Social Media Marketing Management Tools

Tools make reaching social media marketing goals possible. Whether you’re a soloprenuer or a multinational enterprise, it’s nearly impossible to manage a social media marketing program without using 3rd party tools. small business social media marketing During your journey through the 3D chess of social media tool options, you’ll have many decisions to make: Which tool should you start with? Should you use specialized or multi-purpose tools? What features distinguish basic from intermediate to advanced and when should you upgrade?With the help of Emeric Ernoult (CEO of AgoraPulse, which is included in the list), we’ve updated our list of social media marketing management tools to help lead you in the direction of answering those questions. The list below contains information on 22 of the best social media marketing management tools, platforms and services to help manage and scale your online marketing efforts on the social web. Typically, self-service tools are best suited for small and medium businesses and enterprise tools are best suited for large organizations. However, there are exceptions to every rule, so we urge you to research and tools that best meet your company’s needs. provides great reports for social accounts and shows social content and monitored keyword searches in one stream. You can schedule content on all your accounts with a convenient publishing system and manage your Social messages on the go with a mobile app available on iOs and Android. Supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.Hootsuite is the leader in the Social Media Marketing Management space. It offers everything a Social Media manager needs from publishing, to monitoring, including reports and team collaboration features.
Contrary to Sprout Social, it displays all your Social Media accounts in multiple streams. Some users prefer the unified stream approach of Sprout Social and Agorapulse, some like the multiple stream approach. social media marketing plan sample Really a matter of personal preference. Hootsuite also provides a mobile app to manage Social streams on the go.Agorapulse is a social media management toolkit for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, supporting contest applications, monitoring, CRM and one-click, customizable ppt reports. All social content is funneled into an ’email-like’ inbox feature and syncs accounts in real time while retaining past conversations and social data from fans & followers.Buffer is the pioneer of Social Media publishing. It was the first software to introduce the queue publishing system allowing its users to schedule content accross most social networks without having to individually schedule them. It covers all Social Networks except for Instagram, and is definitely the best publishing system out there. Buffer offers a free version. Sendible is a Social Media marketing platform supporting 30+ networks with services for accounts/profiles, messages and social content, social contacts, content discovery, engagement, blog content and promotion, monitoring, and analytics. Sendible also provides a white label version for agencies. PostPlanner is a publishing solution for Facebook and Twitter. It allows to schedule posts at specific times or add them to a queue. The most unique feature of PostPlanner is its “viral content” feature.

Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram—they're all free platforms

Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram—they're all free platforms businesses can use to directly engage with their audiences. marketing on social media But the idea that engagement is easy, free, and quick is false, according to Amy Vernon, social marketing consultant and cofounder and CMO of Predictable.ly. "One of the biggest false assumptions about using social media for marketing is that it doesn’t cost money and it’s fast," says Vernon. "Like all good things, 'getting the word out' takes time." Luckily, she says there are things you can do to help speed up the process.Don’t wait for launch day to create your social media channels," says Vernon. She suggests you start building your social media accounts—and your presence—early. But what can you share before you even launch your business? "Share information relating to your industry," says Vernon. "Become a resource of information. Connect with others in your industry and talk to them.""Just like your social media channels, you need to build relationships before you 'need' them," says Vernon. She suggests starting out by looking for journalists and bloggers who write about your business topic. "Read, comment on, and share their posts, if appropriate." Connecting and developing relationships with influencers and experts in your field of business will help you down the road. "When you approach them later, they’ll be more likely to recognize your name, or at least be receptive, because it’s obvious you know what they cover," says Vernon.If you haven't taken the time to build your networks and develop relationships ahead of time, Vernon suggests figuring out which social platform is best to reach your target market. Then she says you should study those platforms and, when possible, take your targeted advertising to those platforms.
Find out who's talking about what, where they're talking about it, and then start listening there," says Vernon. social media marketing campaign Figuring out where to find your target market on social media does take time, and involves searching for people who are talking about topics that are important to you. There are many social listening tools out there that can help. She suggests FollowerWonk and SpiderQube. Vernon suggests just joining the conversation. "You can participate in Twitter chats and Google Hangouts that relate to your business," she says. Or you can join an ongoing conversation about a topic by using popular hashtags on any platform. "You can’t just jump into the conversation with, 'Buy my stuff!', but if you join in the conversation, you’ll raise awareness."While LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are the most receptive social platforms for business, Vernon says that no platform is off limits so long as you adapt your content to that platform. "I'd have thought, for example, that people would hate seeing businesses on Tumblr," says Vernon. "But IBM does a fantastic job on Tumblr because the content they create for it and share there really taps into the type of content that Tumblr fans like." Vernon says that as long as you are a part of the community, and understand that community, and you're not just promoting your business, you can succeed on any platform.So, when can you jump in with "Buy my stuff!"? Vernon says that the general rule of thumb is 90/10: Ninety percent of your content should be sharing other people's content, and 10 percent should be promotional. While that's not a hard and fast rule, Vernon says that "people are not going to come around often to check out what you have to say if you're talking about yourself all the time.

Social Media Can Reduce Your Overall Marketing Costs

Social networks are a cost-effective way to get your brand in front of fans and prospective customers. It doesn’t cost you anything to tweet a message, social media marketing degree pin a product photo to Pinterest, or promote a discount on Facebook, so there’s no cost outside of your own time spent.If you do have money to invest, these channels offer advanced but affordable advertising platforms that you can use to target consumers with demographic, keyword, and interest-based campaigns.The highly specific targeting parameters offered by Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can help you get the biggest bang for your marketing buck. When it comes to impacting your website’s position in search engines, you need to create optimized and compelling content if you want your domain to appear high up on the search results page.By sharing this content on social media as well, you can get in front of interested readers who may visit your website, like or share your content on their own social networks, and link to it from their own domains. Google and Bing both pay attention to social signals like this when they decide how to rank links on the search results page.If you’re looking for a way to field customer comments, concerns, and questions, then you are going to find social media to be extremely beneficial.Customers using one of the common platforms like Facebook or Twitter can communicate directly with you, and you can quickly answer them in a public format that lets other customers see the quality of your customer service.The impact of this activity can be huge: 71% of consumers who receive a quick brand response on social media say they are more likely to recommend that brand to other people.
Social media is meant to be more like a cocktail party than a business meeting. You will always do a lot better in a social situation if you are more like yourself and less like a corporate robot. social media marketing los angeles Social media is a great way to display your business’ personality, as well as behind-the-scenes information about you, your employees, your workspace, and more. When you humanize your brand in this way, it makes it easier for consumers to connect with you and develop loyalty.The fact that you are able to connect directly to the consumer means you can use this platform to also connect to other entrepreneurs and business owners.From possible strategic business partners to new distributors, social media lets you have real conversations with actual people who might otherwise be socially or geographically inaccessible in the real world.The idea behind allowing customers to correspond directly with you is so that they can get the best customer service possible. When this occurs, it happens in a very public forum that can be seen by other prospects.So when customers sing your praises to their friends, it not only boosts your online reputation, but increases the chances that someone else is going to give you a shot next time they need your services.The idea that you can provide a truly valuable service to your target market means you are positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. Whether that’s educational and entertaining blogs, posts, or tweets, if you are solving a problem or providing information, you’re adding value that customers will appreciate.The true advantages of social media are the ability to get a leg-up on your competition by connecting with your current and prospective customers in an organic way across the web.