How many social media profiles do you or your business have?
Three? Five? Ten?
Even going out on a limb and presuming you only have a Facebook and a Twitter account, they still take some time to manage.
As such, you will need the proper social media management tools for the job.
But with so many to choose from, which ones would you even use?
Depending on how large your user base is, you’ll need to do any and all of the following:
We’ve prepared a list of five essential tools just for these occasions. Here they are, in no particular order.
Squirrly Social allows you to schedule everything from one place. If you have a handful of social profiles, one of a few things could happen:
To avoid a headache or twelve, consider a platform such as Squirrly Social to manage all of your accounts in one place. It supports all the big ones (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).
But we did mention a handful. So by using the Squirrly Social connections, you can use a free Buffer account that allows you to extend your control to other platforms, including:
If you’ve set up a content calendar, you’re going to have a lot of work on your hands, scheduling posts on social media.
Squirrly Social allows you to schedule everything from one place. You can even create categories and repeat each post several times.
On the other hand, you can also let Squirrly Social help you write the best posts for you. It can even automatically add hashtags and emojis to your posts.
#SquirrlySocial can automatically find the best hashtags for your posts. Click To TweetYou can even use their Social Media Assistant feature to find a list of posts according to what you are searching for, that you can share with your followers. Or you can set it to post things from your RSS feeds as soon as they’re published.
That is very useful if you’re publishing very often and would like your audience to know as soon as you have something fresh out.
If you don’t feel like doing it yourself, you can delegate some social media tasks to your team. You didn’t think you were in this alone, did you? The tool has some excellent team management options.
All in all, Squirrly Social seems like a lifesaver to anyone to wants to master the art of social media management.
Instagram marketing could benefit from some great social media management tools.
The way the platform is built guarantees a broad range of content for all sorts of audiences. That can put a hole in some marketers’ plans, however. They would need a way to know who these people are, for better targeting.
And what better way to know your audience than to get an idea about the demographics?
Get to REALLY know your audience with demographic analytics by #Instagram. Click To TweetWith the new Instagram Analytics, you can:
All of the above are an aside to the integrated post analytics. The whole system is similar to Facebook’s “Insights” feature, even being named as such. Those familiar with it should have no problem adapting.
In fact, all the demographic data is pulled straight from Facebook. That helps give Instagram marketers the best and most accurate graphs about user engagement.
For the rest of you who aren’t that familiar with “Insights,” here are more of Instagram’s newest capabilities:
The feature also allows you to view “Follower Activity” information. What does that mean? Well, it determines when your followers are most active on Instagram.
That allows you to figure out how to create your posting schedule so it gets the most engagement possible.
#Optimize your content schedule with #Instagram analytics. Click To TweetBut possibly the most useful aspect of the new Analytics is the “Top Posts” mechanic. Instagram sorts out your posts according to the number of Impressions they have. You can do that for posts created in the last week, or in the last month.
The number of times your posts have been viewed is displayed over the thumbnail of the picture. That allows you to see exactly how successful each post has been, not just by the number of likes it got.
Think of how well you can optimize content for your page‘s audience now. With that much information, it’s not hard to deliver results for your fans.
A problem people might find with the tool is that it’s currently only for Instagram business pages. It might leave some feeling left out.
Now, social media insights are very useful on their respective platforms. But what if you want to track your blog’s performance on social media? What about SEO performance and traffic analytics?
These are also aspects you should consider if you want to know what areas to focus on.
ContentLook is more than just a site audit tool. It is a site/blog performance analyzer with built-in team capabilities. It also analyzes your SEO performance and offers helpful information on what you can improve.
Here is what information it can provide:
How well your posts fare on social media. The tool calculates how many shares, likes, comments your posts have received across platforms. That helps you identify where your audience hangs out the most.
How much traffic your website is getting – overall, as well as based on each post. You can use it in tandem with the above point to evaluate what works for your blogging strategy.
How well optimized your articles are for SEO. The easier it is for your audience to find you on a search engine, the better.
ContentLook calculates your SEO score based on a variety of factors. You can read about them here if you are interested in the details.
Of course, offering you that information isn’t enough if you can’t put it to good use. Fortunately, ContentLook also provides some team management features to help you out:
Create and assign tasks to better your blog posts and landing page(s). Found out what you need to improve? Get your team on the job.
The option to connect the app with Google Analytics and Trello.
Create and analyze digital marketing Campaigns. For example, do you want to reach 1000 likes and 10,000 views on a post? Create a Campaign that lets you know how far you are from your goal.”
This tool is continually being improved for your convenience. Most likely it will see integration with Slack in the near future. Besides other features, that is.
As we’ve mentioned, Buffer allows you to track the optimal times at which you should post. We can’t stress enough the importance of posting during these online traffic “rush hours” to increase exposure for your posts.
Besides, you don’t want to spam your users with too many posts. For one, they might miss some of them because people don’t frantically refresh the page to check for new posts.
It also doesn’t help that you’re not spreading out your content over a longer period. You’ll soon find out that you’ve burned out and have run out of posts.
Spread your pins over time for better exposure with Pixlee's #Pinterest Scheduler. Click To TweetUnfortunately, Pinterest suffers from a lack of a scheduling feature, so people look to other apps to do it for them. If Pinterest is part of your marketing strategy, then Pixlee’s Pinterest Scheduler is just such an app.
It has a content calendar so you can create a great posting strategy over time.
The best part is that it allows you to manage schedules for multiple accounts! If you have more than one page, this must be a godsend.
Here we have another in the series of social media management tools. At its core, Everypost is a content curation platform. And yet, it is so much more than that.
You can curate content from the following platforms:
Alternatives such as Buffer and HootSuite would only let you curate content from RSS feeds and app extensions.
Everypost is a lot like Buffer in some regards. But at the same time, it offers added functionality.
Besides the usual social media platforms, you have the option of posting to Tumblr, Dropbox, and even by email!
An interesting feature is your ability to save social posts to Dropbox for future reference.
You can also post to WordPress and Evernote through your email account. That’s some all-in-one action Everypost has got going for it.
Another feature worth mentioning is that Everypost allows you to add YouTube videos, video links, and native mp4 files to your posts.
When it comes to music, you can add Grooveshark embeds, links, and native mp3 files.
In both cases, Buffer would only allow you to post links to your media. If you prefer to upload your own files instead of using somebody else’s work, Everypost has your back.
With Everypost, you can customize content for each social platform before cross-posting. Click To TweetEverypost also allows you to customize your content for each social platform before you cross-post.
No more thinking up messages that apply universally to all platforms. You can add each social media platform’s particular metadata tag (hashtags, mentions, etc.) and post away.
One thing I have to mention is that you can use Everypost together with your team. When businesses grow, or even when their social media presence grows, one social media manager is not enough.
When your online presence grows, one #socialmedia manager just isn't enough anymore. Click To TweetThe tool lets you manage your team of social media workers and set access and posting privileges for each of them.
All in all, Everypost has some nifty features that set it apart from similar social media management tools.
You have to wonder why social platforms didn’t think of some of these features beforehand. At least Facebook’s Insights and Instagram Analytics are a step in the right direction for social marketing.
These tools allow you more time on your hands to create great content. To recap, by using these tools, you can:
Post on all of your profiles on different platforms from one convenient place;
Take advantage of user and post analytics to optimize schedule times and the type of content you post;
Customize and schedule posts at convenient times for your fanbase;
Curate valuable content to share on your social profiles;
Post content instantly from wherever on the Internet;
Calculate your SEO scores and get information on what you need to improve on your blog and articles;
Benefit from necessary team management tools so you and your colleagues can work more efficiently
That’s quite the baggage of applications to include into your social media tool-belt. Don’t try them all at once; you might blow a fuse. 🙂
Now, applications are all fine and dandy. If you’re a social media expert, you will know how to put them to good use. But what if you aren’t?
If you’d like to find out more about how to become one of those experts, check out our other blog posts on the subject.
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