Social media tools

Social media marketing tools are primarily a means of light­en­ing your workload and saving time. These tools create partly automatic processes that enable busi­nesses to multitask and cut down time spent on analysing marketing campaigns, content man­age­ment, and analysis of customers’ online behaviour. Social media tools benefit the following areas:

Overview and planning

Trying to keep track of multiple accounts on several platforms can be a confusing business. Without precise planning, social media man­age­ment can quickly descend into chaos. Erratic updates won’t go unnoticed by your followers or potential customers. Social media tools therefore enable users to get an overview of their marketing activity; a central dashboard manages the planning of content as well as pub­lish­ing queued updates and tracking.

Workflow

When several col­leagues have access to the company’s social media accounts, it is im­per­at­ive to co­ordin­ate efforts ef­fi­ciently. In­stalling social media marketing tools provides trans­par­ent teamwork and better workflow. Not only is it then possible for staff to organise a schedule for their social media content, it's also easier to follow who posted what, and when.

Customer contact

When customers have problems or questions, they often contact the company via its social network platforms. Whether they have enquiries, criticism, or positive feedback, the customers expect a quick reaction, rather than having to wait several days for an answer. Social media can therefore be an important aspect of customer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM). With social media man­age­ment tools, busi­nesses can keep track of the many enquiries that are dis­trib­uted over different networks.

Tracking and analysis

Analysing its social media channels allows a business to find out when and in what context it is mentioned. This isn’t just about tracking likes and shares, but also the full spectrum of “social press reviews”. A social media mon­it­or­ing tool enables the business to react as quickly as possible to these reviews. Many tools not only enable the business to analyse their own fan base, but also offer a function that analyses competing busi­nesses and finds in­flu­en­cers.

Stay up-to-date while on the move

Yet another practical aspect of many tools: if all the networks are ac­com­mod­ated on one dashboard, they can be accessed on the go. Many tools provide mobile versions or their own apps, which enable the user to check the status of their social media profiles from their personal devices.

Content de­vel­op­ment, analysis, mon­it­or­ing: these are just some PR aspects that can be made simpler by using social media tools. Make managing your web presence a breeze with these five tools:

Buffer

Buffer collects, manages, and shares content on various platforms at different times, both online and in the mobile version for iOS and Android. It is possible to split the content between up to three online profiles, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, App.net, and Pinterest (the latter only in the paid version). The free version can be used for one account and store up to 10 saved content items for each platform. To add more accounts and stored content or connect to RSS feeds, Buffer offers plans starting from just 10 US dollars a month. As well as the browser extension for common programs, there are also ex­ten­sions available for online services such as Pocket, In­stapa­per, Feedly, or scoop.it. Extra features include the in­teg­rated automatic URL shortener and the practical graphic tool, Pablo. Another package, offers the user the option to analyse their own social media activity with the option, “social analytics”.

Hootsuite

Due to its ability to follow several streams at once, Hootsuite was initially popular among Twitter users, although the tool also supports Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress, and Mixi. Users of the free version can sim­ul­tan­eously manage up to three accounts, and connect five social media networks to the tool, whereas the social media man­age­ment tool’s paid packages can ac­com­mod­ate up to 50 accounts. Hootsuite is a browser-based ap­plic­a­tion and offers ex­ten­sions for Chrome and Firefox as well as a mobile version for Android and iOS. The main functions - auto­mat­ic­ally pub­lish­ing updates at an appointed time - are com­par­able to those of Buffer. However, Hootsuite also offers a dashboard with a huge range of functions that can be made available to up to ten col­leagues. The tool also provides more scope in the analysis of users’ behaviour and reactions, meaning users can record the number of reactions to a single post, for example, and use that in­form­a­tion to find out the optimal time period for pub­lish­ing updates.

Brand­watch

The set of tools from Brand­watch focuses on the themes of social listening and social in­tel­li­gence. Rather than content de­vel­op­ment, this social media mon­it­or­ing tool places the emphasis on data analysis. Using data from the biggest social media channels, Facebook and Twitter, this analytics tool enables users to take advantage of various functions. These include: observing campaigns in real time, regularly con­duct­ing analyses of the com­pet­i­tion, and getting an overview of fans, followers, and in­flu­en­cers. Every user can access this in­form­a­tion from a cus­tom­ised dashboard. New customers have the added benefit of being able to trial a free test version for 7 days, and have the choice of two different packages there­after.

Audiense

Another option is Audiense, a com­pletely free tool for managing a Twitter account. Like Hootsuite and Buffer, the tool is ideally suited to schedul­ing content updates, but watch out! Based on the gathered para­met­ers, the app only as­cer­tains the best times for sharing content. Actually sharing the content, however, is carried out via a con­nec­tion to Hootsuite. Moreover, the tool can only be used for Twitter accounts. It records a site’s followers and un­fol­low­ers and iden­ti­fies the “most important” followers, i.e. the most in­flu­en­tial Twitter users in your network. With this data, it creates an analysis of a business’s demo­graph­ic and gives the user an overview of the most important hashtags for content de­vel­op­ment. .