To know about good content marketing, you should understand what content is first. It is not just written word; it encompasses all possible media from blogs to cartoons/animation.
Anything you see on a screen is content! The internet is jam-packed with it, and social media platforms are built on it. The thing that makes content “content” is that you shouldn’t use it for marketing as we know it.
You can learn from it, be entertained with it, and share it, but that is not the traditional marketing that everyone thinks about.
Content marketing aims to inform, educate or entertain a customer into being loyal to a brand!
Customers visit a website for research and information, and if they like what they see (the content 😉), they are more likely to be persuaded to stay or make a purchase.
The best content marketing doesn’t overtly sell products/services – it just helps deliver the needed information that is easy to understand for everyone in various forms:
- Blogs
- Emails
- Newsletters
- Apps
- Videos
- Photos
You can consider almost anything content, so long as you’re not pushing people towards a sale from the get-go. The main point of any content is to consistently bring something new to the table and keep people interested.
Always ask without asking and do it politely!
To have a good content marketing strategy, it is essential to have access to statistics telling about current trends, people’s interests and how well they receive any content that is pumped out to all the platforms.
This is where Social Animal comes in! This is a handy tool that streamlines content search through keywords and gives you access to information on trends, key influencers and how to approach people with your own content so that it is received as favourably as possible.
Read the review below to find out more about Social Animal, its features and how you can benefit from using this content marketing research tool to better your strategies!
What is Social Animal?
Social Animal is a platform with a mission!
It is a web tracking platform that helps you analyse top-performing content, articles and authors to give you insights based on your keyword search. It’s basically a content marketing research tool on steroids.
Its powerful search capabilities streamline any search process and cut research time from hours to minutes.
Top-performing authors, domains, articles, or other content types are found at the tip of your fingers and with a simple keyword search. Only the relevant results will be shown to you, allowing you to infer and make actionable decisions in the future.
Plus, marketing insights help you study and (hopefully) surpass your competitors!
The abundance of information you can find online about content marketing strategies and tools can be overwhelming, so having all the features you need in one platform is very convenient and easy to navigate.
Making the platform more fun!
The creators of Social Animal wanted to make content marketing more fun, and since it’s not an easy job – every little helps! That’s why the app has coloured charts and diagrams to visualise the information and keep you engaged as you conduct your searches.
Colourful chart after searching ‘Game of Thrones’
Backed by data from billions of posts and web pages full of high-performance content, it is a HUGE help to any marketer – beginner or expert.
From content research to monitoring performance and staying on top of the competition, Social Animal is the one-stop-shop you need to bring your A-game and start winning with your business or blog.
It helps that all these features are wrapped in a simple and intuitive user interface. All the elements are constantly working together to bring you the most relevant and most recent information – seamlessly weaving analysis from the massive database that Social Animal operates.
Additionally, certain proactive features work for you even when you’re not online and send you email updates so you’re always in the loop.
No matter how big or small your marketing efforts are, I know Social Animal will be a huge help with it. Put it to the test during their free trial and reap the benefits!
Who is Social Animal for?
Currently, Social Animal caters to the following:
- B2B Content Marketers
- Social Media Marketers
- Bloggers
- Influencers
They can accommodate smaller businesses for now but are rolling out more updates which will allow them to help medium and large-sized companies and organisations too!
So keep an eye out for that in the future, as I’m sure the benefits of Social Animal are massive and will help your business stay ahead of the game.
Key Features of Social Animal:
Content Research:
Filter by types of content, check out basic metrics
- Detailed Results:
In regards to any research, the more information you have, the better it is! With the Social Animal tool, you can get more than just the number of shares, but also an analysis of the main keywords, number of words per article and many other details.
- Useful Insights:
Using this tool will give you a chance to see how a specific keyword has performed historically. Because Social Animal tracks several million keywords, you get practical information that can help you decide when to publish, optimise the title, length of article and more.
- Article Comparison
Some articles focusing on the same keyword that get shared a lot might not be similar. With this tool, you can compare a couple of articles for any common or unique features they have and see how you can benefit from combining different keywords for various topics.
- Analyse Headlines:
A headline is the first thing that catches the reader’s attention, with Social Animal, you can see how compelling a headline can be and how well it relates to the actual content of any article. After all, content is king.
Content Curation:
- Powerful Search Capabilities:
Social Animal allows you easy access to the precise content you have in mind. You can apply filters to narrow down your search, including searching by domain, author, keywords, publishing date and more. You can combine any of these criteria to get to your specific target!
- Keyword Centric:
This tool leans heavily on keyword research. During your searches, you only need to click on selected keywords as they pop up, and all information will be given to you. And because all your searches are saved, you can merrily go about your other business knowing that you’re not losing any information.
- Increase Social Media Following:
Curating content is not an easy feat, and you always have to stay on top of things to share relevant content as much as you can. This will help you keep your audience engaged. Using Social Animal, you can feed live content to your social media at a sustainable pace with just one click!
- Leave Social Animal in the Background:
While you don’t work 24/7, Social Animal can’t say the same. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), this tool is always looking for content and leads that you might be interested in based on your niche requirements.
Social Animal can send you a daily email with a summary of any new developments you should know about. In that email, competitor information and keywords are also included.
Influencer Research:
Check out who is top at talking about a topic and filter out whatever specifics that you need
- Best Folks in the Business:
Using their algorithm, this tool can help you find relevant influencers that share your interests ensuring that each search provides you with as many benefits as possible.
Social Animal has access to thousands of authors and influencers that fill up various niches.
- Promoting Content with Active Users:
With this tool, you have access to a vast range of active profiles who are interested in and curate content that is similar to yours! You can unlock this feature with the View Sharers button to see all the possible leads.
Facebook Search:
Have a look at Facebook trends and filter by page, post or any other filters
- Dynamic Page and Keyword Search:
Curating content for Facebook has never been so easy! Search billions of posts and pages to find what you need and track post-performance to stay on top of relevant information. Additionally, with Social Animal, you can share the top content related to your target keyword.
- Analysing Information:
Learning about your target audience is very easy using this tool, as it offers insights into how to approach your target audience most effectively (sentiment analysis) and engagement rates (likes, comments etc.) for many Facebook posts.
- Future Post Publishing:
Predicting when would be the best time to post something can be a bit of a hit or miss. With Social Animal, that is taken care of because they provide analysis on trending topics and conversations so you can be sure to get the most engagement and attention at any given time!
Competitor Monitoring:
- Stake out the Competition:
With Social Animal, you can scope out the best authors and most used social media platforms. You can also check out how they create and share their content and find the niche content that works for you.
- Social Animal Dashboard:
When using Social Animal, your dashboard will be refreshed every few hours with new information to keep you up to date. The pro-active qualities of Social Animal help you constantly focus on the target keywords and stay ahead of competitors.
Payment Options and Plans:
Unfortunately, Social Animal is not free.
They offer a 14day free trial for all institutions: bloggers(individuals), agencies and enterprises.
The creators of this tool also offer discounts for educational institutions (40% off any plan) and registered non-profit organisations (50% off any plan).
The full prices and included features are below, and you can choose a monthly subscription or an annual one (which works out to be 12months for the price of 10!)
Source: Social Animal
Pros of Social Animal:
I’ve already mentioned all the great features and benefits of Social Animal as a content marketing tool, so here’s a more straightforward, condensed version:
- You can instantly browse and analyse millions of articles for top trends, keywords and best sources.
- Easy access to influencers and experts for all content to help with your reach and promoting niche content.
- Competitor monitoring and tracking their content performance against yours.
- Best for digital marketing agencies and pro bloggers who want to have statistics to back their strategies.
- Social Animal offers a 14day free trial.
- Excellent online support from the team during all business hours and online.
- Integrated deployment with Cloud, SaaS and the internet.
- Provided training in several formats – online, webinars and documents.
- Social Animal is GDPR compliant!
- Results come from Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
Cons of Social Animal:
Of course, with all the good things, there are some drawbacks.
- There is no free version. After the trial, you have to make a subscription to continue using the best features of this tool.
- They don’t offer a campaign management system, so you will have to keep track of that manually.
- You can reach out to people that you find on this platform, but Social Animal doesn’t offer automatic conversion tracking, so if you want to know how many leads are successful, you will need to either use another tool or do it manually.
- As with everything, there is a learning curve to understanding this platform fully.
Social Animal Review Summary
I hope this article helped you understand how you can better your marketing strategies by using Social Animal for content marketing.
Whether you are a single individual or part of a bigger team, this tool can cut down a lot of time for chasing leads, doing research, and making competitor analysis.
All the information that the platform provides should help you make more informed decisions and have more effective and successful outcomes for your marketing campaigns. You can later implement these improvements across more social media platforms (although that will be a manual task to some extent).
So what are you waiting for? Try out Social Animal for yourself!
If you’re having trouble with content writing, marketing or management, we can help!
Pearl Lemon is an award-winning lead-generation agency, and we know how to get good results. Just check out our reviews and have a read about more content marketing here and here.
If you like what you see, don’t be shy, give us a call!
