the globe that are on different social media channels.
5. Generates the ultimate customer experience
Social bots are always in control of what they are commanded to do. It should generate the ultimate customer experience.
Benefits of using social media bots to boost your social media marketing
Social media bots make work overly easy. Well, some of the obvious benefits of using social media bots to influence your social media marketing include;
· Create a better customer experience
There is no better way to stay in touch with your potential buyers than personalized messages. Every conversation made with your audience does matter. Take advantage of the social bots to personalize each conversation with your audience. Social bots gather information from the user’s database engagement purposes without overrunning their privacy.
For instance, if you are running a travel company and using social media bots in your social media marketing strategy, you can command the bots to ask simple questions such as: “Where do you want to go this holiday?”, “What is your final destination?” or “Where is your favorite holiday destination?’’. You can’t compare it with displayed ads thus bringing a sense of ease and simplicity.
You can also include a link to your chatbot in your Instagram account. When your followers click on the link, it directs them to your Messenger. The bot will display something like, “Hi, welcome from Instagram! Thank you for your follow. You can access the new freebies by clicking here!”
· Drive traffic to your website
Social bots can easily drive traffic to your website. For instance, if you are running an organic Facebook post or Facebook ads, link your bot to your post. When people comment, your bot automatically send a message. Another way is adding your chatbot links to your email campaign. It automatically leads your user to your website or leads magnet depending on how you customized it.
You can also include chat icons and slide-ins. They are like pop-ups, and the user does not have to leave the site to interact with your bot. they can say something like, “Do you like what we are offering?’’ or “would you like to receive more messages in the future?” This strategy is used to capture emails and visitors before they leave your site.
· To improve the relationship between the marketers and customers
The main aim of using social media bots is to foster a long lasting relationship between the business owners and customers. The repetitive task and continuous interactions with customers may be time-consuming, monotonous and boring to the marketers. The deployment of social bots is therefore required to ease the work. The bots can provide reliable customer support, acting as customer agents, simplifying buying procedures, facilitating sales, answering simple questions, sending order notification, and sending customer purchase notifications, etc.
Conclusion
Social media bots are a great tool, but it comes with its own baggage. They are not risk-free, and every time you use it, you are at risk of losing your account or followers. However, if you are considering using bots for your social media campaign make sure it is properly designed developed, and programmed properly to improve your social media presence.