How Can You Ensure That Your Chosen Social Media Management Platform Is The Right One For Your Company?
It can be beneficial to begin by establishing clarity on your priorities and goals before engaging in research, which frequently offers overwhelming possibilities. It would be best if you considered your preferences and the demands of your team.
When you start investigating, reviewing possibilities, and comparing features, you’ll have a good set of criteria to measure your selections against once you’ve reached this point.
A crucial first step in expanding your business is picking the right social media management platforms for your social media posts. Choosing a social media platform with an active user base can be complicated, suits your target demographic and offers the finest tools for content marketing.
So, if you want to find the best social media management platforms for marketing your business and learn how they fit into social media strategy, keep reading.
Three Queries That Help You Specify Your Social Media Goals
1. What Made You Decide To Look For A New Social Media Management Tool?
You probably could have had a better experience with your current tool or routine, which motivated you to seek alternatives. What was that encounter? Was there a source of your annoyance? Have you ever wanted to do something that you just couldn’t?
Finding the fundamental problems that led you to begin looking for a new tool in the first place is a crucial stage in the process if you want to end up with the best solution for your team.
Regardless of the instrument, the objective is to assist you in finding the correct solution to resolve those problems and enable you to perform tasks that you were previously unable to complete.
2. How Do You Want Your Social Media Staff To Interact With The Social Media Management Tool?
Your team will use this product for a considerable time. Because your team is your company’s face to the public, they must have the best tool. They may spend less time on pointless activities and more time making excellent content by finding a simple, enjoyable, and intuitive tool.
3. What Goals Do You Have For Your Social Media Marketing Efforts?
What are your objectives? Do you wish to raise brand recognition? drive visitors to your website? drive direct sales or lead generation from your content?
What outcomes are you intending to achieve with your time and effort on social media?
It’s important to remember that each social media platform has its own strengths. Finding the best tool for the job can be difficult if you are unsure of your objectives and what you want to achieve.
Each social media management tool has its own strengths, and there’s no single tool that’s best for everyone.
When it comes to achieving your social media marketing objectives, the tool you use may often make all the difference because it can assist you to increase traffic and interaction and track your progress.
So how do you decide which one is going to fit you the best?
Here are 12 factors to think about before selecting your next social media management platform.
12 Essential Criteria for Social Media Management Tool Evaluation
1. Pricing And Various Billing Alternatives
Of course, price is always a factor, but when choosing a potentially crucial business tool like social media monitoring, “value” is essential. In other words, does the tool meet my company’s unique social media presence needs at least as well as competing mechanisms and is it priced similarly to or less than tools with equivalent functionality?
However, in social media management platforms, you get what you pay for. “Free” is usually a popular pricing point. Small businesses can start with one of the many free social media management tools available because of their limited capabilities. Still, more significant, socially engaged firms will soon see the need for more advanced, fee-based options.
Do:
Consider your billing alternatives: Some social media management tools may give you a discount if you pay yearly.
Examine your alternatives for canceling a plan: A few businesses allow you to break annual agreements and receive reimbursement for unused time. Many don’t. You are locked in as soon as you join up.
Benefit from free plan periods: Receive free use of the tool for a limited time so you can evaluate it.
Don’ts:
Spend time on tests for social media management tools much beyond your budget range. To get the most out of the money you spend on devices, learn how to make less expensive items work for you.
Get the annual plan only if you know the service will meet your yearly demands. If unsure, stick with a month-to-month plan, even if it is slightly more expensive. If you can move to an annual plan to save money, review the tool and your requirements every month.
2. Ability To Interact Socially
Being social and active on social media is essential. To simplify your ability to process, manage, and respond to social media data streams, many social media management tools concentrate on controlling them.
Buffer is an example that concentrates more on content publishing and offers fewer engagement tools like scheduling posts. The goal of tools like Hootsuite, a social media marketer, which focuses on stream management, and Sprout Social, whose Smart Inbox gathers notifications from your connected multiple social networks, is to make managing social media feeds performance for brands easier.
Do:
Consider utilizing solutions that highlight social network notifications. Providing you with quick access to brand mentions, likes, shares, and other actions that create an opportunity for or necessitate a response from your brand.
Consider both the desktop and mobile versions of available tools. Make it simple for your staff to respond and interact on the fly.
Consider team features that enable the assignment of follow-up tasks to diverse team members. These make it simpler for team members to be informed and on the same page.
Consider compatibility with other customer service software.
Don’t:
Refrain from using separate tools for various social media purposes. We suggest to several clients that they utilize Buffer for publishing and Hootsuite for monitoring and interaction. It is economical and time-efficient, and it provides the functionality we require.
3. Features Offered
Are your marketing needs met by the capabilities of the social media management tool? Your choice of social media management solution or software satisfies several fundamental needs in addition to assisting you in choosing which social media scheduling tools to use to realize your marketing campaign strategy. The importance of each feature will primarily depend on your circumstances and your company’s goals.
Understanding The Features You Need In 3 Easy Steps
Step 1: List the top 12 social media management features you will use.
Here are some crucial factors to keep in mind when you brainstorm:
Why did you decide to look for a new tool? There was probably something you wanted to do but couldn’t. And what was that?
Social networks: Which social networks must you be able to share content with?
Scheduling posts: Do you require the ability to plan out your posts in advance?
Times for customized postings: How should scheduling operate? Can you select your specific posting times?
Social media campaigns: Do you require the skills to manage paid social media campaigns? (Ads on Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Social conversations: Do you require the ability to draw in, participate in, and reply to incoming social discussions?
Scheduling tool vs. “all-in-one” platform: Do you want a great scheduling tool or an all-encompassing social media management system?
In-depth social analytics: Do you require them? Which metrics are necessary to monitor? How detailed must your reports be?
Social listening: Do you require social listening and brand monitoring capabilities?
Team Collaboration: Will you require the ability to add marketing teams, approve posts, and oversee your team’s workflow?
UTMs: Do you require the flexibility to customize UTM settings for each channel? A per-post basis?
Integrations: Are there any additional tools you would need to integrate with to manage multiple accounts?
Step 2: Review the features and mark your top 5 favorites
After listing every feature, you believe a tool should have, go through your list and circle the top 5.
Ask yourself: What are the top 5 most crucial tasks as you go through the list? What are the capabilities I absolutely must have? What should we consider mandatory?
Step 3: Utilize the following two lists to assess prospective social media management tools
You currently have two lists. The 10 additional products are your “nice-to-haves,” while the five you marked are your “must-haves.”
You can use your “must-have” list as the criterion for eliminating tools that won’t be the proper fit for you as you examine tools in the following section.
Thanks to this, you’ll save a ton of time and be able to create a shortlist of viable tools.
Do:
Make sure the plan you’re thinking about meets your demands. Please pay special attention to whether it can accommodate the number of social media you connect to, the size of your team, your reporting needs, etc.
Look at the whole feature list. You can discover some things that are only available at higher price tiers.
Look for tools that let you add on specific functions. This can significantly increase tool functionality by letting you buy only the required features and saving you money on the extras. For instance, social media management tool like Hootsuite provides tools like basic analytics reporting, campaigns, and the opportunity to add team members.
Don’t:
Pay for capabilities or features that you still need in your content or marketing plan. You may continually update your live accounts if you need specific abilities later. People frequently pay for items they feel “good to have” but never use.
Be aware of reports that look nice but lack the necessary information: Some technologies provide visually appealing reports, but words are about data. The data in the reports must deliver insights that enable you to enhance and achieve your digital marketing objectives. If reports seem fantastic but lack the necessary facts, they are merely pretty faces. Pass on.
4. Customer Support
You or a member of your team may need assistance at some point.
Will the company’s customer support be available to you at that point? If so, how effective is it in terms of both speed and quality?
The finest businesses go beyond merely giving you software. Additionally, they are available to:
- Assist you when necessary
- Advise you on the finest social media techniques
- Assist you in using their product successfully and achieving your goals
You will require assistance while using a new social media management tool. Does social media management software provide client training? How soon do they react to client complaints? Are they easily accessible through channels for customer support?
5. Team Collaboration Tools
Because social media management entails a variety of operations such as publishing, designing, engagement, customer response, analysis, and more, different team members may be in charge of the social media accounts. Your tool must promote effective teamwork to be dependable and effective.
Will you be inviting team members to use this tool for collaboration? You can manage your team incredibly easily with some social media management tools. The better ones make it simple to:
- Add team members
- Determine which social media accounts each individual may access.
- Set authorization levels, evaluate social media content features, and publish posts before publication.
It is essential to ensure that the tool you select provides the reporting features you require as a social media manager or team leader!
6. Social Media Analytics And Reporting
Specific solutions with advanced social media performance analytics reports may be an excellent choice if you require in-depth reports regularly. However, for many businesses, the ability to follow their account’s growth over time and analyze the engagement they receive with every post is sufficient.
The top social media management tools and services will enable you to investigate and examine your own company and those of your rivals. Careful observation of what your industry and business rivals are doing regarding social media ads might yield insightful information.
There are numerous reasons to explore dedicated social media analytics tools, yet, only some can afford them or have the time to learn how to utilize them. Check the analytics capabilities of any social media management solutions you are investigating. The various sorts of analytic social media management tools may include:
- Publishing analytics can help you figure out when the best times are to post content to reach the most people or get the most engagement.
- You can export or save data and reports that you can use for further analysis or keep track of your social media publishing activities.
- Statistics and trends about growth, keeping followers, impressions, and can find engagement in a social network profile’s analytics.
- Content-specific statistics that identify your most and least popular content.
Do:
Look for technologies that integrate with Google Analytics or your analytics platform.
Make sure the social media management tools you choose can track all your virtual networks: Some tools offer a lot of reports for some social networks, like Facebook, but don’t include data or don’t have the same messages for others (like LinkedIn).
Look for social media management solutions that provide data exports or reports that you can download, print, and share: they can utilize them to assist you in generating information for management and clients.
Check for additional payments linked with reports: Some tools provide some reports for free but need you to pay for others. Social media management channels can become costly if you require reporting for numerous networks.
Look for solutions that interact with Web analytics: Such as Google Analytics, so that you can observe how social media activities affect website traffic.
7. Supported Social Media Management Platform
Make sure the social media management tools you choose offer most of the functions you demand. For instance, it is preferable to use one social media management tool that supports the platforms used by your ideal customers rather than four, as an example.
Additionally, it is more effective for your staff to work together on a single platform.
8. User-Friendly Interface
A marketer is looking for a social media management tool to make all marketing tasks more manageable. The social media management tool may have a lot of features, but if it’s not easy to use, it doesn’t serve its purpose. It can be frustrating when a user needs help finding the most basic functions. When a tool is easy to use and has an excellent interface, it ensures you can do all of its tasks without waiting.
A social media management tool with a good user interface lets you see things in as many ways as possible. This means that the tools should be adaptable to the user’s demands. For instance, a small business may wish to watch a few social channels.
On the other hand, a large firm needs a significantly more comprehensive program that monitors various social media networks. A social media management tool should be well-suited to a user’s requirements. The instruments should be flexibly adaptable to changing client requirements.
A marketer has to think about how easy it is to do the following things:
- Planning out content
- Discovering information and generating reports
- Communicating with followers
When you buy a social media management tool, it is wise to find out if the existing users have a good user experience. You can read online reviews to assess how other users feel about the tool. You can also sign up for a free trial to see how the tool works.
9. Training
Higher-level tools are inherently trickier to operate, even with improved UI design. Ensure that you comprehend the training provided at the outset, the level of individualized assistance available as part of the package, the process for getting issues answered, and the strength of the internal help system for continued use.
How will you learn how to use the new tool or teach your team?
Some businesses will supply you with in-depth tutorials to assist you in making the transition and getting off to a good start with your product or service. Many external instructional resources are also available for many of the more well-known technologies that can help you make the most of it.
10. Innovation
In addition to keeping up with how social media is changing, some tools add new features or release products that work with their other tools. These features and social media management tools may extend the capabilities of social media management solutions, such as picture production, advertisement management, and other services.
For example, Buffer has released a tool called Pablo that makes it easy to create stunning images that are the right size for each social media network.
For Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, Hootsuite’s service now includes features for creating campaigns, such as content and prizes.
Do:
Check out all of the features of the tools you’re considering.
Pay close attention to pricing and tiers because more innovative or advanced features often come at a higher price. For instance, Hootsuite provides some campaigns for free while charging more for others.
Please pay attention to beta-tested features and seek clarification on pricing and access once they are released. Beta tests are frequently free or low-cost, but once the components are appropriately published, they could separate them into different price ranges. Inquire about the vendor and what it will cost to access the features you desire at the pricing tier you are considering.
Don’t:
Change away from existing tools if doing so will degrade the quality of your material – Increase the amount of time required for your team to complete the same work.
If a new feature or capability has just begun beta testing, abandon your current tools. Give the vendor time to iron out the problems before you adopt.
11. App Integrations
Again, small businesses with relatively simple programs can handle this. However, companies with larger, more multiple social media accounts should look into how the social media tools they are considering work with programs like CRM systems (for example, Salesforce.com), marketing automation tools, and web analytics packages.
Many tools offer complete collections of add-on applications. For example, Leadsift installs into the Hootsuite UI as a stream to find leads based on keywords you choose. Hootsuite and Buffer have extensive lists of apps they integrate.
These integrations range from something you install into your control panel that becomes part of the tool’s UI to apps and services that send information into the tool. Your Buffer schedule can be connected to and modified by a schedule of social media posts.
12. Extensions
Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and other apps provide browser extensions to enable you to curate material directly from your browser. These apps allow you to use the tool from your browser.
Because you can curate as you find and read content online, it makes content creation much more straightforward.
Extensions make sharing more manageable and more time-efficient.
Do:
Look for add-ons with the same appearance and functionality as the tool’s UI so there is no additional learning curve.
Look for extensions that maintain publishing configurations, such as built-in link shorteners and default networks to share.
Don’t:
Be encouraged if your browser has an extension – many social media tools only offer extensions for the Chrome browser. Give Chrome’s extensions a try; they’re potent. Even if you don’t typically use that browser, switching can be advantageous if it will save you time and benefit your team.
FAQ
What Function Do Social Media Platforms Play In Marketing?
Since the use of social media in advertising depends on the precise goals and objectives of the marketing campaign, there is yet to be a universally applicable solution to this topic.
However, social media may be a helpful tool for generating leads, increasing sales, or spreading the word about a good or service.
What Is The Significance Of Social Media Management?
The success of your brand depends on social media management for various reasons. Efficient social media channel management can reduce the time needed for publishing. As a result, you can schedule posts early in the month rather than manually producing them every day. You can share content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using our social networking tools
What Is A Social Media Manager?
A social media manager is usually in charge of creating a content strategy and getting people to interact on the social platforms of a company. Social media managers often need to be good at telling stories, have a good eye for design, and be able to figure out what works with an audience and what doesn’t.
How Can You Begin Your Career As A Social Media Manager?
Here are some thoughts.
Network: It still comes down to who you know and how you get in. Consider your contacts, and find out who their contacts are. Attend networking or educational events (now virtual) arrange for informational interviews.
Be explicit about your objectives: Do you wish to begin with the artistic side? Do you find organic strategy interesting? How does customer service fare? Do you want to learn more about media purchasing and paid planning? Influencer advertising photos for social media or copywriting? Exists interest in a specific platform?
There are a ton of them. Choose one to focus on, learn more about, and then move forward.
Imaginatively consider your approach to:
Find ways to establish your online brand. Help a local nonprofit organization develop its social presence by volunteering. Ask a local journalist or micro-influencer if they would like you to work as a production assistant.
To demonstrate your proficiency in using creation tools, learn how to make a podcast. Make every effort to gain some experience and a foundation for a portfolio that you can later use as evidence in an interview.
Be ready to take a long game: One of the most important lessons I learned about social media early on is this, especially when businesses (and leaders) began to pay closer attention.
Think about working at an agency: It’s frequently the best way to get started and a great place to build a career.
Can Social Media Management Tools Benefit My Company?
Social media marketing may benefit your company. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offer an excellent chance for businesses to connect with and engage with their target market.
Businesses may raise their brand awareness, produce leads, and improve sales with the help of a well-designed social media marketing campaign. Social media marketing enables companies to deliver relevant adverts and exciting content that appeals to their target market. It promotes credibility and trust, increasing traffic to the company’s website and physical location.
What Are The Best Techniques For Effectively Boosting Your Social Media Presence?
Building a solid social media presence can be hard when you’re just one account among millions. If you post content on social media and don’t get the desired results, you might feel frustrated and unsure of what to do next.
The most important thing to do is not to give up.
With its capacity to raise awareness and boost interaction, a solid social media presence offers several advantages. Learning how to use social media takes practice. All you require is a bit of resolve and some guidance.
Here are a few of the best strategies for creating a strong social media presence.
Choose the Right Tool: Before you build a presence on social media, you should have a clear goal in mind and research the best platform to help you reach that goal.
Each platform often attracts users from a distinct demographic and tends to be more suited to particular types of content. Make sure the medium you select aligns with your objectives.
What’s A Social Media Calendar?
A social media calendar is a chronological listing of your upcoming social media updates. Social marketers utilize content calendars to plan posts, manage campaigns, and evaluate ongoing strategies.
How Do You Manage Social Media Effectively?
Your key priority should be “quality, not quantity.” Nowadays, everyone uses social media, from tiny businesses to large corporations. Therefore, if your postings benefit your audience, they may recover them among the hundreds of other posts. You must carefully consider what your primary audience wants to see and how you may differentiate yourself from the competition.
Instead of having your audience scroll to locate your post, you want to encourage them to visit your social media platform directly. It will undoubtedly help if you have high-quality content, but frequently posting at the same time is also a terrific idea. When you schedule your posts ahead, you might create a habit among your followers to check your account.
Conclusion
Picking the ideal social media marketing tool after your marketing strategy is ready will solve your most significant problems. Use these fantastic automation tools based on artificial intelligence to improve your social media marketing campaigns.
You must consider the crucial elements above before selecting a social media management solution for your business. Choosing the best tool for your social media marketing initiatives can improve interaction with your audience on social media and increase lead conversion. Investing in the appropriate tool can help you and your team save time and effort.
Final Thoughts
The use of social media in today’s world of constant connection is standard. And to use it properly, you need the appropriate tools. You can manage and evaluate your accounts with numerous apps and services. Marketing solutions for social media management make sure you may frequently publish to increase visibility and drive sales automatically.
Remember to take the time to assess which platforms are most appropriate and advantageous for your organization. Before selecting the right social media platforms for your business, you must know your target audience, goals, and accessible venues.
