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Are you feeling overwhelmed with all of the digital marketing tools out there? Paralyzed by choice? Don’t worry; you’re not alone! In today’s digital age, knowing where to start and which tools are right for your team, budget, and business can be hard.

We’re here to help you navigate the ever-evolving world of digital marketing tools. This guide has the top tools for everyone, from novice marketers to managers of enterprise corporations. Keep reading for a spectrum of digital marketing tools that’ll put you in the upper echelon of your industry.

Social media marketing tools

Want to automate tedious tasks, stay organized and on top of to-do’s, and better connect with your audience on social? If you answered no to any of those prompts, you’re in the wrong place. How did you even get here?

Jokes aside, the right digital marketing software will super-boost your social media strategy. These tools can make your work life so much easier, to the point where it might not even feel like work anymore.

1. Hootsuite

Number one in our hearts is Hootsuite. Obviously, we’re a little biased but hear us out. Hootsuite can do so many social media marketing-specific things. As far as digital marketing platforms go, this one’s a banger.

Hootsuite is beloved by over 16 million users, too, many of them solopreneurs, busy marketing managers, and content creators. That many social media marketing professionals can’t be wrong.

Now, Hootsuite is famous for its ability to help you publish content, plan your social media calendars, create account-specific streams that keep you organized, and organize your many different social communications in one place. But there are other, more niche features that you’ll discover as you use the tool.

For example, here are two Hootsuite social features you don’t want to sleep on:

The catalog of ideas in Inspiration

Do you ever hit a wall with marketing content generation for your social media calendar? Well, Hootsuite’s got your back.

You can browse through this nearly endless source of inspiration for new social media content ideas. Each content idea is a three-parter, including:

A sample post that you can open in Composer to customize and schedule
A description of how and when to use it
A list of best practices for creating variations on the idea

The Best Time to Publish feature

This Hootsuite Analytics feature gives you automatic suggestions for the best time to post based on your unique audience. You don’t have to do any data-crunching yourself. Simply schedule your content for the future, and when you go to choose your time, Hootsuite will make suggestions for you.

Price: Included with every Hootsuite plan, starting as low as $49/month.

Who it’s for: Content creators, brand managers, marketers, and small business owners. Businesses of all sizes.

2. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social listening integration for Hootsuite. It lets you track and analyze keywords, brand mentions, and the general activity of your audiences on a large scale. You can easily track, study, and shape the conversation around your brand, also known as brand monitoring.

With Brandwatch, you know what your audience is saying about you and topics related to your brand and industry. Then, you can deliver content that speaks to what’s relevant to them or chime in on conversations about your brand.

Source: Hootsuite

Price: Included with a Hootsuite Business or Enterprise account.

Who it’s for: Marketers, content creators, brand managers. Businesses of all sizes.

We’ve got you covered if you’re thirsty for more of the best marketing tools for social media.

Keyword research and SEO marketing tools

Keyword research tools are crucial for setting up a successful SEO marketing strategy. Whether you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a small business owner, everyone has to play by the same SEO rules. And when you play the game right, with the right tools in your belt, you can bump your brand to the top.

Keyword research and SEO marketing tools can help you to track search trends, create powerful content, and optimize your visibility on search engine results pages.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most popular keyword research tools out there, and for a good reason. It has a range of features, like an all-in-one SEO toolset that allows you to audit and optimize your website. You can also audit your competitor’s sites and uncover the keywords they’re ranking for, discover your industry’s top-performing content, and track your ranking progress.

Ahrefs makes it simple to discover profitable keywords that’ll help skyrocket your site’s ranking in no time.

Source: Ahrefs

Price: Ahrefs has a host of free SEO tools anyone can use. Paid plans range from $99/month to $999/month.

Who it’s for: Marketers, SEO strategists, small business owners, and marketing teams for enterprise-level corporations.

4. SEMrush

SEMrush is another great keyword research tool for any marketer or SEO strategist. It helps to identify long-tail and highly targeted keywords that can show significant improvements in online traffic and conversions. Plus, the keyword ideas are especially helpful when brainstorming new keywords to rank for.

SEMrush provides a powerful and easy interface to quickly find targeted keywords ideal for SEO campaigns or content creation. It also offers a Social Media Toolkit that includes advanced social media analytics.

Source: SEMrush

Price: Paid SEMrush plans range from $119.95/month to $449.95/month

Who it’s for: Marketers, SEO strategists, small business owners, and marketing teams for enterprise-level corporations.

5. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a research tool for anyone looking to better their advertising, optimize their keyword performance, and streamline their SEO efforts.

The best thing about it? It’s free. Google Keyword Planner is a cost-effective alternative to expensive SEO marketing tools. Plus, it offers up-to-date analytics about the most effective search phrases your business should target.

Of course, it has some limitations compared to the bossy Internet marketing tools mentioned above. But again, you can’t beat free.

Source: Google Keyword Planner

Price: Free!

Who it’s for: Solopreneurs, content creators, marketers with small budgets, small business owners.

Graphic design and video marketing tools

Graphic design and video marketing tools are invaluable when creating stunning online content. Today’s world is dominated by visuals, which makes having professional-looking online assets so important. Listen, even if you’re not an artist, you can fake it till you make it with tools.

Graphics and videos that are aesthetically pleasing can help draw in viewers and add a level of credibility to your brand. Tools make it easier than ever to create quality content while minimizing cost and effort. This ease of use and stunning visuals make these tools a no-brainer for any business.

6. Canva

You know we love a free, template-rich, and intuitive tool! Canva is one of the only online graphic design tools that checks all of those boxes and more.

Canva contains a huge library of pre-made templates and images, so it’s easy to create a video with stunning graphics in minutes. Their intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes the process even simpler, taking much of the necessary technical know-how out of graphic design.

You can also easily create an animated video in Canva using one of the pre-made templates. Then, use their video editing software to make it your own. You’ll be able to create the type of video you want in minutes with their drag-and-drop capabilities.

The online tool also offers powerful features such as photo filters, email editors, and team collaboration capabilities. Oh, and Canva integrates seamlessly with Hootsuite.

Source: Canva

Price: Free! If you want to upgrade, Canva Pro starts at $119.99/year per person.

Who it’s for: Non-designers who need to create assets, content creators, and solopreneurs.

7. Visme

Visme is another free and intuitive design tool. Where Canva is focused on simplicity, Visme is great for more complex designs, like infographics or presentations. It has tons of professionally-styled templates for you to choose from.

Visme’s focus on business-forward templates makes it easy to film a corporate-style explainer video. These are particularly useful when producing assets for your internal team. With Visme, you can easily create both internal and external video content that can help you further your business goals.

Source: Visme

Price: Free! A premium Visme account is available from $24.75/month.

Who it’s for: Non-designers who need to create assets, marketers with client presentations, and solopreneurs.

Analytics tools

Data analytics tools are a must-have for any digital marketing venture. If you’re not measuring your tactics and strategy, you can’t know what’s working and what’s not.

When it comes to analytics tools, choose ones that serve your specific business goals, whether that’s insights into optimizing your operations, increasing your sales, improving your customer experience, or all of the above.

The right tools will help you reduce your churn rate and predict future trends based on your collected consumer data.

8. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is proof that you don’t need a big budget to stay on top of your data. It’s free to use and will help you better understand your website traffic. For the social-obsessed folks out there, Google Analytics can give you detailed insights on your social traffic and conversions.

You’ll gain insights into how visitors interact with your website; you can monitor marketing campaigns and gain valuable data about the demographics of your customers. Then, you can optimize your site and campaigns for better user engagement and higher conversions.

Source: Google Analytics

Price: Free!

Who it’s for: Everyone who has a website, from solopreneurs and small businesses all the way up to larger enterprise companies.

9. Hotjar

Hotjar, a popular analytics tool, gives you insight into how your consumers interact with your website and apps. It can create Heatmaps or Recordings where you can watch the path your users take, where they pause, and where they quickly click away from.

Hotjar’s features are undeniably useful when it comes to creating user journey maps or understanding the areas of your UX that need improvement.

Source: Hotjar

Price: Free! Paid subscriptions range from $39/month to $99/month.

Who it’s for: Product teams and designers, UX designers, and people looking to better understand their user’s journey.

Email marketing tools

It’s not hard to see why email marketing tools are a must-have for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Email marketing boasts an average ROI of $45 for every $1 spent. And with the right tools, you can maximize that profit and make it as painless as possible.

Email marketing tools make managing customer contact lists, automating and designing campaigns, and tracking results simple and straightforward. With the ability to monitor open rates, clicks, conversions, and more, tools for marketing with email provide valuable insight into customer behaviour.

10. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the leading email marketing SaaS companies out there. They offer automation capabilities, templates for content creation, and omnichannel, integrated campaign tools. Plus, Mailchimp makes it easy to create professional-looking emails with a drag-and-drop interface.

Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform. They offer tools for automation, insight, content creation, and audience data. Mailchimp also integrates with Hootsuite.

Source: Mailchimp

Price: Free! Paid Mailchimp accounts range from $17.80/month to $479.24/month.

Who it’s for: Marketers, agencies, small owner-operated businesses to enterprise-level corporations.

11. Marketo

Marketo takes a slightly more personalized approach to email marketing than Mailchimp. This tool makes it possible to manage multiple lists for different customers all in one place.

Marketo offers a highly-customizable system with equipped with useful email templates. So you can build personalized email and nurture campaigns. This way, you can send individualized emails based on your customer’s past purchases and interests.

Source: Capterra

Price: The pricing is based on your database size, but there are no free options.

Who it’s for: Marketers, agencies, and small- to mid-sized businesses. Those who want to make personalized sales.

Landing page and lead capture tools

If you want to increase website conversions and generate leads, then you’re going to need landing page and lead capture tools. By creating attractive, engaging pages that are specifically designed to convert, you’ll foster powerful relationships with potential customers.

Lead capture tools help followers take action more easily by providing them with simple and intuitive processes. Essentially, the right combination of content, visuals, and calls-to-action gives your users a natural path to convert.

12. Linktree

If you’re, say, a food blogger, an ecommerce business, or any brand interested in social selling, you might want to link more than one URL in your Instagram bio. But alas, Instagram won’t technically allow it. Enter Linktree: One of the best link-in-bio landing page tools.

Linktree allows you to create and customize a bio link. With it, you can connect anything you have a URL to, like your social links, website, store, videos, music, podcast, and events. Plus, Linktree is easy to set up, so you’ll be reaping the benefits in no time.

Source: Linktree

Price: Free! Paid Linktree plans start at $6/month and go up to 27$/month.

Who it’s for: Marketers, content creators, and brands on social media who want to share more than one link.

13. Unbounce

Unbounce makes creating, optimizing, and launching landing pages a breeze. With its built-in A/B testing and analytics features, you can easily determine which page elements are delivering the most bang for your buck. It’s a landing page and lead capture tool in one.

Unbounce’s intuitive editor lets even the most design-challenged among us customize one of their pre-built templates. You’ll be able to give each page a personal look and feel while still relying on proven strategies for success. And once they’re published, advanced analytics take over, so you’ll know exactly which elements are resonating with visitors down to the finest detail.

Source: Unbounce

Price: Free two-week trial, then $90/month or $575/month.

Who it’s for: Business owners, agencies, B2B marketers, and ecommerce brands.

Productivity and collaboration tools

Collaboration and productivity tools can significantly improve communication within the workplace. With remote working taking over, water cooler chats and boardroom meetings have been replaced with online communication.

Having a range of simple tools like chat, video conferencing, and cloud-based document storage makes work easier, whether you’re working alone or with colleagues. By allowing team members to collaborate easily on projects, these tools help take the strain out of managing complex tasks.

14. Slack

If you’ve used Slack before, you know it trumps most other tools for work-related communication. Within the app, you have public and private channels where you can pin important messages or share files. It integrates easily with other communication and collaboration tools like Zoom and Google Drive.

Slack works on pretty much anything, from your phone to your laptop and your tablet. Just make sure you turn your notifications off at night, as the classic Slack ping can induce a Pavlovian effect for work-related stress.

Price: From $7.25/user per month to $12.50/user per month.

Who it’s for: Agencies, enterprises, and businesses with large, medium, and small internal teams.

15. Airtable

Airtable is a cloud-based collaboration platform. Its capabilities are wide and far-reaching, but at its core Airtable is a database-spreadsheet hybrid where you can link records and store information.

Airtable is great for collaborating on projects, mapping out calendars or timelines, and generating easy-to-digest plans or strategies. It has tons of templates to get you started, from content calendars to marketing campaign trackers and product launches.

Source: Airtable

Price: Free! Paid models are $10/ seat monthly to $20/ seat monthly

Who it’s for: Content creators, agencies, large to small businesses, project managers, and marketers.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a classic collaboration tool. You can create a spreadsheet in Sheets, share it with your entire team or clients, then communicate back and forth by commenting on the cells in question.

Google Sheets also hosts a number of templates that project managers will love, like project timelines, plans, and trackers. It has Gantt chat functionality so you can see at a glance your project’s start date and task timelines.

Source: Google Drive Sheet’s Template

Price: Free!

Who it’s for: Agencies, large to small businesses, project managers, marketers, and content creators.

If your team struggles with collaboration, try implementing some tips from our Social Media Collaboration guide.

Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.

Get Started

The post 15 Digital Marketing Tools for Every Team and Budget appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Originally posted on January 10, 2023 @ 9:40 pm

Having an orderly, beautiful and consistent set of Instagram highlight covers looks cool, sure — but it’s also a great opportunity to show off your branding, color palette and sense of style to your followers. And, aesthetic highlight covers encourage profile visitors to click and view the Stories that contain all the important information you’ve essentially pinned to the top of your profile.

You can design personalized highlight covers from scratch or use a graphic design tool or photo editing app for extra support. Read this post and you’ll be, well, covered.

What is an Instagram highlight cover?

First: What is an Instagram highlight?

An Instagram highlight is a collection of Instagram Stories that a user has saved under a certain category. Instagram Stories can only be viewed for 24 hours, but adding a Story to a highlight gives it a permanent spot on your profile.

An Instagram highlight cover is a photo or graphic that appears above the highlight name on your profile page. It’s like a book cover, but for your highlight.

In the example below (indicated by the blue rectangle), a fashion brand uses highlights to feature important information—a sizing guide, care info, new launches, etc.—and each highlight has a cute floral highlight cover.

Source: Instagram

Highlight covers aren’t essential, but they do provide your profile with a polished look—and they make a great first impression for people visiting your Instagram page for the first time.

Here’s how to make them.

How to create an Instagram highlight cover

To create an Instagram highlight cover, first you need to have an Instagram highlight. Follow these step-by-step instructions to create a highlight (and if you already have a highlight set up, skip this part).

How to create an Instagram highlight

1. Open your Instagram account in the mobile app and click “New” in the highlights section below your bio.

2. Scroll through your Story archive and select the Stories you want to include in your highlight. Then, tap Next in the top right corner of the screen.

3. Type in the name of your highlight.

4. Optional: Tap Edit cover to edit the default cover picked by Instagram (a frame from the first Story in your collection). You can also do this later, once your highlight is live — we cover the process in detail below.

5. Click Add in the top right cover of the screen.

That’s it! Your highlight will show up on your profile page.

How to create a personalized Instagram highlight cover

Once you create an Instagram highlight, the cover will generate automatically — but personalizing your Instagram highlight covers is way more fun. It’s also a great way to showcase your branding and add an individual touch to your profile.

We’ve put together 40 Instagram Story highlight cover icons that are free to download and easy to customize. Or, you can make your own.

You can create circular Instagram highlight covers using any design app or software. We’re fans of Canva (and psst… Canva is now integrated with Hootsuite, making it simple to design beautiful graphics for free). Here’s how to create a highlight cover using Canva.

1. Go to canva.com. Canva is free to use, but you do need to create an account to log in.

2. You can design your own Instagram highlight from scratch using any circular image, or personalize a Canva template (that’s what we’ll be doing in this example). Type “Instagram Story highlight” into the search bar to find thousands of templates.

3. Select your favorite template.

4. Once you’ve selected your template, you can edit the text…

5. …and the colours…

6. …and even add graphics, if you want to. Canva has a ton of free images and designs to choose from.

7. When you’re happy with the design, click “Share” at the top right of your screen to download the image.

8. Choose Download from the drop-down menu. Download the image as a PNG or JPG. If the template you’ve chosen has several pages, only download the pages that you want—in this case, we’re only saving page 2.

9. Save the image to your phone’s camera roll. Now, it’s time to use the image as a highlight cover.

How to change your Instagram highlight cover

To change your Instagram highlight cover to a personalized image, follow these simple steps:

1. Open the highlight from your Instagram profile.

2. Tap More in the bottom right corner.

3. Tap Edit highlight. Then, tap Edit cover, near the top of your screen.

5. To choose an image from your camera roll, tap the photo icon near the bottom of your screen.

6. Choose the new highlight cover from your camera roll. Then, tap Done.

That’s it! Your brand new highlight cover is live.

8 tips for clicky Instagram highlight covers

Still searching for inspiration? Here are some great examples of engaging Instagram Story highlight covers and tips on how to get it right.

1. Keep it simple

Instagram Story highlight covers are small—so small, in fact, that you’ll want to avoid crowding that precious little circle with too much text or overcomplicated images.

Source: Instagram

Keeping your covers basic and clean is ideal. Even simple color-blocked highlight covers (like the ones used by the artist above) are super effective: they’re not too busy, and pleasing to look at.

2. Be consistent

Your IG highlight covers don’t need to be identical, but ideally, they’ll match: consider picking a certain color, theme or pattern to follow when making your covers.

Source: Instagram

This restaurant uses a red circular frame on all of their highlight covers, creating a consistent look even though the photos within each frame are all different. It’s a small detail, but it gives the covers a cohesive look.

3. Be creative

Highlight covers are an opportunity to show off your creativity as a brand. Think about how you can infuse your brand into your highlight covers as much as possible.

Source: Instagram

For example, paint brand Farrow and Ball has highlight covers that look like paint mixing together. It’s a very unique choice that effectively communicates something about the brand (mainly, that they sell paint).

4. Use a branded color palette

Another way you can incorporate your brand into your highlight covers is by using your brand’s colors in the designs. Think of a cover like a label for your business: audiences should be able to look at it and immediately know that it belongs to you.

Source: Instagram

This cosmetic brand, for example, has a very consistent color palette across their products and on their Instagram. The highlight covers are no exception: they take on the same trendy pinky-brown hues as the rest of the profile.

5. Use icons

Because there’s not much real estate on a highlight cover, using pictures that symbolize words and ideas—or icons—can be an excellent tool for communicating simple information.

Source: Instagram

Crate and Barrel’s Instagram highlight covers are quite basic, but the icons are effective when it comes to symbolizing ideas (and they’re pretty cute, too). Icons are where editing apps like Canva really shine—there’s thousands of symbols and simple illustrations built right in.

6. Show off your products

If you use Instagram for business, your highlight covers work as a tiny marketing tactic. Instead of having to scroll through your feed to see all of your merchandise, Instagram users can get a quick look at your products via the highlight covers.

Source: Instagram

This slow fashion brand uses highlights to feature specific products, so curious shoppers can easily research the design and fit of different pieces of clothing.

7. Highlight what matters most

Don’t make the high school mistake of highlighting everything. Highlights should be used to showcase only the most important and useful information to your audience. It’s good to be picky about which Stories you highlight (and as a bonus, being selective means you won’t have to design a ton of highlight covers).

Source: Instagram

Pottery Barn Kids keeps their highlights simple and broad: topics like “Nursery,” “Toddler,” and “Bedroom” make it easy for Instagram users to find the inspo they’re looking for.

8. Don’t be afraid to experiment

Highlight covers often symbolize the highlighted category in a very literal way, but if you’ve got an idea, try it—one of the best things about highlight covers is that they can be edited or switched out if you change your mind. Let your imagination go wild.

Source: Instagram

It’s not surprising that this graphic designer has very bold, distinctive highlight covers—they fit perfectly with his brand. For example, it would be the typical choice to go with Twitter’s logo for the “Tweets” section, but this designer created his own personal version of that iconic bird.

Instagram highlight cover templates

Now that you know how to create Instagram highlights and add custom covers to them, download this bundle of 40 free customizable designs and take the look of your Instagram profile to the next level.

Easily manage all of your Instagram marketing with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule and publish posts directly to Instagram, engage your audience, measure performance and run all your other social media profiles. Try it free today.

Get Started

The post How to Make Clicky Instagram Highlight Covers [40 Free Covers] appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Originally posted on January 12, 2023 @ 2:41 pm

Social media RFPs (requests for proposals) are the starting places for many successful social media strategies, campaigns, and collaborations.

Actually, a social media RFP template is the starting place. Creating a great RFP for social media marketing services isn’t easy, after all.

Write something too vague, and you’ll be sifting through unhelpful applications.

Leave too many questions unanswered? You’ll spend all your time writing lengthy responses to emails from interested vendors.

Whether you’re an agency or vendor, what you get out of a social media RFP depends on what you put into it. So why not use a tried-tested-and-true social media RFP template to set your project or brand off on the right foot?

What is a social media RFP?

Here’s some important marketing vocab for you: RFP stands for “request for proposal.”

A social media RFP is an open call for pitches, whether for a one-off project or a longer-term collaborative relationship. It can be put out to social media marketing agencies or individual practitioners.

Your RFP for social media marketing services might do the following:

outline a specific project or need your business wants to address (for example, the promotion of a limited-edition line of belts for dogs)
invites agencies, management platforms, or other vendors to pitch general creative ideas or solutions for your brand as a whole

The RFP process provides a way for a company to vet ideas and providers before committing to a significant collaboration or long-term agreement. Why wouldn’t you want to scope out your options before locking one down?!

A good RFP for social media management services should provide background, describe the project and its objectives, and spell out bidder requirements.

That being said, it’s a delicate balance between providing info and oversharing. The art of an RFP for social media lies in providing the necessary amount of detail while leaving room for creativity. It’s worth taking your time and doing it right, though, because the better your RFP, the better the vendor proposals will be.

(FYI: RFPs can be used for other business needs as well. You might create an RFP for help with a print marketing campaign or for manufacturing services. A social media RFP is specifically seeking proposals in the field of social media marketing.)

What to include in a social media RFP

Wondering what to include in your social media RFP?

While every RFP is different, most strong social media RFPs feature a few common elements. (Just read a few social media RFP examples, and you’ll see these same details coming up again and again and again.)

Your social media content should be creative, but when it comes to social media RFPs, it really is best to stick with a proven structure.

Whether you want to work with a social media agency, digital marketing agency, or individual contractor, we recommend including these ten sections (in this order!) for your next social media RFP.

1. Introduction

2. Company profile

3. Social media ecosystem

4. Project purpose and description

5. Challenges

6. Key questions

7. Bidder qualifications

8. Proposal guidelines

9. Project timelines

10. Proposal evaluation

We’ve parsed out each section so you can get a better sense of what it should include in your RFP for social media services.

1. Introduction

This is your first impression: a chance to give a big-picture overview of what you’re looking for. It’s like your objective on a resume.

Provide a top-level summary of your social media RFP. This short section should include key details such as your company name, what you’re looking for, and your submission due date.

Here’s an example:

Fake Company, Inc., the global leader in fake companies, is looking for a fake social media awareness campaign. We are accepting proposals in response to this fake request for proposal until [date].

2. Company profile

Time to peel back some layers and let the reader know what your brand is all about.

Share some background on your company. Try to go beyond the boilerplate and provide information that may be relevant to an RFP for social media marketing services. This may include your:

Mission statement
Core values
Target customers
Key stakeholders
Competitive landscape

If including any of the above in your social media RFP would require disclosing trade secrets, note that additional information is available upon request and/or NDA signature.

3. Social media ecosystem

In order to get great social media proposals, you’ve got to give your vendors a peek behind the curtain. Knowledge is power!

Give vendors an overview of how your company uses social media. Let them know which social channels you’re most active on or which networks you’ve chosen to avoid. Some other things you might mention in this section may include:

A summary of active accounts
Essential aspects of your social marketing strategy
Overviews or links to past or ongoing campaigns
Relevant social analytics (e.g., audience demographics, engagement, a social media audit, etc.)
Highlights from your social accounts (e.g., content that performed well)

Discover Puerto Rico outlined its wide range of social media accounts in its social media RFP, clarifying the distinction between their leisure audience and their business audience.

SOURCE: Discover Puerto Rico

A key reason to provide this intel in your social media RFP is to avoid repetition. Without this information, you may end up with social media proposals that are too similar to past concepts, which is ultimately a waste of everyone’s time.

The better a vendor can understand your social media landscape, the better they’ll be able to deliver a successful concept.

4. Project purpose and description

Explain the purpose of your social media RFP. What are you looking for? What social media goals are you hoping to achieve? Be as specific as possible.

Some examples may include:

Promote awareness of a new store opening in [location]
Gain new followers on a recently launched social media channel
Increase consideration for an existing product or service
Generate more leads via specific social media channels
Establish your company as a thought leader
Share company values or initiatives with a target audience
Run a seasonal promotion or social contest

Remember, social media campaigns can and should include multiple objectives. Each goal provides a box for a vendor’s proposal to tick off.

This RFP from SkillPlan outlines the company’s primary objectives and secondary objectives clearly and concisely.

SOURCE: Merx

Consider using primary and secondary goal categories so that it’s clear what matters most.

5. Challenges

The struggle is real… real important to share with your potential new social media collaborator, that is.

Most companies are well aware of the unique challenges they face on and off social media, but an uninitiated third party won’t have that same understanding.

Identify roadblocks upfront in your social media RFP so you can work together to solve or work around them.

Challenges may include:

Customer sensitivities (e.g., anything that would help a vendor avoid pressing known pain points)
Legalese (e.g., cumbersome disclaimers and disclosures that often get in the way of creative concepts)
Regulatory compliance (are there age or other restrictions associated with marketing your product?)
Differentiation (is it difficult to differentiate your product or service from competitors?)
Social media security (have you faced issues with scammers or hackers in the past?)

Resource and budget challenges may be relevant here, too. Does your company have enough staff to support necessary customer service and community management? Be honest. The best proposals could present invaluable solutions.

6. Key questions

It’s going to be tough for a vendor to provide a great answer when they don’t know what you’re asking for.

That’s why it’s super common to find questions in social media RFPs used for marketing purposes. They often follow or are included as a subsection in Challenges. In some cases, they simply ask: How will your proposal address these challenges?

Including questions is a way to make sure that proposals provide the solutions or answers head-on rather than dodge or skirt around them. If your company faces significant challenges, these answers will make it easier to evaluate the proposals you receive.

7. Bidder qualifications

Sure, there’s a chance a young hotshot with a heart of gold is going to just crush your project, but chances are you’re looking for someone who’s been there and done that. So ask for what you want.

The bidder qualifications section of a social media RFP is where you can request details on why a company may be uniquely qualified to take your project on.

Experience, past projects, team size, and other credentials are important factors when evaluating vendors who answer your RFP for social media marketing services.

Include qualifications that will make for a successful project, help you evaluate social media proposals, and are important to your business. For example, while it may not be pertinent to a social media RFP, your company may prefer B Corps.

Some things to ask for:

Details on the size of the vendor’s team
Proof of social media training and certification (Hootsuite’s social marketing education and certificate program, for example)
Examples of work with past or existing clients
Client testimonials
Results from previous campaigns
A list of employees—and their titles—who will work on the project
Project management approach and strategy
Resources that will be dedicated to the project
Anything else about the vendor and their work that is important to you and the execution of the project

Sure, you can disregard the bidder qualifications section, but you might end up with a bunch of applications that lack the information relevant for you to make a decision. So include anything and everything you want to see from prospective vendors.

8. Proposal guidelines

This is where you get into the nitty gritty: how exactly do you want this social media RFP packaged and delivered?

This section should cover proposal submission basics: when, what, where, and how much. Indicate the deadline for submission, how proposals should be formatted, and the level of detail you require for budget breakdowns.

The Government of Nova Scotia gives vendors a clear outline for their proposals.

SOURCE: Nova Scotia

If your company has brand guidelines, social media guidelines, a social media style guide, or any other relevant resources, include links or information on where vendors can find them.

Make sure to add a point of contact as well. Our social media RFP template puts contact information in the header. But it doesn’t matter whether you put it first or last, so long as it’s available for agencies to direct questions or clarifications.

9. Project timelines

Every social media RFP should indicate proposal and project deadlines—that’s why you won’t find a social media RFP example without one.

In this section, provide a structured proposal schedule that vendors can follow. If your project is tied to a specific date or event, include those key delivery dates too, but if you’ve got some flexibility, it’s OK to be broad here.

A social media RFP timeline may include:

Deadline to RSVP participation
Meeting period with vendors for preliminary discussions
Deadline for agencies to submit questions
Proposal submission deadline
Finalist selection
Finalist presentations
Selection of winning proposal
Contract negotiation period
When notifications will be sent to bidders who were not selected
Include a hard deadline or target project date. If key milestone and deliverable deadlines are already in place, that should be indicated here as well.

10. Proposal evaluation

Just like your teacher provided you with a rubric back in your schooldays, you should offer vendors a clear set of judgment guidelines to work towards. How can they wow you if they don’t know what wows you?

Both you and prospective vendors should know ahead of time how their proposals will be evaluated. List the criteria you will measure and how each category will be weighted or scored.

The National Institute of Urban Affairs provides a detailed chart outlining how each application will be judged. Intimidating? Yes. Crystal clear? Also yes.

SOURCE: National Institute of Urban Affairs

Be as transparent about your agency selection process as possible. If a rubric template or scorecard is available, include it here. If evaluators will provide comments, let bidders know whether they should or should not expect to receive them.

Finally, indicate the stated budget’s role in your decision-making process. Will it be revealed to evaluators after they’ve scored the proposal? How will cost vs. value be determined?

Social media RFP template

If you skimmed over all that content, we don’t blame you—it’s a lot to take in and process!

That’s precisely why we built this free social media RFP example: a template to make things easy for you.

Use this social media RFP template as a starting point, and tailor it to your needs. You’ll be able to use this to create your own in minutes and find the right vendor to help you achieve your goals.

Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.

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The post Social Media RFP: Free Templates and Examples appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Originally posted on January 12, 2023 @ 5:41 pm