What Is Social Media Management?
Social media management is known as monitoring your social media accounts and upholding your online presence. Generating, publishing, and promoting the material entails assessing the social media audience and devising marketing plans. It is one of the essential components in an all-encompassing strategy for building and maintaining a brand’s public image.
What Are Social Media Management Tools?
Utilizing a single social media management platform, marketers may monitor and manage one or more social media channels for their business using social media management software. Marketers frequently employ these tools to plan, schedule, and create content.
Managing social media execution more effectively is made possible by media management tools. Which social media tools are suitable for you mainly depends on your business’s size and financial constraints.
Why Is A Social Media Tool Effective?
Even though the phrase “social media management tool” is pretty broad and can refer to a wide variety of services, your top social media tools should have a few essential characteristics.
Time-saving
A social media management tool should save you time and help you achieve results that are on par with or better than those you could have achieved without it. Search for social media tools that can automate a process, but confirm that the process is out correctly. Some shortcuts may be too quick and thus not prioritize quality.
The Price Is Reasonable
Inexpensive social media management tools are necessary (and most of them are). Many excellent social media tools, like the Unfold app, which is ideal for making Instagram stories, are free.
With social media management technologies, you may have your budget authorized without negotiating with the accounting team. All you need to do is sign up because most social media platforms are inexpensive.
It Promotes Brand Recognition
The capacity of social media to raise your brand awareness is one of its most significant advantages. Thus it is vital to keep this in mind when choosing the social media management tools you use.
Your go-to social media management tool is an editing program like Lightroom, which can assist you in producing photographs that blend in with the rest of your feed. Use an Instagram planner like Later to see your profile before you publish any pictures. Whatever the situation, a significant priority of social media platforms should be brand awareness.
It’s User-friendly
Only simple and transparent social media management tools can save you time. Each social media management platform you use should be user-friendly so that, if necessary, your right-brained writers and your accounting team could use the analytics feature to track daily social data.
On their websites, several social networking applications offer tutorials. Others, like Kicksta, have excellent customer service, so you can get prompt, professional advice if you need assistance getting started.
It Helps You To Stay Organized
Making sure your social media tools are effective and well-kept will help you save time by keeping you organized, which is one of the ways social media tools may help you.
For instance, the Social Inbox tool from HubSpot assists you in prioritizing your interactions on social media, and the graphic design website Canva stores your designs so you may change them at a later time.
Why Are Social Media Management Tools So Essential, And What Are Their Benefits?
Social media management tools simplify the social media marketing process. They may assist you with monitoring the social media activity of your company, measuring audience engagement, and locating your best content.
Here are some of the benefits of using social media management tools:
It helps to understand the audience better. The first step in running a successful business is understanding your audience better, getting inside their thoughts, and seeing things from their point of view. It is essential to comprehend their habits and needs. You may learn more about your audience’s preferences and online behaviors with social media reporting tools.
It helps you choose better content to share. It is simpler to comprehend what material performs better and what content your audience prefers with the aid of social media reporting solutions. It enables you to correct the situation and produce better content for your brand.
It helps you figure out how your competitors work. Businesses may monitor and evaluate their rivals’ strategies and performance with social media management tools, giving them the upper hand. It is simple to gain knowledge about competitors’ methods and apply it to your own.
It helps in the development of better plans. Social media tools give you a better, more detailed perspective of the most critical areas that require improvement, thanks to all the fantastic insights on customer behavior, content performance, competitor analysis, and industry trends. You can develop better tactics with the aid of social media analytics tools and put them into practice.
Results-driven. Using social media management tools, you may study each essential factor that boosts your business’s growth and revenue.
Fortunately, there are several excellent social media management solutions at your disposal. These tools can speed up your processes, save time, and even guarantee that the appropriate people see your material at the right time.
How To Find the Right Social Media Management Tool for Scheduling Social Media?
There are so many social media management tools for scheduling and posting on social media that it can take time to find the right one for your business. Here are some essential things to think about when looking for the best tool for scheduling posts on social media:
Features Offered
Find out what your business needs and goals are and what problems you’re having with social media platforms right now.
Do you need a social media management app with advanced scheduling tools or something that can help you make visuals? Do you need an app that lets you create a calendar of content? What about listening in on conversations and looking at the data?
Each social media management tool has its own set of features. You can figure out what you need from a social media tool.
Tools For Publishing
A goodsocial media management scheduling tool should make it easy to schedule and post content on different channels, reach your goals (more engagement, more followers, or something else), and get your brand out there. It should have a powerful scheduling tool to plan and organize content for weeks or months.
A queueing and rescheduling tool is also a great thing to have. It automatically shares posts, even if you forget to do so, and lets you add evergreen content. You should also consider adding extra features like optimizing the time you post and geotargeting your posts.
The first lets you automatically post content at the best times to keep people interested, while the second enables you to post content for specific locations to ensure it gets to the right people.
Engagement Tools
Growth is impossible without engagement. You must keep your audience interested and bring in new customers. Your tool for scheduling and posting to social media should have tools for attention, like a social media inbox that lets you keep track of all messages and respond to them as needed.
It should also let you track keywords, so you can see what people are saying about your brand and start a conversation with them. It should also show what people are searching for, so you can find trends and use that information in your campaigns.
Integrations of platforms
When you add integrations to your social media scheduling tool, you can do more with it. For example, if you integrate with Canva or other photo-editing apps, you can simultaneously add photos and videos to your content. Email integrations also make it easy to use your scheduling tool to do email marketing.
Looks at data and reports
Analytics tools let you measure how well you’re doing and use that information to plan your next steps or strategies. Reporting tools allow you to share important information with all your team members and stakeholders.
For example, suppose your social media scheduling tool has an engagement report. In that case, you can see how well you’re engaging your audience by seeing if you’re responding to messages often or promptly.
To keep track of many social media accounts, a team reporting feature is also helpful. You can see which parts are going well, which ones need more work, or if you need to expand operations for that part. It lets you make better plans.
The ability to report on trends will also be helpful. It lets you see any hashtags or mentions of your brand or posts, so you can make changes to your future content and learn more about the people who interact with your brand online.
Featured Collaboration
If you’re in charge of many social media accounts, you likely work with many people. Collaboration capabilities that help you assign tasks, get notifications, manage permissions, and detect overlaps or task conflicts can expedite operations for each department and decrease team member work.
It would be best if you also kept an eye out for approval workflows, which can help you schedule things more quickly. It also gives you more control over the posts because you can accept or reject them before you plan them.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
With CRM, you can track how your audience interacts with you and learn more about them, including your customers. A conversation history tool is a valuable feature that your scheduling tool should have. This tool lets you look at past conversations to better tailor your responses to current ones.
User Interface
Find a tool for making plans that is simple and easy to use. So, you or your team won’t have to spend much time figuring out how to use it, and you can focus on making good content.
Pricing
Check your money plan. How much will you pay for a tool to help you plan? There are many ways to pay for scheduling tools, and most offer free trials. Check to see if a specific plan has the features you need or if you need to upgrade to get more features. If you’re on a tight budget, you can also check out scheduling tools that let you make free plans.
Automation
A great thing to have in your social media scheduling tool is the ability to do things automatically. Automation ensures things get done even if you are only sometimes online. It also gives you more control over your post and schedules it.
It makes you less busy, keeps your social media channels active, and helps you reach more people online. When it comes to engagement rates, sales, and brand awareness, using automation can help things go better. Some of the tools on our list, like Brandwatch, Monday.com, and Buffer, can be set up to run automatically.
Customer Service
You can only expect some people to immediately learn how to use a new tool. Find out if your provider has tools for new users, such as guides and training. Also, find out if they offer support around the clock and how you can get in touch with them if you have any questions or concerns.
Scalability
As your business grows, you may need different things. You’ll need to find out if your social media scheduling tool can grow as your business does. Find out if the device you want to use has a flat rate for all users or if each user has to pay a separate fee. If it’s the latter, check to see if the total cost is still within your budget or if you need to make adjustments.
Mobile App
Make sure the tool you choose for scheduling has a mobile app. So you can get to it even when you’re out and about. Check to see if the app is easy to use and has all the same features as its desktop or web version.
With so many excellent social media management tools on the market, it would be helpful to highlight the top 10 to assist you in selecting the best one for your business.
Top 10 Social Media Management Software
Hootsuite
Hootsuite will meet all your needs if you’re seeking a comprehensive answer to your social media management problems. It is a social media management software for scheduling messages, creating and managing possible posts, keeping an eye on your various inboxes, and managing boosted post-advertising campaigns.
And anything else you could need it to accomplish within the bounds offered by said social media companies. It gives some of the most logical analytics of any app and supports multiple accounts like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Social media scheduling content
Hootsuite Price: The free plan, which is only accessible after a trial, offers one user, three social profiles, and thirty scheduled updates. The professional plan, which starts at $49 per month (billed annually), offers one user, ten social profiles, and unlimited scheduling. Team plans begin at $249 per month for three users (billed annually).
Quickly and easily show which campaigns drive the most leads and conversions with Advanced Analytics. Plus, view your organic, paid, and web metrics in one dashboard.
SocialPilot
Brands and agencies can use SocialPilot, a social media management tool, to automate the publishing, scheduling, and analytics processes that make up the backbone of social media marketing. It tracks sentiment, interaction, and location information and manages pages on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Google+. To utilize SocialPilot, you don’t need technical expertise or programming knowledge.
- Social media calendar
- Social media analytics
- Social Inbox
- Team collaboration features
- Bulk scheduling
- Canva integration
- URL shorteners and RSS feeds
- White-label reports
- Client management
SocialPilot Price: Professional plan begins at $30 per month, while the Small Team plan with three users and 25 accounts costs $50 per month.
Zoho Social
ZOHO Social is an advanced platform for social media marketing that assists companies in expanding their online presence to the most relevant audiences. It offers numerous functions, including team collaboration, scheduling, and keyword monitoring.
- Analytics
- Scheduling
- Monitoring
- Team collaboration
ZOHO Social Price: Free Edition. Professional Plan starts at 50$/mo.
A unique and powerful suite of software to run your entire business, brought to you by a company with the long-term vision to transform the way you work.
Later
Because it only focuses on scheduling content for Instagram using a visual content calendar, Later is the top Instagram management tool compared to other social media tools.
- Instagram Scheduling
- Media library for storing images and videos.
- Review and reply to comments (Instagram only)
- Hashtag suggestions tool
- Drag-and-drop post-scheduling.
- Calendar view
Later Pricing: Starts at $16 per month for small businesses, $24 per month for large teams, and $41 per month for premium (Agencies).
Whether you're a social media pro or just getting started, Later has you covered. The best social media marketing app, influencer marketing management platform & Link in Bio tool.
ContentStudio
ContentStudio is a versatile content and social media management solution aimed mainly at agencies and corporations. With a total of 35 social media management platforms supported, this single tool can manage virtually every central social platform, from Facebook to blog platforms like WordPress (25 social & 10 blogs).
Features:
- Content Discovery
- RSS Feed Reader
- Competitor Analytics
- Media Library
- Social Media Automation
- Social Inbox
- Analytics and Reporting
- Content Curation
ContentStudio Price: Start at $49/month after a 14-day free trial, which makes it an excellent choice for small businesses because of everything it offers.
Buffer
Through its vast social media calendar, the well-liked platform Buffer primarily serves the purpose of scheduling social media posts.
We can compare statistics in addition to getting comprehensive analytics. It is more secure because of the two-step login process.
Features:
- Social media scheduling
- Team collaboration (via administrator rights)
- Post analytics
- 2-step account login
- Customized scheduling
- Analytics and insights
- Stats comparison
Buffer Price: Free plan includes one user, three accounts, and ten queued posts per profile. The $6/month Essentials plan offers 2,000 queued posts per profile, while the $12/month Team plan has unlimited users.
MeetEdgar
Another social media automation tool with a comprehensive social media calendar is MeetEdgar. A great social media management platform just for scheduling social media posts with a fun content-curation element. But it doesn’t offer statistics or reporting.
Features:
- Social media calendar
- Content Library
- URL shortener and in-app tracker
- Browser extension
- Social media scheduler.
- Auto-refill queue.
- Unlimited content library
- Category-based scheduling
- Automated social sharing
- Automatic post-re-sharing
MeetEdgar Price: The Eddie plan, which includes five social media accounts, an infinite media library, four categories, and 20 team members, starts at $29.99 monthly.
NapoleonCat
The social media publisher offered by NapoleonCat enables users to post content to multiple social media accounts and platforms. The application is best suited for expanding marketing and customer service teams because of the user-friendly collaborative features.
Features:
- Social Inbox
- Social Media Publisher
- Automated Moderation
- Social Media Analytics
- Social Media Reporting
Planable
Planable’s social environment for team collaboration sets it apart from other social media platforms. Planable, like most social media platforms, is cheap and gives you access to the foundations of social media marketing. The primary features, however, are only available in the Premium version.
Features
- Social media scheduling and publishing
- Visual Calendar
- Social media Monitoring
Planable Price: Begin at $39 per month (1 Workspace) and $99/month for premium.
Iconosquare
Iconosquare is another excellent tool for managing your Instagram Business accounts exclusively. You may boost your Instagram following by using the rich information provided by Iconosquare for your Instagram business social channel.
Features:
- Instagram scheduling and publishing
- Instagram Analytics
- First Comment Scheduler
- Instagram Feed Preview
- Media Library
- Best Time to Post
- Geolocation
- User Tagging
Iconosquare Price: Starts at $39/month.
FAQ
What Are The Four Main Social Media Tool Categories?
The four main categories of social media tools include reputation management, media analytics tools, scheduling apps, and curating tools.
What Is The Significance Of Selecting The Appropriate Social Management Tool?
As we move deeper into 2023, staying on top of social media trends is essential. With the proper social media monitoring tools, businesses can keep an eye on their online presence and interact with their audience at all times.
Do I Require A Tool For Managing Social Media?
You can automate and control your social media marketing from a single Dashboard, or you can manually submit material to each social media network. A social media management tool would not be necessary if you used one social network, such as Facebook.
People interested in your business’s offerings are on social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and more; thus, a social media management solution is necessary. Combining all social networks into a single dashboard saves time while enhancing your posts’ effectiveness through automated scheduling and real-time performance information.
Can Small Businesses Use Social Media Scheduling Tools?
They can! Social media can be a big part of the growth of a small business. If you know how to manage your social media networks better, you’ll be more likely to build and keep an active online presence and a following interested in what you have to say.
Small businesses often have to do a lot with small resources, such as people. Social media scheduling tools can help you streamline your business processes and workflows, save time and money, improve collaboration, and create the right content for your target audience from one dashboard.
So, even if you only have a few people, you can still make high-quality content that will appeal to the people you want to reach. If you’re a small business that wants to use these tools, consider your budget and take advantage of their free trial offers. This way, you can see what it’s like and see if it has the right features for your needs.
What Is Social Media Marketing Strategy?
A social media strategy is a plan for how you will use social media to promote your brand. It should include the following:
What platforms do you use? What kind of content will you post on these platforms?
Who are your target audiences? How do you want them to interact with you and your brand (i.e., comments, likes, shares)?
How will this strategy support your goals?
Which Tools Are Utilized By Social Media Managers?
A social media manager is in charge of the identity and presence of a company or brand on social media sites. Social media managers use platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Meta’s Facebook, as well as Google Analytics and other online software programs like the ones we listed above, as well as many different tools, to increase brand awareness online.
