Zoho announced major updates to†Zoho Social, its social media marketing platform. The new version provides deep analytics into social media metrics such as reach, impression, and engagement, while the latest Facebook Lead Form integration with CRM field-mapping allows users to map and sync lead information from Facebook Lead Ads with records in Zoho CRM. Users can also manage their Google My Business listings and reviews without leaving the interface, and have a greater control of their publishing schedule with the CustomQ feature.
“Social analytics has been one of the most sought-after requirements for social media marketers around the world, and most tools either don’t offer deep analytics or do not connect with other sales, marketing, and support tools to give full context on social interactions,” said Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist of Zoho. “With the new set of reports, Zoho Social offers in-depth reporting on audience demographics, reach, impression, engagement analytics, and overall performance for key social channels.”
The global social media analytics market is†predicted to grow at a CAGR of over 30% through 2021.
“We’ve always believed that there’s more to social media marketing than just publishing posts,” added Vegesna. “That’s one of the reasons why we set out to build a complete social media management platform for businesses and agencies that helps them with not just publishing but monitoring and reporting as well.”
Feature highlights:
Richer Analytics:†The Reports tab in Zoho Social now includes new data sets and graphs—such as audience growth, post engagement, performance, reach and impression—in an all-new interface. The users will get summary reports and will also be able to dive deeper into each of the data sets across different social channels. The new Reports dashboard will be rolled out before the end of the year.
Facebook Lightweight Integration and CRM field-mapping:†Zoho Social, which is integrated with Facebook Lead Ads, now has Lead Forms and CRM field mapping. It includes mapping and keeping in sync 20 different fields (including custom fields) from Facebook with the records in Zoho CRM, and tracking new leads (paid and organic) from the Lead Forms in real-time. This lets users capture additional information—such as Ad Campaign, Ad Set, Lead Form, and Ad Account details—with their Facebook lead generation campaigns. They can also run a new Lead Ad campaign from within Zoho Social with the all-new Facebook Lightweight Integration.
Integration with Google My Business:†This integration helps businesses schedules and publish posts to their GMB accounts with desired CTAs, view and reply to the reviews they’ve received on their listings, and manage their presence across multiple locations using Zoho Social.
Publishing Queues:†It’s important for brands to regularly post content on social media channels to stay relevant on the timeline of their followers. To give users a greater control over their publishing schedule, Zoho Social has introduced CustomQ, which allows customers to spread their posts throughout the week and month by simply adding them to a predefined queue.
zShare Browser Plugin:†With Zoho Social’s†browser plugin, users are now able to customize a post for various social media channels—say 280 characters for a tweet and 2,200 characters for Instagram—in a single compose window. They can then schedule or publish it simultaneously to all the channels.
Integration with Zoho Desk:†Users can convert a social post asking for help or reporting an issue into a support ticket in Zoho Desk from within Zoho Social. With this integration, users can view any existing ticket associated with a social connection before responding to them. They can also look into the support history for the contact, including the current and previous tickets, average response and resolution times, and more. With this integration, users gain an unmatched visibility into the social conversations with their customers across all touch points—marketing, sales, and support.
This announcement was released in conjunction with the introduction of Zoho’s new Customer Experience Platform, a unified suite that allows Sales, Marketing, Support, and Operations to work as one team on one interface. Powered by Analytics and Zia, this platform sets a new standard for omni-channel customer engagement and real-time insight across departments to keep customers satisfied throughout their experience.
Pricing and Availability
Zoho Social is available in plans starting from $10 per month. It’s also available in special plans for agencies starting from $1000 per annum. Zoho Social is also included in Zoho One.