Hawthorn berries.
How to Determine
the Best App for Managing Social Media
Aaron Agius
Before you jump headfirst into the next trendy social
media management tools,
make sure you ask these questions.
Q: What are the
best free apps for social media management?
I am a bit familiar with Hootsuite, Zoho social, Klout
and Buffer
but want to see what is the best and how they compare.
A: You’ve
hit on a few of the top social media management tools out there, but there are
a few others I’d recommend taking a look at as well, including SocialOomph, Sprout Social, TweetDeck, CrowdBooster, MeetEdgar and IFTTT/Zapier.
At Louder, we use Buffer,
specifically the Buffer for Business plan, that lets us bulk upload
social
updates via Excel file. I can’t tell you if that’s the right option for you,
since I don’t know what kind of campaigns you’re running
or what your marketing objectives are.
There are a lot of questions I’d suggest you answer
before investing in a tool,
including the following:
What networks will
I be posting to?
HootSuite is a
popular, social media management tool, but it only posts to Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn but not Pinterest.
If you need Pinterest management, you’ll need to choose a
suite that includes it (like Buffer)
or a standalone Pinterest tool (Tailwind).
What features are
important to me?
This is where the tools I mentioned above differentiate
themselves. MeetEdgar, for example,
focuses specifically on recycling old content from your
social channels to increase their engagement and decrease the amount of time
you have to spend curating new content.
IFTTT and Zapier, on the other hand, are strictly
automation tools.
They’ll auto-load your new blog posts to your Facebook
page, for example, but they won’t give you the analytics reporting tools of a
platform like Zoho Social or
Sprout Social.
Klout is best for
individuals trying to build their personal brands through social content.
The company’s companion Lithium supports business
brands and agencies
with a more fully-featured platform.
SocialOomph offers social mention monitoring tools,
as well as follower suggestions for building an audience.
Get the idea?
Before you choose a tool, you need to sit down and figure
out what you want it to do.
From there, you can narrow down your possible options
based on their features and functionality.
Will I be running
paid campaigns alongside my organic social updates?
You didn’t mention whether you’d be doing organic social,
paid social or both,
but if you will be running paid campaigns, you’re going
to be looking at an entirely different set
of tools (with the exception of Sprout Social, which can
handle both to some degree).
Will multiple team
members be using the tool?
Think about the scope of your social media campaigns. If
you’re a one-person shop,
pretty much any of the tools I’ve mentioned so far can be
made to work for your needs.
There are, however, situations where having multiple user
accounts makes sense.
In a larger organization where social media is used as
much for customer service
as it is for marketing, it can be helpful to be able to
assign required responses
to a customer service rep or escalate difficult questions
to a manager.
In these cases, setting up multiple users means the
appropriate people
receive individual notifications about the tasks they
need to follow up on,
rather than a free-for-all system that risks missing
messages.
What can I afford?
The last question you should ask, of course, is what you
can afford.
The tools I’ve mentioned are all across the board in
terms of price,
with everything from free options to tools that cost
hundreds of dollars per month.
This is a great time to cut that features list I talked
about earlier from
“would be nice” to “must have.”
As more features generally means more money,
understanding your budget will also help you choose the right tool based on the
features that are truly most important for your company.
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