Social media tools are indispensable to business management in many aspects. For instance, you can get the best out of these apps through brand presence, content creation, and staying on of trends.
However, difficulties arise from integrating numerous apps, keeping up with posts, and engaging your audience in time. This article discusses the top social media management tools for companies, including the recommendation of top marketers.
Why do you need Social Media Management Tools?
We will find a lot when considering the benefits of using digital tools for social media management. The practical use of multiple social media accounts is cumbersome, making numerous posts per day. Therefore, you need a management tool that can automate these functions.
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Using social media for business includes
- creating a copy
- finding or designing images
- logging into your account
- copying and pasting both your copy and image into the social media
- publishing
- engaging those who interact with your posts in real-time
- returning to organize and measure results
- reporting results at weekly or monthly intervals
You can now see how much work social media managers put into their work each day. Meanwhile, what if you cannot afford a manager for your social media accounts or hire an agency? You sure need social media management tools to handle all of these activities.
So, what are the benefits of using digital tools to manage your social media accounts?
1. SMM tools aggregate all your accounts in one place
Apart from the social media platform peculiarity, it can be challenging to manage them all at once. Therefore, the social media management tools first bring them all together in one place. You can then access them all at once by integration and manage them centrally.
2. Schedule your posts
Posting in real-time can also be challenging, primarily since social media differ in engagement times. But the management tools solve that problem by allowing you to set a time and date for each post. Therefore, you can use these tools to schedule your social media posts for effective management. Moreover, you can organize them into a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar for each channel within the tool.
3. Delegating posting duties is safer and easier
If you need extra hands to post, they won’t have direct access to each of your social media accounts. It would help ask them to publish through a single social media management tool.
4. You get a better analytics report
Using social media without measuring through analytics is like flying blind. Moreover, you can hardly reach your potential consistently that way. Therefore, you need social media management tools to see how many engagements you have regarding likes and followers.
You can also get a graphical illustration of your history, the best times for maximum engagements, and the best types of posts.
5. Approving posts before they go live
These fantastic social media management tools allow you to check your posts and approve them before they go live. At times, this feature is an opportunity to add trendy hashtags and reschedule posts. On the other hand, it may be an opportunity for social media managers to monitor brand relevance.
How to Choose Social Media Management Tools for a Small Business
There are certain essential factors to consider in picking from social media management tools. For instance, you may not be able to rank the functions and features of these tools in order of importance.
Pricing is another important factor especially concerning your company’s budget. Therefore, the reasonable question is, how can you identify the best choice among the social media management tools?
1. What features do you need?
When it comes to features, you must resist the urge to want to use every part at once. Instead, you should identify the most critical elements and your business goals. For instance, do you need a tool to schedule posts, support multiple users, or just analytics? Whatever you begin with, you can add more features as you expand.
2. How many users does it allow?
Many social media management tools allow multiple users each time, depending on your chosen plan. In addition, you can create various projects using the same method to manage them. Therefore, the tool allows you to bring in more than one employee in the role of social media management.
3. Client support
SEO and social media management involve a long learning process. Therefore, you will need an efficient support service from your chosen tool for social media management. At the same time, most social media management tools are ready to help you navigate the journey safely.
4. Price
Of course, another critical factor, especially for a small or medium scale business, is the price of the plan. Meanwhile, the features you hope to have and your budget may determine how much you’re willing to pay. And when ranking the tools for social media management, check out the cheapest but most effective plan.
Getting the best results from Social Media Management tools
There are different options that a company has when trying to maximize the advantage of social media in business.
1. Hiring a Social Media Manager
One way to harness the potential of social media is to hire a social media manager. They are sometimes called a social media virtual assistant who manages your company’s online activities.
2. Hire a social media agency
Using their staff, you can recruit a social media agency to manage your social media channels. The duty may be on contract or partnership bases, but both parties must clearly state the deliverables.
3. Train your team member as a social media manager
Apart from outsourcing, you can train your team members using the best social media management tools. You can encourage them to learn how to use these tools from other agencies or by organizing a training.
4. Use social media management (SMM) tools
The final option for handling social media management for companies is using social media management tools. These digital tools may be your easiest escape route, especially for small start-ups.
One of the key tools for social media managers is the Google forms that can be used for surveys and forms.
Therefore, this article guides you on the best tools to help your business reach its potential using social media. Consequently, we will examine the following top tools for social media management in 2022:
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- Buzzsumo
- Sprout Social
- HopperHQ
1. Buffer
Pricing: Pro Plan starts from $15 monthly
With over 4 million users, Buffer is the most popular and longest-running social media management tool. A user can easily schedule posts on all linked social media accounts starting from the dashboard. Using a social media scheduler can also save you much time.
As a result, the business owner or social media manager can drive posts and subsequent engagement with the audience. Integrating all the social media accounts into a single platform also gives the marketer a robust experience.
This tool is perfect for medium or large-scale companies that require a comprehensive social media management tool. Moreover, it allows for a smooth collaboration among team members. The Buffer tools are grouped under three significant functions.
- Buffer Publish. This tool is used to create a social media content calendar and post on all the channels at designated times.
- Buffer Reply. Knowing that a conversation isn’t complete without reply/feedback, Buffer helps users manage conversations here. When your audience starts to engage your posts, the Buffer reply helps to handle all conversations. In addition, team members from the same company can collaborate with more effectiveness and productivity.
- Buffer Analyse. Every activity on social media must be measurable and scalable. And the best way to do that is through monitoring and reporting through analytics. Buffer users can monitor the marketing KPIs and customize the templates for monitoring and reporting.
What Top Marketers say about Buffer as a social media management tool
Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers has this to say about Buffer: there are three reasons why you should choose the buffer tool.
- It has a browser widget through which you can buffer any page or image for later use.
- Users can create a list of tweets from a blog of interest through Content Inbox.
- Another one is the transparency code the company has toward the public.
2. Hootsuite
Pricing: Pro Plan starts from $19+ monthly
What is Hootsuite? In 2008, Hootsuite became the first tool that allowed users to manage all social media accounts in one place. The app currently has more than 15 million users, including 800 Fortune 1000 companies.
It provides an all-in-one social media management coupled with analytics for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest. It contains analytics tools that measure performance and share helpful insights to take.
Each social media platform has a specific analytics tool to monitor and measure your activities. They can also produce regular reports to help you make better decisions. One method to optimize that opportunity for Facebook is setting up a Facebook management business.
Reporting is also straightforward and flexible with customizable features. Hootsuite has the most extensive integrations with over 250 partner apps, networks, and other digital tools.
What does the Expert say about Hootsuite?
Cuspera reported that Hootsuite could increase the effectiveness of social media ads for your business. As a result, you can make profitable data-driven decisions, monitor your brand, and increase your social reach.
Moreover, users have access to a browser-based dashboard through which they can update their brand activities. Besides, they can build a more intelligent, scalable, and automated workflow using social media tools for business management.
3. Buzzsumo
Pricing: Pro Plan starts from $79 monthly
Amidst the available social media management tools, Buzzsumo is perhaps the easiest for small or medium-scale businesses or start-ups. The uniqueness of Buzzsumo is that it allows you to explore and discover the best new content ideas for your audience.
In addition, this tool is suitable for social media management by organizing numerous content of different types for you. Then, it produces comprehensive data from which you can sort and pick what you need. There is four prominent feature of the Buzzsumo SMM tool.
- Queries. Anyone working in the digital space knows that queries drive it. By the way, queries mean what people are searching for or questions they are asking. Users can use Buzzsumo to set a query for a particular keyword or phrase. And you get an alert in your mail whenever anyone publishes any content related to your query term.
- Content insights. The insight tool lets you into the popular content across all social media networks. It is also defined by your area of interest and the related keywords in that niche. Therefore, the content insight tool shows you the posts and their respective engagement on all popular social media channels.
- Influential search. It is easy to get traffic from what famous figures are talking about. Therefore, the effective search tool makes it possible to discover what influential people share. As a result, the user can reach out to them to promote your related content on the topic.
- Competitive analysis. Part of making progress with social media management is to pay close attention to your competitors. Therefore, Buzzsumo tells you when your competitors are mentioned and by who so that you can take advantage too.
What marketing experts are saying about Buzzsumo
Neil Patel of Neilpatel.com discusses the importance of Buzzsumo in showing you the trend in your social media space. This tool helps you create the right content for maximum traffic and leads. In addition, it also shows you which influencers can help you promote your content.
4. Sprout Social
Pricing: Pro version from $99+ monthly
Sprout Social stands for its small business-centric approach as a social media management tool. When you put all tools for social media together, Sprout Social designates a tool for small businesses. Sprout Social simplifies workflow using insightful reporting and digital automation.
Meanwhile, some peculiar features include social listening, analytics, robust content management, and post-scheduling tools. Not only can you organize your posts and engagements, but the tool can also determine the best time for maximum visibility.
Sprout Social allows users to access three significant features:
- Content Planning. Users can map out content themes and optimize them for social media networks for maximum engagement.
- Analytics. The role of analytics is to produce detailed reports of what your efforts have yielded so far. More so, you can customize these reporting tools to measure the social media campaign performance against the KPI.
- Campaign management. Using the campaign management tool for social media, the user can monitor, sort, prioritize, collaborate and respond to all messages. And this response can happen through a single inbox with the user’s account. These best apps can help produce the best results for your social media campaigns.
Digital Marketer’s view of Sprout Social
Reilly Roberts of Common Thread Collective identified Sprout Social as the tool to measure specific performance indicators. In addition, it offers UTM tracking that ensures your efforts align and is optimized with your business goals.
5. HopperHQ
Pricing: Pro version from $16 per month
The choice of the last social media management tool to mention took a while because of the others. However, the primary reason why we have to say this tool is its diversification and multiple features at a reasonable cost.
Suppose you will get an effective social media management tool for automation and task management. In that case, it may be costlier than HoppeHQ.
This tool integrates social media insights with accurate data to direct your post scheduling. The following are the significant features of the tool.
- Social Media Planning. Many social media managers or agencies don’t emphasize the planning stage enough. But HopperHQ helps you with a content calendar for organization and setting social media goals. And to make it enjoyable, it uses the drag and drops design option to create, arrange, schedule, set time and add a textual caption.
- Gain insight. HopperHQ is useful for gathering and filtering data before setting out social media activities. As a result, your social media content is tailored for a specific, clearly defined target audience. Before setting out, you already know the best types of content for your brand awareness and gain further insights.
- Auto-post. As expected of tools for social media management, users can schedule automatic posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In other words, you can post on all social media platforms at once. The algorithm does not require any reminder, which is helpful for both B2C and B2B companies.
- Peculiar to larger companies. The robust social media management system with HopperHQ suggests that it takes over your entire social media operations. As a result, business owners can entrust all into the tool and focus on other aspects of the business. You can even integrate different team members with each person knowing his role.
How marketing experts feel about HopperHQ
One unique feature of HopperHQ is the clean, simple, and smooth UI to use. Marketers enjoy the drag and drop features while adding unique features like smileys. Softwareadvice.com shows that HopperHQ is suitable for both the admin and user end of social media management.
Wrap up with honorary mentions
On a final note, many social media management tools have specific features that make each one stand out. In addition, others have become more robust than they are better perceived as an SEO tools. Moreover, it is essential to mention a few other efficient social media management tools.
- Todoist
- Semrush social media toolkit
- Sumo
- IFTTT
- CoSchedule
Feel free to explore these tools and take your social media management to the next level.
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