Your business needs social media to achieve its full potential. Without it, you’re not reaching a nearly unlimited number of potential customers. There are different ways you can go about running a social media campaign. You can run it yourself, you can do so using automated software, or you can hire a service like an SEO company. Let’s examine that second option for a moment.

Automated Software: Pros and Cons

Social media advertising is often reliant on 3rd party tools these days. What we’re talking about when we say 3rd party tools is software that has been created for the explicit purpose of running social media campaigns for businesses. You need someone to use these tools, and that could be an in-house team, an agency, or even a single freelancer in some instances. Whichever the case might be, you need them to have the expertise to make the campaign run smoothly, or it’s a sure recipe for losing money.

There are plenty of tools that have been developed that are supposed to help you run an optimized ad campaign. Some are more effective than others. Facebook’s Ad Manager tool, for instance, has its drawbacks, but you can use Adespresso for your Facebook campaign instead. There are also tools like Adext, which relies on artificial intelligence to automate virtually your entire campaign. If you’re using something like that, then all you need to do is keep tabs on the way the campaign is performing and decide if you want to modify or switch out the ads at some juncture. Some of these tools work very well, and they save you the time of having to deal with the minutia yourself.

The biggest negative about using this software is that it’s usually not cheap. If you’re a big company with a matching budget, then this won’t be such a serious consideration. However, smaller companies might want to avoid draining their ad budget with this added expense. The other problem is that there’s no guarantee the tool you chose will get you the results for which you’re looking. If you’re not an expert at using that software, it can be a challenge figuring out where it’s underperforming. If your ads are not succeeding, troubleshooting the problem can be a massive headache.

This is why using software to manage your campaign might work for some, but not for others. The solution is an SEO company. They might choose to use software to help run your campaign, or they might do it themselves. If they do decide to use software aids, then they’ll know how to troubleshoot any problems that arise. Consider this carefully if you’re reluctant to dedicate funds from your ad budget to hiring an internet marketing company. Choosing not to use one might save you some cash up front, but it might end up costing you both money and time at a later date.