The term social media proxy is heard quite often in the online marketing world. But what are social media proxies actually and how are they used by marketers? At first, they might look like any other proxies. If you buy one, you will get an IP, PORT and login details. However, these proxies are a safer bet than regular ones. Marketers buy them for the safety these proxies offer. This safety comes in the form of protection against an account's block or flagged IP.
What are social media proxies?
Social media proxies are virgin private proxies. In comparison with other private proxies, social media ones have never been used previously to connect accounts to social media networks. Thus, their history is clean. Therefore, marketers can buy them safely and used then to connect accounts to their desired social network.
Some may consider buying shared proxies to use for social media but shared proxies come with the risk of getting abused proxy's IP. Which in turn can trigger phone verification checks. And if a marketer is managing twenty social media accounts and they get phone verified, it will be difficult to find twenty phone numbers to verify these accounts. Therefore, for social media, it is risky to use shared proxies and is safer to use virgin ones.
While they are called social media proxies, these are private proxies allocated specially for certain social networks. For example, marketers can buy proxies for the social platform on which they will develop accounts. Therefore, they can buy either Instagram proxies, Facebook proxies or Twitter ones. In this way, marketers are sure they will receive virgin proxies for the online service on which they will develop and manage accounts.
The benefits of using social media proxies
The risk factor exponentiated above is only one benefit when it comes to social media proxies use. Another benefit is their connectivity and technical performance. Because social media proxies are private ones, only one user will have control over proxies. Therefore, his use of proxies is not altered by other users.
One more benefit brought by social media proxies is mitigating the risk of the simultaneous banning of multiple accounts by protecting each account's connection. The recommended ratio for social media proxies is to use one account per proxy. In this way, each account is protected and isolated by other account's behavior and history. This is an important factor in social media proxies use because if one account, connecting through one proxy is banned and the social network triggers a phone verification, the other accounts, connecting through other social media proxies will be able to continue to function and connect to the social network.
And from a business and marketing point of view, the benefit of using social media proxies is to scale a marketing operation and reach a bigger audience.
Who uses social media proxies?
It is mentioned in the title of this article. Most social media proxies are used by marketers. They buy social media proxies to develop social media strategies and reach bigger audiences than it was possible with only one account. These proxies are usually used to create a content distribution network in the form of a content silo network. For example, the marketer's main social media account distributes original content and the other accounts, used through social media proxies, share this content to their audience.
Private proxies for social media are also used to create a social proof dimension around a business or product. For example, marketers can use social media proxies to manage several accounts that will interact with one main account, starting an engagement snow-ball effect.
Apart from marketers developing accounts for marketing, other users of social media proxies are PR and social agencies. These agencies manage social media accounts of their clients. And managing several social media accounts from the same IP/network is risky. Thus, to ring-fence each account and protect their clients, PR agencies buy private proxies for social media.
Tools for proxies
Social media proxies can be used manually through an Internet Browser, however, this is a tedious work. Marketers can automate their accounts or their accounts posting actions through social media automation tools.
There are some social media tools that allow the use of social media proxies. Thus, marketers can manage several social accounts from the same server, at the same time. One such tool is FollowLiker, an automation tool that allows managing an almost unlimited number of social media accounts by connecting them through proxies. In addition, to use FollowLiker efficiently, marketers need to run it permanently. Therefore, a virtual private server can be used as well to keep FollowLiker work around the clock.
Friday, September 29, 2017