Managing Your Social Networks: Your Starter Kit
Juggling social networks is hard. It’s also neccessary, so let’s not beat around the bush and let’s get straight to the point. You’ve got some work to do and here’s what’s going to help you get it done:
Hootsuit
I’m going to start this off with the tool you’ve most likely heard of, probably even used, and I’m doing it mostly for the Internet newbies who are still staring the title and wondering what social media management means and if it requires a business degree. Go on, you social media guru, skip ahead. You, social media fledgling, stick with me.
You know how there’s one ring to rule them all? Hootsuit is something like that, only more helpful and less evil. It’s a platform that allows you to manage multiple social networks, multiple accounts, and collaboratively execute campaigns from a single dashboard.
Twitter, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress, Mixi – whatever you need, Hootsuit’s got you covered. This platform allows you ro schedule and manage your posts and keep tabs on all your accounts from one dashboard, which makes life much easier with all the social networks where you have to make an apperance these days.
It also generates easy-to-read reports about your analytics, lets you „listen“ to your audience and learn to create content they will respond to and some of the packages will let you use collaboration tools like assigning messages, creating workflows, and streamlining communications with collaborators and clients.
If you’re a rookie, you’ll most likely be using about 10 percent of all the available tools, but the rest is handy to have when you get the han gof them.
Buffer
If you like the comfort of many options and buttons, stick to Hootsuite. If you like clean and simple and lack the horror vacui part of your personality, I suggest Buffer. (Yes, social media guru, I am still in the rookie section of this text. Skip this part too).
Buffer has a nice, clean and calming interface, making you feel like social media management is not something that will keep you up at night. “Don’t worry”, Buffer’s soothing interface tells you, “we’ll schedule this together”. You can use it with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
It is a smart and easy tool to schedule content across social media and throughout the day – it’s like a virtual queue where you stack the content you’d like to share and either schedule it yourself or let Buffer do it for you. Phew, now that that chore’s off your hands, you can deal with the analytics about the engagement and reach of your posts.
It also has a handy “Suggestions” tab lists posts you might like to share with your followers. I’m a bit too much of a control freak to use it myself, but it’s not half bad.
Buffer’s a tool you’ll use either if you are a pro who knows what he’s doing and need no instruction or extra options, or if you are a totally new at this and need something simple and efficient that you can’t possibly mess up.
Cyfe
Cyfe may not be one of the prettier tools sin your toolbox, but it’s one of the sharper ones. It’s basically a full-blown business analytics tool that connects all your online activities : advertising, blogging, email, monitoring, sales and finance, SEO, Social It has several widgets supporting different services, like Sales and Finance , Gmail dashboard, Social Media, even a Competitor Dashboard to keep tabs on your competition.
It’s like a great big dashboard of everything, which is something you’re going to love if you are a control freak, and it is going to freak you out if you’re just dipping your toes in the unpredictable waters of the social media.
Crowdbooster
Now, this one is a bit different. Crowdbooster is not really a dashboard, as much as a tool to gather data from your Facebook and Twitter feeds. What it does is give you a pretty good feedback on your social media strategy, like when is the best time to post.
It allows you to analyze impressions, total reach, and engagement and it alerts you when there’s a new Twitter member on the horizon who might be interested in whatever you’re posting about.
All in all, Crowdbooster’s pretty handy when you need to determine which one os your sociel media plans, agendas and strategies works… and why they don’t.
Latergram.me
You may have noticed that these tools keep omitting one social network – Instagram. And if you’re thinking that Instagram’s just for teenagers, selfies and foodporn, you’re dead wrong. This social network is becoming more and more popular with brands (and individuals looking to brand themselves) and there aren’t that many tools on the market catering to the need for Instagram management.
Latergramme (this one actually does not read as later-gram-dot-me) helps you easily plan & schedule your Instagram posts, upload images from the web or phone, get scheduled images pushed to your phone and all that from the web or mobile app.
