7 Tips on How to Choose the Right Social Media Management Tools

When it comes to social media management, there are a thousand and one tools that have been created to ensure that you use your time maximally and also maximize your efforts in marketing on different social media platforms. Because there are so many of them with different features and attributes, it becomes important that you choose the one that is right for you, which might be difficult.

The reason we now have a lot of applications with different benefits and features, aimed at improving one’s productivity on social media is because of the rapid advancement in social media marketing. This large number of tools and apps for social media marketing is, on one hand, a blessing and on the other hand, a curse.

The main advantage of their numbers is that it offers users a wide range of options to choose from. The problem arises from the difficulty in choosing the very best and the fact that when you choose one, you are already losing out on another one which might be better than the one you chose.

So, instead of trying to choose the best of the best social media marketing tool (which is highly unlikely), it makes more sense to consider choosing the one that is most suited for your purpose and can help you achieve your social media marketing goals.

How then do you decide on which of the array of tools to use for your social media marketing? Here are 7 tips or things to consider to help you make a perfect choice.

Tip #1. Your needs and goals on social media

You need this tool because you need to manage your social media marketing. But the first question you must ask yourself is why are you marketing your business on social media?

While it is important for you to spend engaging and connecting with your target audience on social media, your primary purpose here is to run a business. This means that you need to be strategic in your thinking and put into consideration, the results that you are looking to achieve with your presence on social media.

The tool that you choose will have to be determined by what goals you are looking to achieve as a business on social media. After all, that is the purpose of the tool.

Some of the goals that you will be looking to achieve with your social media marketing efforts will include:

• Increase in web traffic.
• Creation of brand awareness.
• Leads acquisition and generation of sales.
• Increase in community engagement.

These goals stated above are just the broader view, you can still break them further into smaller goals to make it more achievable. It is important that you are very specific when you set your social media goals. These goals will determine if you need a social media marketing tool and which one is the most suitable for you.

You also have to be specific with what you will be needing a social media tool for. Some of them are:

• Getting feedback and relevant information about your performance on social media.
• To scale your efforts on social media.
• To promote collaboration among team members.
• To save time and relieve stress caused by manually carrying out social media assignments.

Once you have these goals clearly spelled out in your mind, you already have an idea of the type of tool that you need, making it easier for you to screen out unsuitable tools.

Tip #2. Social media scheduling

Even if you live on social media, it is not possible for you to always be active at all times on social media. That is where social media tools come in. You can easily set a schedule for your updates on social media, and determine the time and day when they are posted online.

In this case, you need a tool that can help you with any or all of the queue posting, repeat posting, and content curation.

• Queue posting: you need to be able to create a queue for your social media updates, allowing each content to be posted at their scheduled time.
• Repeat posting: you need to be able to share or post content multiple times so that it has a better exposure.
• Content curation: there are times when you have to post contents that are interesting from another source, so, that your profile can be valuable and active to your audience. Your tool should be able to do this automatically.

You need to look at the capacity of the tool to help you engage with your followers and audience from its dashboard, and also like, share and comment.

This feature will help you to save time and stress doing it manually from your social media account.

Tip #3. User experience

According to a recent publication on the best essay writing service platform, the usability of a tool is important to determine how beneficial its features are.

The user experience of a tool is important because you would not be able to use the tool unless you can find its basic functions. This allows you to complete important tasks in a short while. A tool with poor user experience can be very frustrating to use.

When choosing a tool, it is important that you consider the ease of carrying out important tasks such as:

• Scheduling and posting updates.
• Engaging with followers, and
• Finding reports and analytics.

Going through online reviews or activating and using the tool for a trial period are good ways to find out if it has a good user experience and is a tool that you can work with.

Tip #4. Social media platforms enabled

To run successful social media marketing campaigns, your focus has to be on social media platforms where you have your most audience. Now imagine getting a tool for Facebook marketing but the tool supports other social networks but not Facebook.

There are tools that support just 2 or 3 social networks, while others allow more. Irrespective of the number of social networks allowed, what is most important is that it supports your preferred network. Tools that support multiple networks have an advantage here. The more social networks are supported, the better.

If you need a tool for 3 social networks, you must make sure that the one you are choosing supports all 3 networks. This will help you avoid a scenario where you are using or needing 2 or more tools to manage your social media.

Tools that support multiple networks may come at a more expensive price but they are worth the price. Plus, if you consider that you might be needing 2 or 3 tools if they do not support all, then they are relatively cheaper and helps to save your time and energy.

Tip #5. Analytics and reporting

The tool that you are choosing must be able to show you how well your performance is on social media. Without a tool that offers effective analytics, you will not have an idea of what is going on with your social media marketing and will not be able to maximize subsequent opportunities as they come.

Beyond just giving analytics, you also have to consider its capacity and how it reports, so, that you can optimize your process.

Some metrics that you would want to consider are content performance, engagement, follower growth, and publishing analytics. Your tool must be able to give you all the necessary information about your marketing campaigns on social media.

It should also be able to report your performance over a particular period of time.

Tip #6. Social Media monitoring

There is a big possibility that there are people online that are already monitoring your brand. These people, however, do not have access to the company’s official account. So, it might be beneficial for you to remain aware of mentions like that. The question is, how do you go about it?

There are a number of social media management tools that can help you to monitor the mentions of your brand. This will allow you to more easily react to complaints and inquiries of your customers on social media. Another advantage is that you have a chance to quickly react to situations that can potentially become disastrous for your PR before it gets out of hand.

These tools do not just track your own mentions, it can also track the mentions of other brands that are competitors for your brand, helping you to keep track of their progress and weakness. You can also use it to track various terms in your industry.

Tip #7. ROI measurement

The term “ROI” is what every boss/manager wants to hear their employees speak. For every investment, there is an ROI. The question is what is the ROI that you and your company stand to gain from investing in a social media marketing tool?

What impact can your chosen social media tool make in your company? How can it be beneficial? Do the benefits of this tool justify the cost of acquiring, setting up and maintaining it?

These are questions that you have to respond to. When it comes to ROI measurement of social media management tools, there are 2 ways you can view it

• Productivity: this tool will save you some stress and more importantly, hours which you would have spent working manually. Hence, making you more productive. How do you calculate the hours saved monthly and convert it to money?
• Social media activities: these tools help to increase your social media activities and engagements and bring you closer to your target audience.

Conclusion

These are just some of the major factors that you must consider before picking your social media management tool. These tools have the capacity to connect you to your audience. Much more, they save time and boost productivity.

About the Author!

Becky Holton is a journalist and a blogger at essay writing service. She is interested in education technologies, write my dissertation, top resume reviews and is always ready to support informative speaking. Follow her on Twitter.