Social media isn’t new anymore. It’s a substantial and important component to any business’s marketing strategy.
And there’s a reason for this importance: being active on social media can steer potential customers to buy from your site, as well as being integral for answering queries and keeping your customers satisfied.
But the more consequence that social media has, the more you have to work with it. And that takes up time, resources and ultimately, money.
Thankfully there are a myriad of tools available to make your social media management more streamlined and efficient. Here are four of our favourite tools that’ll empower your social media while minimising your workload.
- Scheduler
Buffer will let you breathe easy in knowing your social media is active, even when you’re not logged in. It’s a scheduling app that allows you to create multiple posts at a time, assign them to individual social profiles, and then have them spread out and published throughout the day and week.
This means that once you’ve arranged your posts there is no need to log in to Twitter or Facebook to publish them. The time that you’d spend manually posting content is now liberated.
On top of this, Buffer offers a URL shortening feature that means there’s analytics on each post showing you how many clicks it’s received.
Buffer has both a free and paid service. The free is enough to schedule 10 posts in advance and publish them to up to 4 social profiles.
- Content Discovery
You’ll naturally want to keep up with industry news online. You’ll also want to share this news to promote your business’s reputation as knowledgeable and on-the-ball.
Enter Buzzsumo. This tool scrapes content from around the web and sorts it in order of how many shares it’s had on social media. This is a fantastic way of getting quick access to highly shareable content that can then swiftly be added to your Buffer.
As well as looking at the most shared posts in your industry, you can sort your content discovery by time period, social network, author and more.
Buzzsumo has a variety of features that are accessible after you subscribe to their paid service. However, on the free service there is still enough power for you to find some great content.
- Analyse your Twitter
Measuring the performance of your social accounts is a necessity to ensure your goals are in line with growth. Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tool that gives a comprehensive breakdown of a user’s followers and who they’re following, too.
This sort of information gives insight into the location of the users connected with you, the times they’re most active, the number of followers they have and much more. There’s also a ‘social authority’ score that measures how influential your Twitter content is.
The level of detail Followerwonk offers is especially helpful when using the ‘compare users’ function. Doing so allows you to compare the characteristics of your followers with those of your competitors – meaning you can identify any missed opportunities.
- Schedule, Measure, Report
Not as accessible as Buffer yet undeniably more powerful, Sprout Social allows you to schedule in an array of content to go out simultaneously across your social networks over weeks. If you drop in to Buffer for half an hour to sort out your week’s social posts, Sprout Social is a good hour or so’s sit down but at the end of it your social content is sorted for the next month.
As well as this, Sprout’s reporting tool is thorough. Organic impressions, engagement and clicks are all measured over a custom timeframe, meaning you can see how your current strategy is performing.
Social media doesn’t have to consume your time. Use the tools available to you and your social media management can thrive without you being stuck on your newsfeed all day.
