5 Useful Social Media Management Tools
0So many statuses, so little time. Whether you are managing your personal brand across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or managing 20 social media profiles for your company, how does one keep up? Luckily, there are hundreds of tools to help you manage, analyze, tweet, and post to your heart’s desire.
Here is a round-up of some of the tools I find most useful. What are your top social media management tools? Let us know in the comments below.
1. Buffer – http://bufferapp.com
I have tried many tools to schedule my tweets and posts, but I keep coming back to Buffer. Buffer allows you to schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, App.net, and LinkedIn. There’s a free version that allows you to connect one of each service, and a paid version that allows you to connect up to 12 profiles. Each post gets scheduled according to the optimal posting times, and you can track analytics for each individual post.
Free version with limited profile connectivity, paid “Awesome Plan” is $10/month.
2. Hshtags - http://hshtags.com/
Hshtags is a fantastic social media search engine. Enter your hashtag and the engine searches across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, and Vimeo. This is a great tool to use if you are tracking real-time social media mentions of a campaign with a particular hashtag, or if you want to see a compilation from a popular hashtag like #sb48.
Free!
3. Hootsuite – http://www.hootsuite.com
Hootsuite excels for those managing corporate brands across multiple social media channels. You can also schedule posts within Hootsuite, although they do not automatically suggest optimal posting times like Buffer. Hootsuite also has a built-in analytics feature, integrating Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Google+ Page Analytics, and Twitter profile stats. There is a free and paid version, with the free version offering basic analytics and connecting up to 5 profiles.
Free version with limited features, paid version starts at $8.99/month.
4. Sprout Social – http://www.sproutsocial.com
Sprout Social is another tool to help you manage your corporate social media profiles. Sprout has a unified message inbox where you can monitor and reply to incoming messages from Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ Pages. Sprout also has a robust analytics feature which can create highly visual reports (great for those weekly team meetings!).
Free 30-day trial to start. Paid plans start at $39/user/month.
5. Bitly – http://bitly.com
Tired of those needlessly long URLs? Bitly, a fantastic URL shortening service, comes to the rescue. Bitly not only shorten your URLS but allows you to track clicks and saves of your links, as well as link clicks overall from all sources.
Free! Enterprise version available with custom features and analytics.
These are just some of the social media tools on the market to help you manage your social media profiles. What’s your favorite social media management tool?