Since the emergence of social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, social media marketing is where all the hype is. It has plenty of benefits like brand awareness and customer relationships, but it takes a lot of time to organize and publish individual social media posts. This is where a social media management tool comes in handy.
In this article
- What Is a Social Media Management Tool?
- Why Use a Social Media Management Tool?
- 5 Of The Best Social Media Management Tools
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Finding Tool For Your Business
What Is a Social Media Management Tool?
A social media management tool is a software application that allows users to handle multiple accounts at the same time across multiple platforms.
Businesses use social media as a platform to grow their following, improve brand awareness and turn interested prospects into loyal customers. There are however some hindrances to this, namely creating, monitoring, and engaging. A smart move would be to either hire a support team or use a social media management tool.
It simplifies tasks like
- Creating
- Scheduling
- Publishing
- Monitoring
- Analyzing
- Engaging
- Collaborating
Traditionally, companies would hire a team to manage their various social media channels and accounts to maintain and nourish their social media presence with the aim of generating leads, establishing healthy relationships with customers, and collaborating with users and other brands with the same goals.
Why Use Social a Media Management Tool?
From price savings, automation, and collaboration tools, to analytics and reporting tools, here are some reasons why businesses should use a social media management tool.
1. The Price
Which free social media management tool you use depends on the size of your business and scope. Free and budget-aligned social media tools can be a stepping stone for you to eventually get into a fully-loaded management tool. Social media marketing involves a lot of planning and creating and something like this can help take some pressure off of worrying about the price because there are plenty of management tools that offer the basic features for free and some have additional features which won’t cost too much.
2. Automation
One of the best parts of using software like this is it does much of the work for you. Features like publication, scheduling, calendars, automated responses, and content ideation tools help you save some extra time during a hectic day.
3. Collaboration Tools
Management software enables you to easily collaborate with other brands and customers with automated responses and custom scheduling, allowing you to keep track of your performance, keep the content organized in real-time, and stay ahead of the competition.
4. Analytics and Reporting Tools
Another useful feature is that you can track your social media performance to see how your social media accounts are performing, using analytics. It becomes easier to highlight your performance and see how it compares to your KPIs. Marketers use KPIs (key performance indicators) to track how well a website is performing. For example, Link builders use KPIs like the average quality of the links and the cost per link.
5 Of The Best Social Media Management Tools
These are some of the best social media management tools to use in 2023.
1. Hubspot Marketing Hub
Modern marketing is already a tough job and marketers need a powerful tool to help them ease the workload and take some weight off their shoulders. You can opt for the Hubspot Marketing Hub because you get features like form builder to generate leads, live chat to help customers, and salesforce integration under a single platform. The free version has features like email marketing, forms, and landing pages This is also perfect for small and medium-sized businesses.
2. Social Pilot
If you are new to marketing and social media advertising, then you need this one. Social Pilot is a simple and straightforward social media management platform crafted to help marketers find their way around handling multiple social media platforms. Apart from the usual publishing and scheduling features that most tools have, you also get a content list curated by the app based on categories and keywords.
In addition to this, you also have a detailed analytics report for implementing better strategy using insights that include the performance of the content, audience, and understanding what type of content audiences are engaging the most with. This tool is mostly aimed at small businesses because of its easy-to-use nature.
3. Buffer
Buffer has one of the most aesthetically pleasing UIs and is a delight to use. It has an intuitive and streamlined interface which is one of the many reasons why businesses prefer this one to other social media management platforms. Buffer is free to use for anyone looking to up their social media game and if you want, you can upgrade to their premium plan which costs $6 per month per channel (the type of social media platform).
They have a social media publishing tool to get posts and content published across all platforms and a dashboard from where you can access and manage any messages and mentions about your brand in all social media networks from one place.
Apart from this, you also get analytics to obtain a better understanding of your campaign and acquire insight from the data into the areas where you can improve your marketing efforts. In addition to this, you can also create landing pages that will be helpful for your business in terms of lead generation and overall sales.
4. Zoho Social
Zoho Social is one of the best social media management tools to use because it has features that let the user start discussions, share reports, and create team roles for individuals in a team. What this means is that it becomes easier for everyone on the team to know what the Team leaders’ strategies are and follow them accordingly. It also lets them know their performance with the help of insights derived from detailed analytics.
The app also has a separate scheduling feature for Instagram that automatically uploads posts based on the time the user sets. Other notable features include integration with their in-house Zoho CRM (customer relationship management) and being able to monitor the interactions of the customers with other people and the business. In addition to this, you can also track brand mentions, branded keywords, and mentions using social listening dashboards.
5. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a veteran in the business of digital marketing. The most notable feature they have is the dashboard that gives all you need to know about your campaign in a single place.
In addition to this, you also have the ability to schedule and publish posts across a variety of platforms including Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. You can also manage all incoming messages, respond to mentions and place them in a single inbox.
What’s more, you can also monitor the conversations that are taking place around your brand and industry. This can give your business some insight into what the target audience is feeling about your brand and how it compares to what other people think, allowing you to stay on top of the latest trends.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is CRM?
Customer relationship management is a technology that is designed to handle all the customers and their relationships with the company.
2. What is the average cost of a social media management tool?
On average a social media management tool can cost anywhere from $10 to even $600 per month. The features they provide are subject to change based on the price and version you use.
3. Are social media management tools worth buying?
For businesses who want positive results in their social media campaigns, a social media management tool will be handy to use. They can track and manage customer behavior and give users useful insights about what posts most people like and what they don’t. You can use these insights to curate content that is relevant to your audience, but also to your business.
Finding The Right Tool For Your Business
Social media has become such an important part of our daily lives, and it is one of the biggest reasons why a large percentage of brands have turned to it for promotion and brand awareness.
These are only some of the many apps that are available on the internet. Choosing which one to use depends on your business, its scope, and scale, and how much help you actually need to manage all of it.
