With so many different social media management tools
available and their importance to any social media marketer, it can be very
difficult to find the right tool for you.
The main things to look for in a social media management
tool is if it makes you more productive and efficient. Does it take you less
time to manage all of your social accounts? Are you creating better social
media campaigns and generally getting better results by using the tool? Is it
making the process of managing multiple accounts easier?
With those end goals in mind, here is a list of 8 popular
social media management service companies.
1. Agorapulse - The Agorapulse dashboard is very
straightforward. Switching through all your accounts is easy, as they are all
clearly listed on the left-hand side of the dashboard. All of its features,
such as the social media inbox, monitoring and publishing, are all at the top
of the dashboard and easily accessible. One of Agorapulse’s best features is
the social media inbox, because it makes it very easy to check all of the
social media updates that require your attention. It works very much like an
email account would – as you go through your inbox and read your notifications
and respond to them, the queue grows smaller. You can create automated
moderation rules, meaning that Agorapulse will then tag, flag, hide or assign
content so that you get all the most relevant messages in your inbox. If you
find an update or comment as you go along that you want to save for later
review, you can easily add custom tags and categorize them. Another big feature
is publishing and scheduling. You can publish posts to any of your networks, as
well as schedule them, but the best part is the editorial calendar. Basically,
you can schedule all of the updates that you want and see them in a beautiful
calendar that makes it so much easier to stay organized and plan your social
media updates. Next comes the monitoring tool. You can use it to monitor all of
your shares and mentions on social media, find out when someone mentions your
Page, create searches for certain keywords on Twitter and monitor hashtags and
places on. Agorapulse has created some of the most beautiful and detailed
analytics reports among social media marketing tools. the feature that sets
Agorapulse apart from most other dashboards is the CRM function. This feature
makes it very easy to keep track of all of your followers and friends and find
out whom your most engaged users are. You can also use Agorapulse to find out
who your influencers and brand ambassadors are and who among your followers has
the most followers themselves. With
Agorapulse you can add custom tags so that you know who is a prospect, who is
an influencer and so on. You also can see exactly what you’ve talked about with
each user so that you’re never out of the loop.
2. Postplanner- Its main focus is on helping marketers increase
their engagement on , Twitter and Pinterest. With Postplanner, you can easily
identify the top performing content for any hashtag, topic or social media
account, ranked by their vitality. With this information, you can more easily
come up with updates that will increase your engagement, reach and ultimately
your traffic. It’s also a pretty good content curation tool; all you need to do
is add your favorite social accounts, blogs, hashtags and keywords to have a
list of awesome content that you can easily share, as well as use for
inspiration for your future posts. Postplanner helps you decide what the best
content is with their star rating, so that whenever you see a post with 4 or 5
stars, you’ll know it stands a better chance of getting you more engagement.
The content is also categorized by Photos, Articles and Statuses so you can
easily diversify your updates and keep your audience more interested and
engaged. In fact, PostPlanner claim that their features have helped marketers
and other users get 650% more engagement than any other of the top social media
marketing tools. Scheduling content is also very easy. Their Plan feature lets
you quickly schedule posts for and Twitter and arranges them in an easy to use
calendar. You can also schedule reoccurring updates and use their cool Re-Cycle
feature to revive all of your top updates so that you can make the most out of
them. PostPlanner is the perfect tool
for those who want to increase their engagement and publish more targeted,
engaging content, all from one place. That said, those who want more monitoring
and reporting, might have to look elsewhere.
3. Hootsuite- is probably
the best-known social media marketing tool on the market, but also one of the
most criticized. In the beginning, Hootsuite was the answer to all marketers’
prayers; now, though, more and more are sharing their grievances with the
popular dashboard, from its add-on analytics to the price of its Pro and
business plans as you add more team members. Its interface, although it’s not
complicated per se, it is at times confusing. One thing that I’m not a big fan
of is the Hootsuite Ow.ly link shortener, which you can only track from within
Hoosuite. When it comes to some of its features though, Hootsuite are
definitely back at the top of the list. You can connect your account to over 35
different social networks, which is definitely not something you’ll see with
many other dashboards. Another good feature is monitoring, as you can easily
set up streams for monitoring keywords, hashtags, mentions, etc. When it comes
to scheduling updates, you can set the date and time yourself or use the
AutoSchedule feature that publishes your post at the best time for increased
impact. Its reporting feature works with Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and Ow.ly.
The reports aren’t always that great and you could probably get more
information by simply going to your Insights or Twitter analytics. With the s
feature, you can see who is following you and whom you are following. From
there, you can follow and unfollow, as well as organize everyone in
customizable lists. The Hootsuite
Campaigns feature, which is now in Beta, allows you to create contests,
sweepstakes and and Twitter galleries easily. Conclusion: While Hootsuite is
still definitely one of the top social media marketing tools, its high prices
and its bland, sometimes confusing interface are definitely worth considering
before deciding on the perfect tool for you.
4. Sendible -is a full feature social media marketing tool that
allows you to engage with your audience, schedule updates, monitor social
activity and measure your results. It works with, Twitter, Pinterest and blogs publishing
websites. You can post updates to any network or multiple networks from the
same ‘compose message’ box, similar to Hootsuite’s. Another similar feature to Hootsuite is how
you can select to have your updates published automatically at the times they
consider best for boosting engagement and reach. Sendible also has a RSS Auto
Posting feature that posts relevant content at regular intervals throughout the
day so you’re always providing awesome content for your audience to engage
with. If you have a blog, Sendible will automatically share any new posts to
your social networks. There is also a cool calendar where you can oversee all
of your team’s publishing activity on social media that you can also easily re-arrange
by dragging and dropping updates. Its monitoring feature allows you to keep
track of any mentions of your brand, while also creating an automatic sentiment
analysis that highlights any messages that need your attention immediately.
What’s cool about this is that Sendible doesn’t just find Twitter mentions, but
mentions from all around the social web, so that you know everything being said
about you online, and the overall sentiment behind it. When it comes to CRM,
Sendible strives to find you prospects and opportunities. In fact, if you want
it to, it can look for prospects and leads constantly and even start
conversations for you with the Twitter welcome messages and Twitter auto
replies. Another cool feature (just like Agorapulse) is that you can see all
past conversations you’ve had with different users that is great for finding
new leads and improving connections. You can even import your email lists or
create new ones so that you can reach the prospect you’ve found via more
traditional marketing channels like e-mail and SMS. Sendible also provide
pretty good analytics that you can customize. It also integrates with Google
Analytics so that you can easily see how your social media and email campaigns
are helping you improve your website traffic. Conclusion: Sendible is a pretty
good tool that has all the main features you can look for in a social media
management tool. The interface is easy to use and it has some cool extra
features such as the email and SMS marketing integration.
5. SproutSocial -has a very clean, easy-to-use interface. It
connects with all of the major social networks: Twitter and LinkedIn. When it
comes to engagement, SproutSocial has a feature very similar to one of
Agorapulse’s: the Smart Inbox. Just like with the aforementioned tool,
SproutSocial’s Smart Inbox gathers all of your social messages in one place
that’s easy to manage and make sure you’ve responded to everything that needs
your attention. You can schedule posts for all of your accounts from one box
(similar to several other tools), which are then placed in a shared content
calendar where you and your team can review and edit all of the upcoming
updates. You can also get pretty good analytics reports for Twitter, and but
one of the features that makes it stand out is that you can also review each of
your team member’s activity and engagement. Conclusion: SproutSocial is
definitely worth a try; the interface is beautiful and intuitive and it has
good tools for engaging and scheduling updates.
6. Buffer is a social media management tool designed to help
you post more easily to your social networks. It works for both individuals as
well as teams that want to collaborate. Buffer
is first and foremost a publishing tool that aims to help you increase
engagement, reach, clicks and ultimately traffic to your website. It works
with, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can use Buffer to publish and
schedule content, curate your favorite websites and blogs to easily share new
content with your followers, see quick analytics for each of your posts and get
more detailed analysis with the Business plan. One of Buffer’s best features is
its integration with Pablo by Buffer. With Pablo, you can more easily create
images to share with your audience. This is really useful, as images help
increase engagement and traffic. Conclusion: Buffer is a great tool, but mostly
for those who are looking to increase their engagement, as it doesn’t have the
full suite of features other tools like Agorapulse, Hootsuite or Sendible. As you
upgrade to Business or Enterprise plans there are more features, but the prices
are also much higher.
7. MavSocial- is a
social media management tool that allows you to connect your, Twitter, Tumblr,
Youtube and LinkedIn accounts into one central dashboard. On the main
dashboard, you can monitor all of your social networks and the engagement and
brand mentions so that you can quickly respond. You can also use it to create
and manage social media campaigns and publish and schedule social media posts. MavSocial has its own social inbox where you
get all of your mentions, comments and replies from all connected social
networks. Similar to Buffer in a way, MavSocial aims to help you post better
visual content to your social networks. MavSocial allows you access to a
library of over 70 million royalty-free images from sources like Images,
Pixabay and more, and you can even edit your photos from within the tool.
Conclusion: MavSocial has everything you need from a social media management
tool with the added feature of finding and adding images to your posts directly
from within the tool.
8. Oktopost- stand among all of the other social media
marketing tools as it’s dedicated to B2B marketing. That said, its features are
similar to most other dashboards. With the menu on the left-hand side of the
screen and its different streams, Oktopost looks quite similar to the popular
Hootsuite. The design is a bit cleaner and sleeker than Hootsuite in my
opinion, making for a better browsing experience. You can use Oktopost to easily
monitor keywords, mentions of your brand, company pages and more, in a similar
way to Hootsuite. It also has a Social Inbox where you can see every comment
from all of your social accounts in one place. Oktopost helps you post better content to your
audiences with their content curation feature. Social Amplification is probably
my favorite feature from Oktopost. You can basically make use of your employees
in an entirely new way, by helping them become thought leaders and brand
advocates for your business. Oktopost also provides detailed analytics and
beautiful reports, and helps you track any conversions you make on social
media. Conclusion: Overall, Oktopost is a great tool for B2B companies and
marketers, as it has most, if not all of the features you need for a complete
social media strategy.
If you would like more information on how to better mange your social media endeavors STL Productions Group offers free 45 min consultations. Schedule yours today by visiting www.stlproductionsgroup.com and scheduling your 10min- pre-consultation session.
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