The power of social media management tools
By: Eduardo M. Gonzalez
Tags: Social Listening, Social Media Management, Community, Community Engagement, Social Media Tool

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

A social media manager’s role has expanded since the role was created and brands began hiring people for the position. From scheduling posts and tweets to creating content and monitoring comments from customers, the role continues to grow. In fact, some brands have their social media managers form teams to focus solely on the social media.

And it looks like as social media platforms continue to add more features and users find new ways to utilize it, more expectations will fall onto the social media manager. This includes monitoring and listening to what users are saying about the brand and other subjects that pertain to the brand.

With many responsibilities bestowed on the social media manager, social media management tools have become the forefront of every social media manager’s needs. They’ve also have made their jobs easier.

What is a social media management tool?

A social media management tool basically helps you manage the bulk of your social media tasks. It’s a tool that can streamline your workflow.

This can be a dashboard that allows for multitude of options that can include posting, monitoring, listening, analytics, interacting with followers, and anything else for your social media task needs. In the end, it should simplify the process of building and executing social media campaigns.

Why is a social media management tool important?

Here are some reasons I found and learned that prove a social media management tool can be useful for any social media manager or user in general:

Ability to manage multiple platforms on the same page

Saves time and cuts costs

Can organize content

Enables content to be delivered to your audience when you want or should

Allows social media listening (which will get into in more depth below)

Provides a rich, holistic view of data

Helps prove ROI

Updates your CRM to modern time

Helps you get a peek of where your campaign is heading

Of course there are other useful features a social media management tool can do. Let’s take a look at two social media management tools that illustrate the necessity for them.

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that basically covers the role of the social media manager. The platform allows the user curate content, schedule posts, measuring ROI, and even managing a team.

The platform also allows social media monitoring. If a brand needs to know every mention, follow, and likes, Hootsuite allows it. This also includes multiple accounts at the same time making it easy for any social media manager monitor what customers are saying about the brand.

Users can also see detailed analytics using the platform. This includes performance over time and compare data with other social media accounts.

Sample Hootsuite dashboard (Hootsuite)

Detailed analytics from Hootsuite (Hootsuite)

What is also great about Hootsuite is the customization. However you want to view your dashboard and the analytics the platform allows it. It makes it simple for the social media manager to track, monitor, and understand social media campaigns and the brand’s social media performance overall.

As a former user of the tool, I highly recommend for beginners who want to get their hands dirty on learning how manage multiple accounts at the same time. Also makes reports easy to digest.

Sprout Social logo (Sprout Social)

Sprout Social is a social media management tool, similar to Hootsuite, that allows social media managers manage multiple social media accounts at the same time.

Some of the features the tool has include creating, drafting, and scheduling posts and tweets, social content calendar, profile, keywords and locations monitoring, CRM tools, and analytic reports. What makes this one different from other social media management tools I’ve used before is the paid promotion tools for Facebook posts and trend analysis for Twitter keywords and hashtags.

Sprout Social features (Sprout Social)

Sample analytics report from Sprout Social (Sprout Social)

If you want to pay more, the tool allows more monitoring and reports for other social media platforms such as Instagram and LinkedIn, and other features such as custom URL tracking and helpdesk integration. There are plans to meet a brand’s needs depending on the size of the social media team and/or brand.

Sprout Social has been in the social media game for quite some time. So, the company understands the changing landscape of the business and social media managers’ needs in order to optimize their engagement, content, and campaigns.

Putting it into play with community engagement & social listening

Social media communities are vital for a brand in terms of building relationships with its customers. It allows the brand and customers to engage in a two-way conversation, form relationships, offer solutions, and customers can meet other customers with similar passions and bond.

Utilizing a social media management tool can strengthen the engagement that occurs within that community. Using tools such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social allows any brand to find creative ways to engage with followers across multiple platforms with features such contests, polls, questions, sharing user-generated content (UGC), hosting a Q&A, and more.

There are also content creation tools that allow for engaging, vivid content for customers to actually read or listen that the call to action is. Canva is one I use frequently to create engaging Twitter and Instagram posts that is easy to use. I like to call it an easier version of Adobe Photoshop.

Most important, most social media management tools will allow a brand to look at what kinds of posts are most effective when trying to engage within their communities, thanks to analytic reports. Brands will be able to learn if they should focus on asking followers for UGC rather than creating polls which have little to no engagement.

At the same time, it will let the brand know if they should shake up their community engagement strategy. Should they invite key influencers into the community or be more upfront what they want from the customer? The social media management tool will provide the answer.

And this is where social listening comes into play.

Social listening basically tells you what your customer wants and why they want it. This often confused with social monitoring, which is waiting for the issue to come up, responding to it, and moving on from it.

Listening requires that you pay attention to the industry hashtags, keywords, mentions, and competitor accounts. It also entails reading through tweets, posts, and other social media elements in order to learn what the customer wants and why.

Social media management tools can help any brand and anyone with social listening because of the capabilities mentioned above. This includes monitoring hashtags, setting up keywords you want to pay attention to, mentions, and keeping up with the trends that everyone is talking about. These same tools can also recommend which hashtags, keywords, and other social media elements you need to pay attention to stay in the game. But there’s more!

Some of the other tools’ capabilities include:

Learning key demographics

Finding influencers within your brand’s industry

Sentiment analysis to tweak and/or adjust your content strategy

Market research

Finding leads and start social selling

Determining the appropriate listening strategy depends on your brand’s goals. This will define the effort the social media team will put into the content and engagement strategies.