The 7 Best Tools For Managing Social Media Accounts
As a digital marketing agency (or business), do you have tools for managing social media accounts? What about a strategy to save time?
Determining the best tools and strategy for social media can be difficult sometimes, especially when you’re handling multiple accounts across different platforms.
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, and plenty of others makes this is no easy task.
Luckily you’re not left to do it all manually. There are many social media management tools these days that businesses can use to manage the chaos into an organized manner.
Be Smart, Use Social Media Management Tools
We all know the power of social media marketing or we wouldn’t be in this business. If you don’t or want more knowledge, read the best social media marketing books.
If you need a reminder, here are some general social media marketing statistics on how businesses have benefited from using social media.
- Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networking (95%)
- 71% of consumers are likely to recommend a brand to others when they have a positive social media experience with them
- Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
There are numerous benefits to using social media for small businesses, and thus many reasons to use social media marketing tools.
But what happens when managing all the social media accounts becomes more problematic than the benefits of social media? That can happen if you’re running around and pulling your hair trying to get the right pictures and captions in the right accounts on the correct dates.
That’s a lot to remember. So if you need help with organizing your clients’ account then you came to the right place.
The best thing about these tools below is that all of the accounts you manage are in one place. One place where you can schedule posts in advance, run contents, track analytics across platforms, and overall develop a strategy that best fits your clients’ goals.
This boost in productivity from these marketing tools will improve your business, the results you produce for clients, and your future cash flow as they retain your services.
Soon our agency will be known for your organization, dependability, and productivity.
Knowing when to post and planning posts for multiple accounts is also incredibly time consuming. That’s why tools like Hootsuite and Buffer, for example, are so helpful when they allow you to schedule posts in advance.
Scheduling posts in advance will also help you devote more time on the actual content of the post instead of worrying about when is the best time to post on Instagram.
Lastly, not only will using social media management tools make your life substantially easier, it does not need to get budgeting approval. These tools are free to use so no need to worry about extra expenses.
Below are the best seven social media management tools to incorporate in your marketing strategy.
Top Social Media Management Tools
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the most popular management tool because it is used by over 15 million people. In fact more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies use Hootsuite. The best of the best use it and here is why.
Hootsuite allows you to manage your clients’ account in one place. It is an all in one platform that allows you to create and schedule your content, measure your social ROI, run social media ads, and more.
They offer a free plan and priced ones ranging from $19 to $499 per month, as well as enterprise pricing (with a 14 day free trial).
Hootsuite can make your business incredibly more efficient by allowing you to monitor multiple accounts. This is very beneficial for large agencies managing a wide range of accounts over multiple networks. You can connect with more than 35 social networks with Hootsuite.
2. Buffer
Buffer is a streamlined social media platform trusted by many agencies. Their goal is for businesses to see results, no matter the size, so their focus is to help users with publishing, engagement, analytics, and team collaboration.
Their packages are carefully considered to help social media marketers to work more efficiently and effectively.
Customers have said how much they love the clean design of the website and how easy it is to use. Buffer’s tools are intuitive offering a very helpful experience.
3. Canva
Canva is like Photoshop for beginners who want superior graphic design capability without spending months to learn the technical skill. This tool makes it easy to create social media content and gives you the exact width and height dimensions to design the perfect Facebook cover photo, for example.
Canva differentiates themselves from other tools by focusing on brand design. You can ensure consistency in your branded designs by importing your brand’s fonts into Canva.
You can create branded templates you and your team can easily edit and download. Through Canva for Work you can easily find previous designs you had made for a client’s brand by searching.
Canva for Work has been used by businesses and organizations all over the world. Their website includes case studies where you can see how their tools have produced results.
4. Edgar
Edgar takes a creative approach to social media marketing. All it takes is three easy steps.
First you have to add your content. With Edgar, you build an unlimited, categorized library of updates for business accounts. Edgar can even create updates for you using RSS feeds from websites of your choosing.
Edgar allows you to post content on multiple social platforms that is timed according to the schedule you make. Their goal is for you to spend less time dealing with scheduling and more time engaging with possible customers for your clients.
What we like about Edgar is that it automates social media posting and scheduling in a refined way. Instead of simply posting your social media posts several times, it will automatically recycle previous content.
5. Feedly
Feedly allows you to manage all of your interests in one easy to read format. Feedly can help you save time on research and content sharing while also giving you access to all of your industry news. You can add content using the search bar in the top right or by clicking content on the left menu.
Feedly also allows you to organize your content on the right hand menu. Feedly will recommend more related content when you add new content. This is a really quick and easy way to add other relevant content sources.
You can also save articles to read later by using the bookmark icon. You can view these articles at any time by clicking ‘Saved for later’ in the top left of your page.
Once you have chose the content you want to share you simply need to choose the channel you want to share it on. If your Buffer App account is set up it is recommended that you use this service with Feedly.
As you experiment with the tools on this list, you’ll see how well they complement each other.
6. Bitly
Ever see a URL that is 25 characters too long and just, plain ugly? Bitly fixes this.They take long URLs and transforms them into short manageable links.
One of the reasons that Bitly has received a lot of attention is because of easy it is to use. All you do is go to their website, paste in a link at the top, and Bitly will automatically shorten the link.
Bitly also incorporates a button that can easily copy the new URL, a summary of the contents of the link, how many clicks the link has received, and an option to join Bitly so you can save and monitor all of your links.
Whenever you make a new link on their website, it gets posted into your feed so you can always refer back to it later.
You can also archive, tag, or share each bitlink using the buttons to the right of the bitlink. If you create a lot of bitlinks and need to find something specific, you can use the search bar at the right to find it.
The Stats section of your Bitly lets you see what you have clicked in the past seven days and saves your overall most popular clicks. You can sort these stats by date and even see some extra details as you scroll through each one.
What is helpful about Bitly is how they walk you through the process of setting up your brand’s short domain name. They also walk you through how to track your clicks and stats. If you want to use bitlink for marketing purposes then you can always upgrade to get access to their premium tools for link branding and audience analytics.
7. Trello
Trello is an excellent project management tool that is a visual way to see all the tasks that you and your team need. It allows every team member to to see what everyone else on the team is doing at a given time.
Their service is free so no need to worry about pricing. Trello’s service is available for businesses, we at Robben Media use it daily, and even for individuals who want to track their personal tasks.
Trellos is also one of the easiest project management tools to use out of all of the sites that we have discussed so far.
Trello uses boards. A board represents a project. You use individual boards to organize and track all of your ideas, represented as cards. You or your teammates can add as many cards to the board as necessary. The cards on the board are considered lists. Knowing these terms will help you utilize Trello more effectively.
Despite the websites many features, Trello has an incredibly easy to navigate unlike other project management tools.
The board, list, and card system allows users to get the big picture what is going on with the current tasks. Just one social media account could be very complex and involve many moving parts so Trello is very helpful with its simple framework.
Managing Social Media Conclusion
You need to find a dashboard and workflow that is intuitive. One that makes your employees and your own life easier. And tools that ultimately improve efficiency rather than draining it.
When you test a couple and find the ones you like, you’ll know.
Some social media management tools will be easier to navigate than others. Some may be more helpful for a specific task than others. That is why it is only to your advantage to try out all of the sites mentioned.
Keep in mind not all of the tools may be for you. For example your team may prefer Photoshop over Canva. But if you walked away with only one extra tool in your digital marketing toolbox, consider it a win.
What’s the best social media tool in your opinion? And why?