Most businesses reach a point where they have to decide if they should invest in a social media management tool. Typically this is once they are active on a couple of networks and are beginning to become overwhelmed by the complexity of managing them.
Does this sound familiar? If so, then you are in the right place. A social media management tool can be a serious investment depending on your budget, so let’s look at some of the main reasons why a social media management tool is worth investing in.
- Manage Multiple Social Accounts
As stated above, managing your social media accounts can become complex very quickly as you begin to grow your presence on multiple networks. Multiple logins to remember, and different user interfaces to master. On top of that, social networks were built first and foremost for consumers.
As a business, none of these things make your life easier. That is where a dedicated social media management tool comes in handy. It allows you to consolidate down to one login, a unified user interface and is packed with business-focused features. Put simply, it is how businesses were meant to manage social media.
Remember you should also audit your social media accounts for quality. Use our social media audit template to make sure you cover everything.
- Ensures You Never Miss Something Important
If you miss a notification from your best friend on Instagram telling you to check out a funny cat video, chances are the world won’t end. However, if you miss an important message or mention from a customer it could result in a loss of money, relationships, etc.
A good social media management tool will make it nearly impossible for you to miss an important notification. For example, eClincher has a Unified Social inbox that aggregates all of your messages and notifications in one place. On top of that, it allows you to mark items as completed, tag them for later reference, and search by keyword. This combination makes it hard to miss anything important, which is great news for you and your business
- Organize Conversations
As any social media manager could tell you, socializing is important. The word “social” is in the name, for goodness sake. Unfortunately, they can also probably tell you how hard it is to remember every conversation they have had. Introduce multiple social networks into the equation and finding old conversations in a timely manner becomes nearly impossible.
A social media management tool will make it much easier for you to keep track of all your conversations. To begin with, all of your data is in one place, this already makes your job easier. Some tools also allow you to search for conversations by keyword, which may make you feel like you have social media superpowers. By remembering even one word or name from the conversation, you will be able to find it with ease. Not bad, huh?
- Schedule Posts Ahead of Time
Marketers that have a documented social media marketing strategy and an editorial calendar are far more likely to succeed than those that don’t. Seems like common sense, right? You would probably find it surprising then that only 32% of marketers have a documented strategy.
Documenting the goals you hope to achieve is crucial, as well as the type of content needed to reach them. By planning ahead you can ensure you post the type of content necessary to reach your goals and grow your business. A social media management tool will allow you to schedule social media posts ahead of time. This will make it much easier to visualize what you will be posting and align it with your goals.
Scheduling posts sure beats having to post everything manually. Without the help of a tool, it is impossible to keep up with the 24/7 nature of social media.
- Monitor Keywords For Leads and Valuable Information
Social Media Today’s Andrew Hutchinson recently said that the greatest benefit of social media is data. This data gives businesses insight that they could have only dreamed about 20 years ago. Consumer opinions, feedback, competitor information, and much more. All of this information is out there, but finding it is easier said than done.
Luckily, social media management tools can help. Many tools offer a dedicated place to search for this information. Though you can find the same information by using the network itself, tools simplify the process while allowing you to save your searches for quick access at any time.
- Analyze Your Results
As a marketer, you should always be looking for ways to improve. A great way to do this is through trial and error. By testing different types of content, formats, timing, etc. you can begin to learn what your audience likes.
Well, only if you can measure what is and is not working. That is where a social media management tool comes into play. Most social media management tools offer access to analytic data. This data may be how many retweets posts received, how many website visitors your social channels referred or the cost per click of your recent paid campaign. Understanding what these numbers mean and adjusting accordingly is crucial. The cycle to social media optimization is simple: test, tweak, optimize.
- Prove ROI To Superiors
The analytics provided will help you to improve your efficiency as a marketer, but they will also help you justify your investment in social media marketing. Though you probably see the benefits of social media for businesses, your boss or superiors may not. This is typically due to the belief that social media doesn’t increase the bottom line.
If you want to have support for the long haul, you are going to have to prove the return on investment (ROI) of your actions. With a good social media tool you can quickly show key performance indicators (KPIs) to prove that your actions are improving the bottom line, while also increasing brand awareness, encouraging two-way communication, and building thought leadership.
- Gives You More Time For Real-Time Engagement
Consistent posting is important, but so is spontaneous engagement. The unplanned conversation you jump into or the question you help answer. In a world of automation, this type of engagement is becoming rare. You might be wondering, how does an automation tool help me be less automated? The answer is simple: through the automation of certain tasks, you give your business more time to engage in real time. We highly encourage you to use this time to connect with new people, engage in conversations and answer people’s questions.
- Quickly Enhance Posts With Images
People love to share pictures. The old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” On social media, it might just be worth “a thousand shares.” Tweets including an image receive nearly twice as many retweets as those that do not. This trend carries over to Facebook posts as well.
As you can see, images are very popular, so why is it that so many businesses aren’t creating custom images that will help build brand awareness, encourage shares, and convey their message more effectively? It could be that they don’t have the expertise required. Or so they think. Tools like Canva and PicMonkey remove nearly all barriers to creating stunning images that people won’t be able to resist sharing. What is even better than static pictures,? Ones that move (animated GIFs). A tool like Giphy gives you access to millions of animated GIFs for free.
The Best Social Media Management Tools
Best social media manager app for straightforward social media scheduling
Buffer (Web, iOS, Android)
Buffer is one of the longest-running social media tools aimed primarily at scheduling posts, although it’s gone through multiple updates, shifts, and iterations to keep up with the times. It now supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, as well as Google My Business Pages. Free users can connect up to three social accounts, including Facebook Pages and groups, though you’re limited to scheduling 10 posts for each channel.
While Buffer’s free plan is good enough for small businesses to line up a week or so’s worth of posts, if you want a more complete social media management solution or to control more than three social media accounts at once, you’ll need to pay $6/month per social channel for the Essentials plan. This gives you access to detailed analytics and engagement features, which let you interact with your audience directly from Buffer. (Also, if you want to bring team members on board, Buffer goes up to $12/month per social channel.)
In addition to the core scheduling, analytics, and audience management features, Buffer also offers its own “link in bio” service called Start Page. This allows you to quickly create and update a small mobile-friendly website with your latest content or even products you want to sell. It’s not a new idea, but it’s handy having it included as part of your social media management app—especially as it allows you to get real-world results from your social media posts.
Best social media management tool for all-in-one scheduling, monitoring, and analytics
Hootsuite (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome)
If you’re looking for a complete solution to all of your social media management needs, Hootsuite will cover all your bases. It’s an all-in-one social media app: you can use it to schedule messages, create and manage potential posts, monitor your various inboxes, run boosted post advertising campaigns, and pretty much anything else you would want a social media management app to do (within the bounds offered by said social media companies). It supports Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest, and offers some of the most intuitive analytics of any of the apps I tested.
While you need one of the more expensive plans to get the full suite of analytics tools, they can help you understand how your social media accounts are performing. Hootsuite also pulls in statistics from other businesses in similar industries, so you can see how you stack up to the competition.
Hootsuite’s “Streams” approach to viewing your social feeds (as well as any keywords or competitors you want to monitor) enables you to build a powerful social media dashboard exactly how you want it. You won’t see anything you can’t find elsewhere, but it’s better laid out and—at least for marketers—potentially more actionable.
Hootsuite is really aimed at businesses that can convert social engagement into revenue. It’s one of the more expensive apps on this list—and it can get even pricier if you add any paid apps. Its standout features aren’t so much what it does, but how it does them. It’s fast and easy to work with, and it’s one of the most widely used social media management apps for good reason.
Best social media scheduler for small teams
SocialPilot (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Edge)
With many apps in this category, if you want to delegate social media management to someone else in your organization, you’ll have to pay a serious premium for the privilege—Hootsuite, for example, charges almost $3,000 per year for a team of three and almost $9,000 per year if you want to have some kind of post-approval workflow. (You could always give other people your Hootsuite login credentials to save money, but that comes with a whole host of security concerns.) With SocialPilot, though, the Small Team plan starts at $50/month and includes two other team members who can manage up to 20 social media accounts. That’s 80% less than Hootsuite.
While SocialPilot’s user interface is on the simple side of things, it’s entirely functional and supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and even Tumblr. The sidebar has tabs for managing your posts and accounts, accessing your inboxes or analytics, lining up content from RSS feeds, configuring your team and client setup, and even running ads. All the features you’d expect of a good social media management app are there—though it’s the Team options that are most compelling.
Different team members can be assigned roles, based on what you want them to be able to do. For example, you can set things up so content creators have to submit all posts for approval, or allow managers to edit and schedule but still retain final approval for yourself (again, features Hootsuite charges thousands of dollars for). This allows you to delegate responsibilities to the people you work with, without having to give them free rein.
Best social media management tool for automating your posts
MeetEdgar (Web, iOS, Chrome)
MeetEdgar is the ultimate autopilot for your social media accounts. It does a lot of the heavy lifting of adjusting and creating posts for different social networks for you and is compatible with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. But this isn’t an analytics tool—just a scheduling one.
What makes MeetEdgar so different is how much it automates things. The app can pull (theoretically) quote-worthy text and images from any links you give it, and then compose updates to go along with them. After pasting your link, simply click Suggest Variations, and MeetEdgar will create four alternative updates based on the content. Better still, it can repurpose previously successful content by generating new variations on past updates that have performed well. That means you can repost content without it being identical.
There’s little in the way of analytics tools in MeetEdgar, but the app does implement A/B testing to find what posts work best for your audience; plus, you can use the built-in ed.gr link shortener to track clicks. It’s enough to see what content gets the most attention but won’t give you the same high-level overview that something like Hootsuite does.
