5 Social Media Management Tools You Need To Know About

By Jessica Johnson | November 11, 2021

4 Social Media Management Tools You Need To Know About

Social media marketing has been a buzzword in the marketing world for a while now, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. The question becomes, how does a business use social media in a way that works to HELP them? There are so many tools that can be used, but not all of them work well or produce desirable results. In this post, Jessica explores 5 social media management/marketing tools and approaches that actually work well.

1. Which social media management tool will you use?

Social media management (SMM) tools help manage an organization's presence across the major social networks. SMM tools differ from traditional social media monitoring and analysis tools, which only track mentions and conversations online. SMM tools enable organizations to manage multiple social networks through a single dashboard.

SMM tools typically offer the following features:

Scheduling posts across multiple social networks.
Publishing to third-party networks, such as Facebook Places and Foursquare.
Managing multiple profiles and pages on networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Scheduling and monitoring conversations.
Managing and responding to comments and questions.
Measuring impact by tracking impressions, conversions (sales, leads, or other actions), and audience growth.
Generating reports, including key performance indicators (KPIs). Responding to comments and reviews.
Enabling two-way conversation.
Sharing content across social networks.
Managing and responding to questions and reviews.
Integrating with third-party applications. Integrating with CRM systems and marketing automation systems (e.g., Salesforce.com).
Tracking viral sharing. Managing multiple brands on networks such as Facebook.
Finding followers.
Leveraging social channels to raise brand awareness, increase web traffic, and increase sales.
Integrating with CRM systems.
Integration with marketing automation tools (e.g., Marketo). Integrating with third-party applications, such as Salesforce.com.

2. Use Scheduling Tools

One of the great things about social media is that you can access your fans with a click of a button. But if you really want to interact with them, it's essential to be online when they are.

Like everything else in social media management, the focus of scheduling tools has changed over the years. It used to be that you scheduled messages to go out at a fixed time. Now, though, the emphasis is on flexibility and control. A great example of this is Buffer, a scheduling tool whose free version has up to 10 scheduled posts. It's easy to use: you just create a post, drag it onto the schedule, and you're off.

Buffer lets you schedule your posts on a per-account basis, but you can also schedule posts across multiple accounts. You can even post the same message multiple times, which is handy for Twitter, where it's common to see the same message retweeted several times.

Another great feature of Buffer is that the minimum amount of time you can schedule a post is one minute. That's important because if you're posting on Facebook, you don't want to waste your followers' time by tweeting every five minutes. Buffer's free version has limits, such as the number of scheduled posts you can have. But it's easy to set up an IFTTT applet that sends any new posts you make to Buffer, or feeds your Buffer posts into another tool. Buffer also integrates with a variety of third-party services, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Check out Buffer!

3. Use Engagement Tools

Social media management is the discipline of using social media tools to increase engagement with content. By “engagement” we mean the actions that take place on websites, such as clicking, sharing, and/or commenting. Through social media management, marketers can target content to people who are most likely to interact with it, and can also schedule posts across social media platforms. Social media management is a practice, not a product. There are a variety of social media management tools that businesses can use, but any tool is only as effective as the people who use and adhere to it. The most successful social media marketers use multiple tools in concert, rather than relying on a single tool.

4. Track progress and keep track of what works and what doesn't.

Social media management begins with finding and analyzing content. Marketers use content analysis tools to measure social media engagement. Analytics tools can count clicks, shares, and comments, and can also track user engagement, such as their time spent on a page or their level of activity (such as scrolling). By listening to users and measuring their reactions, marketers can segment their audience and determine which content resonates best with users. This communication between brands and consumers happens in real-time and is the main reason why social media management is emerging as a core function of marketing.

We recommend checking the insights on each platform and pulling a monthly report to compare monthly social media metrics.

5. Engage with your target audience through content by reaching out to professionals or influencers for help.

A network is a collection of nodes, or people, and connections, or relationships. Most of the time, a network consists of personal connections: the relationships we make with our family, our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, and so on. Social media networks are different from this kind of network in that (a) they are global rather than local, and (b) they are made of connections, or relationships, rather than people. In social media, nodes can be people or things. In social media, nodes are, in fact, often people. People in these networks can post things: links to articles, videos, pictures, and so on. They can comment and respond. They can vote. They can tweet. People in these networks can also endorse each other. An endorsement is a recommendation. Someone might say, "I've met this guy, and I think he is great." Another person might say, "I endorse this guy," or "I recommend this."

Endorsers are a way to give social approval. They make it possible to know, at a glance, whether someone is someone worth knowing. The endorsement network is a kind of social network, but it is not the same as other social networks. It is larger, more complicated, and more complex than the personal networks we usually think of.

The endorsement network is global. It has a global membership of millions of individuals, most of whom have never actually met each other.

We recommend using your top hashtags in your industry to learn more about the conversation and who's guiding it!

The Takeaway: The right social media management tools will not only save you time but also allow you to reach a larger audience at a lower cost.

The best social media management tools are ones that give you the ability to organize your workflow and save time. Social media management is an art, not a science.

There is nobody who does it perfectly, and, as anyone who's ever tried to manage social media can tell you, there's never enough time in the day. There are all kinds of ways to save time. You can post more frequently. You can delegate. You can use automation. But nothing can replace good planning. If you keep track of what you've done, your efficiency will be limited. That is why good social media management tools are as important as good planning.

Ready to Get Started On Your Social Media Management Strategy?

While you might think outsourcing social media management is expensive, doing so can actually save you money.

Hiring your own staff to manage your social media can cost way more. When you outsource your social media management, you can easily scale your expenditure based on your needs and your budget.

Are you ready to get started and have the Beyond Big Blue team help with your social media management strategy?

Click here to book a Discovery Call!

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