Creator Scripts. - Zoho Blogs , Zoho Social

Celebrating 10 Years of Innovation and Connection with Zoho Social!

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 17:05:41 -0600

Reflecting on a Decade of Digital Transformation with Zoho Social

Ten years ago, Zoho Social embarked on a mission to redefine how businesses connect with their audiences through social media. Today, as we celebrate this landmark anniversary, I'm filled with pride and excitement over the immeasurable impact we've made on digital marketing.

From its inception in 2015, Zoho Social was more than just a tool; it was a visionary force in evolving social media from simple message broadcasting into rich, two-way conversations that foster deep community bonds. We've been at the forefront, shifting from intuition-driven strategies to sophisticated, data-backed decision-making, and integrating AI to elevate social media management to unprecedented levels.

How Zoho Social Empowers Businesses

Local bakeries now effortlessly schedule posts showcasing daily specials, ensuring their ovens are as full as their online presence.
Growing brands utilize our analytics for sharper, faster growth.
Agencies boost efficiency with our features designed for high-caliber collaboration.

What truly sets us apart is our human-centric approach. Behind every feature and line of code is a deep-seated commitment to strengthen the human connections that animate social interactions online. Our team's empathy and attentiveness are what breathe life into our technology and support.

Looking ahead, the landscape of social media continues to morph, introducing opportunities for hyper-personalization, AR/VR integracies, and enhanced transparency through blockchain technology. As we step into the next decade, our resolve to keep you at the forefront of social engagement remains firm.

Share Your Stories

How has Zoho Social impacted your digital strategy? What features have transformed how you connect with your audience? Share your stories below! Let's celebrate a decade of digital excellence and gear up for the next!

Zoho Social Frequently Asked Questions

What role does AI play in digital marketing?

AI in digital marketing helps analyze consumer behavior, automate content recommendations, and optimize ad targeting strategies. It enables marketers to personalize experiences and improve customer engagement through predictive analysis and machine learning.

How can businesses innovate their social media strategies?

Businesses can innovate their social media strategies by leveraging data analytics to understand audience preferences, using AI tools to automate posting, and engaging with consumers through interactive content such as polls, quizzes, and live videos.

Why is customer engagement important in digital marketing?

Customer engagement is crucial in digital marketing because it fosters brand loyalty, improves customer retention, and generates word-of-mouth promotion. Engaged customers are more likely to make purchases and share positive experiences with others.

What are some innovative digital marketing techniques?

Innovative digital marketing techniques include using augmented reality (AR) experiences, leveraging influencer collaborations, providing personalized content, utilizing chatbots for instant customer support, and employing voice-activated search SEO strategies.

How can AI enhance customer engagement on social media?

AI can enhance customer engagement on social media by analyzing user interactions to recommend personalized content, automating responses to common queries, and enabling chatbots to manage real-time conversations seamlessly.

🌟 Featured Zoho Social Blog Posts

Revolutionizing 2024: Zoho Social's Top Innovations and What to Expect Next!

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:11:11 -0600

Zoho Social's Game-Changing 2024: A Year in Review

2024 has been a whirlwind of innovation at #ZohoSocial, with each month bringing its own set of enhancements that have transformed the way we manage social media. Here’s how our journey unfolded:

January: An upgraded Inbox experience, integrating sentiment analysis to streamline our workflow.
February: Video content optimization for seamless uploads across platforms.
March: Integration of Mastodon and enhanced LinkedIn messaging, thanks to our AI assistant, Zia.
April: Introduced publishing for Facebook Stories and an eWidget for Zoho Mail for direct engagement from emails.
May: Promotions in Google Business Profile posts and streamlined TikTok interactions.
June: Revamped publishing calendar and enhanced Instagram co-authoring features for better collaboration.
July: Welcomed Threads, while August introduced interactive polls on X and LinkedIn, along with document posting capabilities.
September: Bulk scheduling got a makeover for a more intuitive experience.
October: Allowed direct customer connections via Google Business Profile posts with call buttons.
November: WhatsApp and Telegram integrations were game changers.
December: Embraced Bluesky to expand our reach into decentralized social platforms.

Apart from the technical upgrades, 2024 was also about learning and community. With initiatives like 'Navigating Zoho Social,' the 'Social Wall,' and our weekly 'Social Media Simplified' series, we've redefined user engagement and education.

As we dive into 2025, I’d love to hear your thoughts: Which update was your game-changer? And what do you wish to see next year?

Drop your thoughts below or DM me! Let's make social media simpler and more powerful together!

Zoho Social Frequently Asked Questions

What is Zoho Social?

Zoho Social is a social media management tool designed to help businesses manage their social media presence, schedule posts, monitor engagement, and analyze performance.

How does social media management help in digital marketing?

Social media management streamlines the process of maintaining social media accounts, allowing marketers to focus on creating engaging content, interact with audiences, and analyze the effectiveness of their campaigns, ultimately improving digital marketing strategies.

What role does AI play in social media management?

AI in social media management helps automate tasks like scheduling posts, analyzing trends, generating insights, and enhancing customer interactions through chatbots, making the management process more efficient.

What are some recent tech updates in social media management tools?

Recent tech updates in social media management tools include enhanced analytics capabilities, integration with AI for content recommendations, improved collaboration features, and more robust security measures.

How can Zoho Social benefit small businesses?

Zoho Social can benefit small businesses by providing an affordable solution for managing multiple social media accounts, offering easy-to-use scheduling tools, and delivering analytics that help understand audience behavior.

🌟 Featured Zoho Social Blog Posts

How to Resolve Facebook Page Connection Issues in Zoho Social: Step-by-Step Solutions

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 10:07:13 -0600

Connecting Facebook Pages to Zoho Social

To help resolve the issue of not being able to connect Facebook business pages to Zoho Social, here are some potential solutions organized with links to relevant references:

1. **Check Facebook Settings**:

- Ensure that the Facebook Page settings are correctly configured. Go to your Facebook account, navigate to Settings > Business Integrations, and check the settings for Zoho Social.

2. **Verify Page Administration**:

- Confirm that you are the correct administrator of the Facebook Pages. If you are using your personal Facebook profile as the admin, you should be able to connect it to Zoho Social.

3. **Manage Multiple Facebook Pages**:

- If you have multiple Facebook Pages, consider setting them up as separate Brands in Zoho Social. This can help you manage and connect multiple pages efficiently.

4. **Facebook Ad Account Integration**:

- Ensure that you have connected your Facebook ad accounts to Zoho Social if you have multiple ad accounts. This can be done by logging into your Facebook account, going to Business Integrations in Settings, and following the necessary steps.

5. **Error Resolution**:

- If you are still experiencing the "Uh Oh No Pages" error, try checking the Zoho Social community for similar issues and potential solutions. If the issue persists, consider reaching out to Zoho support or a Zoho partner for further assistance.

By following these steps and checking the relevant settings, you should be able to resolve the issue and successfully connect your Facebook business pages to Zoho Social.

Facebook page connection issues FAQ

How do I integrate Zoho Social with my Facebook business pages?

To integrate Zoho Social with your Facebook business pages, navigate to the Zoho Social dashboard, select the Facebook integration option, and follow the prompts to authorize access to your Facebook account.

What should I do if I have multiple Facebook pages to manage?

If you have multiple Facebook pages to manage, Zoho Social allows you to integrate each one individually. You can switch between them easily within the Zoho Social dashboard.

Why am I facing Facebook page connection issues on Zoho Social?

Connection issues can arise due to various reasons such as permissions settings, expired tokens, or network issues. Make sure to check your Facebook page settings and reauthorize Zoho Social if necessary.

How can I resolve errors when using Zoho Social with Facebook?

To resolve errors, first check for any updates or known issues affecting Zoho Social. Reauthorize the connection between Zoho Social and Facebook, and ensure all necessary permissions are granted.

Can I integrate my Facebook ad account with Zoho Social?

Yes, Zoho Social supports Facebook ad account integration. Navigate to the settings section within Zoho Social to connect your Facebook ad account and manage your campaigns directly from Zoho Social.

What are the steps to fix Zoho Social integration issues with Facebook?

To fix integration issues, first check your connection status in Zoho Social, reauthorize your Facebook account, and ensure you have granted all necessary permissions. You might also want to check Zoho Social’s support resources for specific troubleshooting steps.

What permissions are needed for Facebook page administration on Zoho Social?

You will need admin-level permissions on the Facebook page you wish to connect to Zoho Social. This ensures Zoho Social has full access to manage posts, comments, and other administrative features.

How can I configure Facebook page settings for better integration with Zoho Social?

Ensure that your Facebook page settings are configured to allow third-party applications access. This includes enabling app visibility and ensuring no restrictions are blocking Zoho Social.

Are there specific Facebook page settings to check for Zoho Social integration?

Yes, check for settings related to permissions, app visibility, and content publishing policies on your Facebook page to ensure Zoho Social can interact correctly.

What are the best practices for Facebook business integration with Zoho Social?

Best practices include regularly updating your Zoho Social and Facebook accounts, maintaining accurate and consistent page administration settings, and promptly addressing any error messages or alerts from Zoho Social.

Zoho Social now supports TikTok, Instagram Reels and Stories, and YouTube Shorts.

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 19:24:41 -0500

Good things take time, and great things take even longer. Zoho Social is no exception to the ever-expanding scope of social media. As our customers' needs changed, we worked behind the scenes to strengthen it to help you with your social media outreach. We're pleased to announce that TikTok, Instagram Reels and Stories, and YouTube Shorts have been added to Zoho Social. It's been a long time coming, but we hope it fulfills all of your expectations.
Let's dive right in and look at these highlights in greater detail.

TikTok is now available on Zoho Social to assist you in real-time planning, collaboration, and publishing.

TikTok videos can now be planned, posted, and collaborated on using Zoho Social. You can easily plan a post for later or post it right away from the publish window, whether you're at home or on the go, with our custom schedule feature. You can engage your community and gain new followers by publishing trending videos on our desktop platform and mobile app. You can also include a catchy video description and emojis from our emoji tray. You can also group and add trending and relevant hashtags to include them all at once in your post.

TikTok will not be available through Zoho Social in India due to ongoing regulatory restrictions on the platform.

The Zoho Social centralized content calendar allows you to organize all of your videos into a single view, plan your TikTok content strategy and marketing, and keep track of your content plans across platforms. You can view all of your connected channels' weekly and monthly posts at the same time.

You and your team can now easily move material around a structured pipeline thanks to the Workflow and Content Approvals features. You can do so by creating your own approval system and streamlining your social media publishing process. Using the approvals dashboard, you can designate specific team members as approvers who will review and publish drafts, as well as contributors or publishers who will be able to generate and submit drafts for review. As a result, teams have more editorial control over the content they distribute.

Increase your exposure on Zoho Social by using Instagram Reels.

Short-form video is the most interesting and engaging type of social media content available today. With our integration, you can plan and publish Instagram Reels, view and respond to incoming mentions and comments, and even see the number of likes, views, and plays your Reel has received. You can set your Instagram Reels to auto-publish, schedule them for a specific date, or even use Smart Q to publish on the best day/time.

You can also select a thumbnail from the suggested options to use as your Reel's cover image, or you can select your own frame from the video and post it on both your grid and the Reels tab. You can also easily plan and manage your entire video strategy.

You can engage and interact on Instagram Stories using Zoho Social.

Instagram Stories is a feed of pictures or videos that disappear from your profile after 24 hours. Thanks to a feature update, you can now plan and create your Instagram Stories ahead of time. It also allows you to publish immediately or later, preview the story to see how it will appear on your profile, and add captions to each one.

Furthermore, with Zoho Social, you can access a variety of unique and fun custom stickers, as well as apply filters to completely customize the look of your story and build it from scratch. The Zoho Social mobile app allows users to manually post Stories created in the web app. Based on the publishing option you select, you will receive a Publishing Notification at the time and date you specify. You can also see the number of impressions, reach, replies, exits, and forward and backward taps for each story.

The reports tab also allows you to identify top stories, analyze how your story has performed over time based on engagements received, assess your story's completion rate, and much more.

You can keep it short and sweet with YouTube Shorts on Zoho Social.

YouTube Shorts is an excellent way for businesses to increase audience engagement and brand awareness. Additionally, because YouTube Shorts is a mobile-first feature, using content other than horizontal, long-form videos allows you to reach a wider audience. Thanks to a feature update, you can now create a quick teaser for a longer video and upload it as a Short from our publishing window. You can also edit the captions, change the thumbnail, add relevant hashtags, and change the visibility.

The majority of our customers asked for these feature updates, as well as the addition of new channels like TikTok. We're here to help you simplify your social media outreach one addition at a time, and we couldn't be happier. We'd love for you to check out the new updates and see how they work.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact us at creatorscripts@zoho.com. Or if you need help implementing Zoho Social for your business or brand.

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An all-new Zoho Social for your mobile

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 11:25:41 -0600

Social media marketing is dynamic, engaging, and most importantly, happens all in real-time. Conversations continue to take place. Whether you’re at work, at home, or out buying your 20th cup of coffee.

There will be moments when you’d want to send out a quick response to a follower, or post pictures of your booth that you captured at a busy event. For times like these, a few simple taps on a pocket-sized gadget is all you need, to get the job done.

Today, I’m super thrilled to announce a new and improved version of the mobile app!

Having worked on it for months, we carefully redesigned and built the app from the ground-up so you can continue to manage your social media presence and engage your audience. With a sleek new makeover and a lighter interface, Zoho Social for mobile is centered around smarter scheduling, real-time monitoring, and better sharing, no matter where you are.

So, without further ado, let’s dive right into what’s new:

Create and publish, as and when you want

The thing about inspiration is that, it doesn’t wait to strike until you get behind a computer. Some of the most abstract and novel ideas come to you when you’re out taking a stroll in the park, or playing fetch with err… a cat?

The compose window on the app comes packed with a set of powerful publishing features to help you engage your audience. You’ll be able to craft posts, switch between multiple Brands easily, pin your favorite social channels to the top, and much more!

So, go ahead. Create your next best post.

Schedule posts to save time

Things tend to get busy when you’re at work. And, in the midst of all the chaos, you miss out on the things you planned your day around. Scheduling posts to fill up your content pipeline is often one of them. Well, lucky for you, you can now make up for lost time by scheduling your posts even during your commute. In just a few taps, you can set your posts up and schedule them at a date and time of your choice. You can also preview posts that you or your team members previously scheduled.

Oh, and it gets better.

To make sure that you have your content well spread out over time, you can create unique time slots, and add posts to your queue. And, just in case you have the slightest doubts about when to engage your followers, the SmartQ feature will predict and show you the best times to do so!

Picture-perfect posts that set you apart

You may have an amazing caption ready for your latest Instagram post, but it’s often the visuals that really captivate your audience. The Zoho Social mobile app comes loaded with a wide range of editing options for you to add a pinch of contrast, a dash of your favorite filter, and a whole lot of style to your pictures! And of course, you don’t have to worry about resizing your images. After you add them to a post, they get automatically compressed to suit the upload-requirements provided by different social channels.

Highlighting important aspects of images and bringing out the best in them for your audience is what we’d love for you to enjoy.

Keep that creativity flowing, even when you’re off the grid

No one’s really disconnected from the Internet, anymore. But, for times when you suddenly decide to go hiking into the woods, or are 30,000 feet up in the air on a long flight, and your mind decides to de clutter and bustle with new ideas… the mobile app has got your back!

You can now create drafts, offline. All your saved drafts will be automatically synced with the app when you’re back online, so you can pick up right from where you left off.

Stay tuned to social updates on the go

From potential customers asking for brand recommendations on social media, to users sharing feedback about your service across channels—there’s a lot that can happen in the time that you’ve stepped away from your desk. Every social conversation that’s relevant to your brand is an opportunity for you to tap into.

That’s where social media monitoring comes in. You can create and swipe through multiple monitoring cards, customize the screen the way you want, and track important keywords, hashtags, and users. The app also makes it easy for you to stay connected to your audience and engage with them directly, while you’re on the move.

Get insights about your published posts

Numbers and metrics do a great job of conveying what’s working and what’s not. It’s an integral part of social media marketing. You get a sense of excitement out of knowing that 150 people clicked on your article, or 60% of your followers are now talking about your post.

The stats on the new mobile app will help you understand how your brands are performing across social channels. You can take a closer look at who your story tellers are, how many people you’ve reached, and the amount of engagement your posts have received. All of this information about each post will be available to you at the tip of your fingers.

A pause button—at arm’s length

It’s all fun and games until an unexpected challenge comes knocking on your door. It could be a down time on your server, or a major social media mishap.

An appropriate move would be to pause all your scheduled posts. While this is something you can already do on the web app, it’s now available on the mobile app, too! With just a single tap, the Pause button lets you stop posts that you scheduled from being published, until you’re ready to get back into action.

In-built share extension for faster sharing

You could stumble upon a great article on your way to work. Or maybe spot a quirky phrase on an app. The thought of sharing it with your followers and engaging them, would probably cross your mind.

Cut, copy, and paste seems like a convenient thing to do, doesn’t it? …Nah! With the share menu available on your smartphone, you can choose to send any type of content directly to the Zoho Social mobile app. Once you’re on the app, you can add the final touches, before hitting the publish button!

These are just some of the major highlights of the new mobile app. There’s a lot more where that came from.

That’s all for now. We truly hope you enjoy our latest upgrade. Go ahead and download it on your iOS or Android devices, if you haven’t already.

Also, do let us know what you think about the new app. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Create, capture, and measure with the new Facebook Lead Gen features in Zoho Social

Fri, 23 Nov 2018 11:12:00 -0600

Ever since we introduced Facebook Lead Ads integration in Zoho Social, we’ve been taking copious notes from you. Up until now, you could have only a few standard form fields flowing into your CRM. This meant you missed out on the other prefilled data and custom questions that Facebook offers. So we set out to tighten this integration and debut highly requested features that go beyond the basic updates.

Without further ado, here’s what it means for you:

Capture everything that matters to you, in real time
Facebook lets you collect as many as 20 types of prefilled data through lead forms—from the standard CRM fields such as name, e-mail, and phone number to Facebook-specific ones like relationship status and custom questions. As the saying goes, with more data comes more responsibility to keep your CRM clean and free from redundancy. There’s always a high chance that your Facebook fields reside in your CRM with a different label.

Let’s say that you want to capture the birthday of your target Facebook audience, while your CRM stores this data in a field called Date of Birth (you’re right, it’s a potato-potahto problem). How do you make sure fields from Facebook are matched to the right fields in CRM? Moreover, every time you run a new lead ad, you’d have to make sure you aren’t tampering with the fields in CRM—the basic nightmare of every sales rep! Seems like a dicey situation? Well, we’ve got your back! Now, you can manage the mapping of form fields from an exclusive tab called Lead Forms.

Once you link your Facebook ad account with Zoho Social, we’ll look up fields in your CRM’s Leads module and map the standard fields automatically. You can go ahead with automatic mapping, or edit it to your taste. If you don’t find a relevant field to map, you can create a new one in CRM straightaway.

Furthermore, you can choose to keep all forms, or just specific ones, in sync with CRM.

Bring relevant campaign details into the big picture
One of the prerequisites for lead nurturing is having the right set of criteria to define your sales workflows. This is possible only when you go beyond knowing the name and e-mail address of your leads. Where do they live? What products do they like? Which ad campaign did they come from?

When we began working on this update, we realized that these additional data points from your lead gen campaign are just as important. For instance, sales reps might want to follow up on leads who give a favorable response to one of the survey questions you’ve asked. Sales admins might want to assign leads generated from specific ad sets to reps working in different time zones.

Now you can edit the mapping of fields, like Facebook Page, Ad Campaign, Ad Set, and Lead Form, right down to your Ad Account details.

Sync organic leads from your lead forms
Those of you who’ve extensively run lead ads will remember the times your form surprised you with organic leads (beyond your target audience). However, the lead count in your Ads Manager never gave even the slightest hint of organic leads. Going forward, you can easily find out the paid and organic leads from Facebook campaigns, provided you’ve created a field called Lead Type in your Leads module.

Run new lead gen campaigns and track results
With this addition, you should find yourself making fewer trips to your Facebook Ads Manager. Keep track of the leads in sync with CRM, the status of all your lead gen ad campaigns and forms, and run lead ads—all under one roof. And, of course, the most notable change would be all of this in an all-new product design.

We’re constantly looking to improve this integration—and more—with your feedback. Have questions, comments, or ideas to share? Tweet to us @CreatorScripts.

What mom never told you about Zoho Social

Sat, 10 Sep 2016 23:00:55 -0500

There are software providers that specialize in just one area of business operations and productivity, and then there are the companies that cover every enterprise base within one ecosystem. Zoho is in the latter category. The cloud-based office suite and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider is known for products like Zoho CRM, Zoho Projects, Zoho Campaigns, and a slew of other business apps and services. But in 2015, the company entered the social media management and analytics arena as well with Zoho Social (which begins at $10 per month for the Standard plan).

Zoho Social is a full-featured, responsive hub for managing your social operations and tracking key metrics. It's ideally suited for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) looking to curate and monitor a single brand across Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. It's also ideally suited for small to midsize enterprises (SMEs) managing up to three different brands that are looking to track core internal metrics and external reporting on specific social networks. While its broader social listening capabilities and depth of reporting data can't match the global enterprise scale of Editors' Choices Synthesio and Sysomos, Zoho can also do a lot more on the publishing and CRM integration front, and at a bargain price.

Pricing and Setup Zoho Social is free for a single user and brand, with basic social publishing functionality (though with no Instagram access). But the real features begin in the $10 per month Standard plan, which includes two users, publishing and scheduling, and basic monitoring, reporting, and collaboration features. Local SMBs looking for the basics might be suited to this tier but, for most businesses, you'll need the $50-per-month Professional plan. Compared to $99 per month for Sprout Social or Buffer for Business, Zoho Social is a bargain.

The Professional plan comes with five users, three brands, and premium features such as advanced and custom reporting, sentiment analysis, and up to 15 columns in the Monitoring tab. Though beyond those relatively small user and brand caps, businesses will need to pay $10 per month for every additional user or brand. Zoho Social also offers a yearly pricing option, where businesses can pay $100 upfront for the Standard plan or $500 for the Professional plan to get two free months.

Once you sign up for Zoho Social, you're prompted to connect all these networks you see on the home screen. As far as supported social networks, the platform keeps it simple. Zoho Social supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google+. There's no support for other social networks including Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr, and others—Zoho focuses on the core sites for businesses. The rest of the setup is pretty simple. Once you authorize Zoho Social for any given social network, that account is then added to the main dashboard, where you can tab back and forth between your different "brands."

Interface and Social Media Management Zoho Social sports a clean user interface (UI) broken down into seven main tabs accessible from the left-hand vertical navigation bar, which expands and contracts when a mouse hovers over it. The tabs are straightforward, with icons for Home, Posts, Messages, Monitor, Connections, Collaborate, and Reports, but the first thing you see on the Home tab is a Brand Health dashboard.

The dashboard is essentially a table showing key metrics—total audience, active audience, engagement, and the number of "stories" or posts created—each with a red or green plus/minus percentage next to them showing week-to-week change. It's a brand's social report card. This is a great little feature for novice social media editors or brand managers to easily gauge social brand progress and report to their superiors with a few key hard numbers.

On the right of the dashboard is a live stream column showing the most recent brand engagement of any kind of any network. The Interactions tab shows a full list of user engagement, but the live stream tab is good for quick influencer identification and engagement. Click on a message and you'll get a pop-up window with profile info—friends and followers, who they're following, likes—and immediately reply with a comment, tweet, direct message, etc. The Home dashboard does a good job of putting quick actions and key metrics at a user's fingertips, rather than inundating the UI with all the social data the platform is pulling in.

The Posts tab is where you manage publishing in Zoho Social across brands. The main feed is a fairly simplistic look at Published Posts, which can be filtered by network, sorted by date, or sorted by post popularity. You can also sort by Promoted Posts, if you've paid for any reach on Facebook or Twitter, or failed posts to reschedule and post again. There is a bulk scheduler option by uploading a CSV, XLS, or XLSX file containing text for a list of posts, but it's not the most intuitive or easy-to-use bulk scheduler I've tested.

The posts do include positive, negative, or neutral sentiment analysis, but only after a given posts hits a volume threshold for engagement. Zoho Social's sentiment analysis is streets behind Crimson Hexagon and Synthesio, but if a post is popular enough, even basic sentiment analysis is one of the most crucial data points in improving a business's social engagement.

To create a post, you press the New Post button on the top right of the tab to open the publishing window. Zoho Social allows you to toggle brands on and off to send a post to one or more networks and customize the message accordingly. You can add a photo, but Zoho is still working on the ability to attach a video to a post. As for scheduling, there's a calendar and publishing time field on the bottom right of the window. One useful feature is the ability to set a post to repeat on specific dates, weekly, or monthly.

Zoho Social's publishing is nothing fancy, but its most innovative feature is the Smart Q, a custom-built Zoho algorithm that monitors social networks and suggests the optimal time to publish a post. Smart Q recommends the time at which a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc, audience is the likely to be the most active and engaged. It's the first hint of true automation in the tool, and if you let it, Smart Q will schedule your entire arsenal of social posts for you. It's similar to the automated publishing features and recommendations in Buffer for Business, but without the drag-and-drop scheduling queue to rejigger post order you'll find in that tool. Zoho's continued experimentation with this kind of smart automation will be key to how the platform evolves in the next several years, as social media managers are overseeing more and more brands, and have less and less time to curate them all.

Social Monitoring, Analytics, and Reporting The Monitor tab is Zoho's hub for all social listening. You can create more than 10 different columns or "streams" reminiscent of the curated social listening experience in Sprout Social and Hootsuite, but one big difference is that—as with the Messages tab aggregating direct interactions across social networks—it's all integrated with Zoho CRM.

When creating your monitoring streams, you can not only add columns such as Facebook page interactions, searches for a specific Twitter keyword, Instagram likes, etc, but also posts or interactions from CRM contacts and leads. You can also set up a stream of another user or page for competitive brand monitoring and analysis purposes.

The CRM integration is also key in the Connections tab, which shows users who've engaged with your brands in any way. It's a more fleshed out version of the live stream column. In this tab you can filter by network, interaction recency, most engaged users, or filter by CRM leads or contacts. More importantly, in the Connections tab you can also add a user as a lead or contact in Zoho CRM with a single button from their user profile. This kind of simple but effective influencer identification and management shows how Zoho has integrated CRM across its social platform. You can go even further in the Settings tab on the top right of the dashboard, where you can automate social lead generation further by clicking into the lead generation module and setting pre-defined rules and triggers that will automatically add leads from Zoho Social into your CRM.

On the reports front, beyond the Brand Health scorecard there is a substantial amount of analytics baked throughout the Zoho Social experience. Scroll down the main dashboard below the report card and you'll see your last post on each social network with the same metrics below each, broken down by network.

If you click on the details button, Zoho will dig into the post details section showing some more metrics like potential reach and link clicks, and give you a more detailed view of post engagement via pie chart. The data differs depending upon network, and you can email out a report of that data via PDF by clicking the Export button.

The Reports tab itself is where you'll find the most detailed social analytics. The basic reports are each specific to social network, but you can create exportable custom reports incorporating stats from different brands and networks. I liked that the reports are all presented in natural, relatable language. Stats differ by social, like a "How is your brand performing?" line graph, or a "Where are your connections located?" bar graph, or a "How many people are talking about your posts?" engagement chart. There are also reports showing associated keywords with a particular brand, a demographic breakdown of the different industries your followers are in, and A/B testing metrics of whether a post worked better with a link, an image, with only text, etc.

There's also a CRM report for users linked to a Zoho CRM account, whichshows leads created, contacts created, potentials, and revenue generated on particular days laid out in a table with the day, lead name, lead contact, and social source. If you click on a particular lead from there, the URL in the browser bar shows a Zoho CRM profile address. While enterprise-grade social listening platforms like Synthesio, Crimson Hexagon, or Talkwalker can run more complex queries on social data, rendered in a wider array of reports, Zoho Social holds its own in the SMB tier, matching Sprout Social and Hootsuite for post-specific analytics, with dead-simple usability on par with Buffer for Business and seamless CRM integration.

A CRM-Integrated Social Collaboration Hub Social media is a collaborative experience within an organization, and Zoho Social gets the idea that colleagues should be able to discuss specific posts, larger trends, and social strategy within the platform. That's why the Collaborate tab is my favorite part of Zoho Social. Throughout the Home, Posts, Monitor, and Reports tabs, each object has not only an "Add to CRM" option when relevant, but a "Discuss" button to embed that object in the Discuss tab for comment. Add a post, a user or lead, or a specific report or chart to the tab, and a discussion can sprout from there in a feed reminiscent of a basic company intranet page for easy discussion.

Zoho Social also offers mobile apps for Android and iOS, and browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. For the most part, Zoho Social is a standard social media management and analytics platform. The publishing, analytics, and reporting features leave nothing to be desired, but aside from Smart Q automation, there's nothing that'll blow you away. Where the tool really stands out is in its built in CRM and collaboration features, and all at a very low prices for SMBs or SMEs. Zoho Social is an easy-to-use social media management and analytics platform with enough smart publishing and reporting features to satisfy social or brand managers looking for straightforward metrics. If your business is already a Zoho CRM customer, it's a no-brainer.

The Newest Twitter updates and What this means for your Brand. (Infographic)

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 04:28:00 -0500

Here´s the deal:

Less than 9 months ago Twitter shared a list of the features most requested via #helloworld on the official Twitter blog, which may have given us something of a road map as to where Twitter could be looking to make changes in the near future.

As per the #helloworld feedback, the most requested Twitter features are:

Ability to edit Tweets
Remove the 140-character limit (and an equal number of requests not to remove it)
Improve the Lists feature
Accessibility improvements across the product
Lots of feedback about Moments
Suggestions on how to improve search
- See more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/adhutchinson/2015-10-31/most-requested-twitter-updates-and-what-twitters-doing-about#sthash.YYN8v3Uk.dpuf

That´s not all...

Today we finally see some of the #helloworld features come to life. Twitter recently announced an upcoming update that will make big changes to the way people (and brands) create content and engage on the social media platform. Here are the main changes from twitters announcement.

Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.
Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words!
Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed.
Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.

Zoho Social

Zoho SocialShare – The easiest way for brands to share content

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 23:42:27 -0600

We’re always looking for ways to create and share great content that will engage our audience. Creating good content is an art in itself, but so is curating and sharing content.

Discovering, curating and sharing great content that your audience will find interesting is hard enough as it is. But it doesn’t stop there – when you find good content, you need an easy way to add it to your social sharing pipeline. Meet Zoho SocialShare, the new browser plugin from Zoho Social, designed to help your brand easily curate and share content.

Here are some of our top tips for curating and sharing content with Zoho SocialShare.

Share content pronto, without switching browser tabs: Whenever you come across an interesting article that is relevant for your audience, all you have to do is click on the Zoho SocialShare icon in your browser. Once you hit publish, the article will be instantly shared from all your social media channels.

Save as draft idea or discuss later: If you like an article but aren’t sure whether you want to share it right away, you can use Zoho SocialShare to save it as a draft. Draft posts can be published anytime in the future.

What’s really cool about this feature, is the ease with which you can share these drafts for internal discussion with your team. All it takes is one click to share a draft post to your Collaborate tab in Zoho Social. You can even tag your team members so that they can take a look and discuss it with you right there.

Schedule sharing: There are times when you’re sure you want to share an article but can’t do it right away because you already have a lot of content scheduled. Or because you know now is not a good time to engage your audience.

In situations like these, Zoho SocialShare lets you schedule the article to go out at a future time when a majority of your audience will be active. If you’re not sure about what time is best, just use the SmartQ feature and we’ll automagically schedule it to go out when most of your audience is likely to engage with it.

Pick your favorite lines to share: If you loved reading an article and want to make sure your audience reads it, don’t just share the title as the main piece of content. Select the lines that you felt were most powerful, the ones that you think will make the maximum impact on your audience, the ones that you believe will make the reader want to click and read more. I guess you get the picture.

Yes, those are the lines that you should share. Just select these lines, even if they’re at different places in the article and we’ll share them for you.

Zoho SocialShare is available on Firefox and Chrome web browsers and comes for free with all our plans. And, of course, all the content you share from it will show up in your Zoho Social dashboard so you can track how your audience engages with different articles and figure out what’s working best for them. Simplify your social sharing now.

This entry was posted in Zoho Social and tagged brands, content marketing, social media, social media marketing by Meera Sapra.