How to Buy Right Social Media Management Tools for Your Business – Buyers Guide for 2022

By Dhwani Madan | Software & Tools

A social media management software is an application or service that helps you manage your social media accounts. This type of tool will let you handle multiple profiles from a single dashboard, monitor and respond to messages, and also monitor interactions with your posts. There are many social media management tools for businesses that’s why you need to follow some best practices before finalizing a social media marketing tool to manage your social media marketing campaigns. 

Social media management tools have been around as long as social media, but they are still proving to be valuable tools for businesses of all sizes. You can use these tools to manage your updates, schedule posts ahead of time, and keep your team informed on what’s happening with your brand. Plus, it can help a business save time and resources when it comes to handling their social media.

Social media has become an essential tool for businesses. It is a way to engage with potential customers, establish a brand identity and strengthen customer relationships. You can contact Social zinger to boost your social media brand image. Many social media management tools can help you monitor and manage your social presence. As you walk through this guide, you’ll have time to make an informed decision about your next social media management tool.

Why is it important to use a social media management tool?

Depending on your budget, a social media management tool can be a significant investment. Let’s look at a few of the major reasons why a social media management tool is worthwhile to invest in.

1. Manage multiple social accounts

As a business owner, you know that managing your social media accounts can quickly become complex as you expand your presence across multiple networks. You have multiple logins to remember, various user interfaces to master, and social networks that were designed with consumers in mind. None of these things are easy to manage, but a dedicated social media management tool can make your life a lot easier.

add an account to hootsuite

With a social media management tool, you can consolidate it down to a single login, have a unified user interface, and be loaded with business-focused features. This makes it much easier to manage your social media accounts and get the most out of them. Simply put, it is how businesses were designed to manage social media. So if you’re looking to make your social media management simpler and more effective, investing in a social media management tool is a smart move.

2. Ensures you never miss something important

It’s no secret that social media is a powerful communication tool. But if you’re not careful, you can easily miss important messages or mentions from customers. That’s why a good social media management tool is essential.

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The social media tool has a Unified inbox that aggregates all of your messages and notifications in one place. This makes it much easier to keep track of everything. Additionally, it allows you to mark items as completed, tag them for later reference, and search by keyword. This combination of features makes it nearly impossible to miss anything important.

For you and your business, this is great news. With a good social media management tool in place, you can avoid costly mistakes and keep your customers happy. So don’t wait – get started today and see the difference it can make.

3. Organize conversations

As any social media manager will tell you, socializing is essential. The word “social” is even in the name of the networks. Unfortunately, they will also tell you how difficult it is to keep track of every conversation they have. When multiple networks are involved, it becomes nearly impossible to find old conversations in a timely manner.

This is where a social media management tool comes in handy. It can help you keep track of all your conversations much more easily. To begin with, having all of your data in one place simplifies your job. Some tools also let you search for conversations by keyword, which may give you the impression that you have social media superpowers. Even if you only remember one word or name from the conversation, a keyword search can help you find it.

TweetDeck

In short, a social media management tool is a valuable asset for any social media manager. It can help you save time and keep track of your conversations more easily.

4. Schedule posts ahead of time

If you’re a marketer, then you know that social media is a critical part of your job. But did you also know that having a documented social media marketing strategy and an editorial calendar can help you outperform your competitors?

It’s true! By taking the time to document your goals and the type of content required to achieve them, you can ensure that your social media posts are aligned with your business objectives. And when you use a social media management tool to schedule your posts in advance, you can save yourself a lot of time and hassle.

new post

Manually posting everything to your social media accounts is simply not feasible in today’s fast-paced world. A social media management tool can help you keep up with the 24/7 demands of the social media world and make it easier for you to visualize and achieve your goals. So if you’re serious about social media marketing, make sure you have a strategy and an editorial calendar in place. It could be the difference between success and failure.

5. Monitor keywords for leads and valuable information

In today’s business world, data is everything. Companies are always looking for ways to gain insights into their customers, their competition, and the overall market. Social media provides a wealth of information that can be used to gain these insights. However, finding and extracting this information can be a challenge.

Fortunately, there are social media management tools that can help. Many of these tools provide a dedicated area for searching for the data you need. This can make the process much easier than searching the social network itself. Additionally, these tools allow you to save your searches for quick access at any time.

tweetdeck

If you are looking for ways to get more insights into your business, social media management tools can be a valuable resource. Social media tools offer features where you can use keywords to discover, share and save new suggested content feeds.

7. Analyze your result

You should always be looking for ways to improve as a marketer. Trial and error is a great way to accomplish this. You can learn what your audience likes by experimenting with different types of content, formats, and timing.

(40) Pinterest

Only if you can quantify what is and isn’t working. This is where a social media management tool can help. The majority of social media management tools provide access to analytic data. This information could include the number of retweets a post received, the number of website visitors referred by your social channels, or the cost per click of your most recent paid campaign. It is critical to understand what these numbers mean and to adjust accordingly. The social media optimization cycle is straightforward: test, tweak, optimize.

8. Gives you more time for real-time engagement

Engaging in conversations on social media is something that all businesses should do more of. Most businesses do a good job of “staying active” on social media, which often means posting a certain number of times per day.  Consistent posting is important, but so is spontaneous participation. The unplanned conversation you start or the question you assist in answering. This type of engagement is becoming increasingly rare in an age of automation. You may be wondering how an automation tool can assist you in becoming less automated. The answer is simple: by automating certain tasks, you give your company more time to engage in real-time activities. We strongly advise you to take advantage of this opportunity to meet new people.0

TweetDeck (2)

By automating tasks such as scheduling posts and responding to comments, you can free up time to participate in conversations as they happen. This is a great way to connect with potential customers and build relationships. In an age where automation is becoming more and more common, it’s important to stand out by being more personable and engaging. So take advantage of this opportunity and start participating in more conversations on social media today!

9. Simplifies the content curation process

Content is the bread and butter of social media. Without content, there would be no social media. That’s why it’s so important to create your own content, and also to curate content from others.

Curation is the process of finding and sharing the best content from around the web. It’s a valuable strategy for social media because it helps you curate content that is relevant to your audience, and it also helps to reduce the amount of content you have to create yourself.

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Though curated content will not directly drive traffic or sales to your site, there are significant advantages to being the go-to resource for valuable information. When you curate content, you become a trusted source of information for your audience. This can lead to more engaged followers, and it can also help to build your brand. Most social media management tools include content curation features. This could be something as simple as RSS feeds to provide quick access to relevant articles or something more complex like integration with a curator tool. The latter would allow users to quickly and easily find and share content that is relevant to their audience, without having to manually search for it themselves. This can save a lot of time and effort, and help to ensure that your social media presence is always fresh and up-to-date.

10. Makes uniformity and consistency easier

With the rise of social media networks, being consistent has never been easier. Now, there’s a social media tool that makes uniformity and consistency easier. With one click, the app will synchronize all of your accounts with your desired settings. This allows for uniform branding across all channels. Plus, it keeps information from multiple places completely in one place.

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What to look for when buying a Social Media Tool

1. Tracking all social networks

The first consideration for any social media management tool is if it supports the networks you’re currently using.

At this point, interacting with social media can be difficult because of limited third-party tools and the changing rules of networks. So, every social media management tool is limited by what each social network allows third-party tools to do. Some networks are more open and allow more functionality than others do while some are easier to work with. 

Currently, there are different levels of access to network functions that may be a consideration for you. For instance, Facebook offers different access levels and functionality for businesses, personal profiles, and groups.

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No matter where you’re marketing, it’s important to make sure that the social media management tool you use offers networks your brand is active on.  

When choosing a social media tool, you may have to decide between the one that supports all your networks but lacks some features and the one with many features but does not have all of your preferred networks.

The right social media management tool is not an easy choice. However, don’t worry there’s no perfect tool. Once you’ve gone through the networks and features, prioritizing them, and making judgment calls will be easy.

2 Publishes to social networks

It can often be difficult to maintain an online presence on social media. Sometimes, you may find yourself without the time needed to accomplish this. Social media management tools allow you to publish your posts on multiple social networks at once, a feature that is key for business success.

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You’ll need to find out what publishing capabilities a tool has to determine if their product will work for you. For example 

  • Which social networks does the tool allow you to publish activity on?
  • How quickly can the tool schedule posts?
  • Can you view a calendar of scheduled activities?
  • Is it possible to repeat posts?
  • Is there a queuing function?
  • What are post categories?
  • Can the tool cross-post to social media at the same time?
Quotes Instagram Post

Subsequently, content curation is sourcing and sharing relevant content on social media. Some brands may produce their content, while other brands are open to other sources of content. Some tools offer more features for sharing content from other sources, so that may be a factor to consider when deciding on what tool to use.

Keep best practices in mind as you consider your current workflows and compare them to the capabilities of existing social media management tools. Then select a tool that works with them.

3. Monitors social media

Monitoring is a necessary business function that is often overlooked. I have seen many times how companies do not pay attention to what their current audience members and customers say on social media. This lack of attention is losing the business.

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From a functional point of view, Monitoring is the ability to directly view and respond to your brand profiles and social media posts from your audience.

Monitoring can include the following:

  • Post Comments / Replies
  • Messages sent directly or privately
  • Mentions of your brand’s profile in the comments or posts of others
  • Comments on paid social media advertisements

By monitoring your social media accounts, you can ensure that your customers are always happy and that your business is running smoothly. Hence Your social media management tool must capture these inputs and route them to a dashboard or inbox where you can review and respond appropriately (and quickly).

Monitoring is another area where social networks have varying permissions and access, so tool capabilities will differ.

4. Provide detailed reports

Reporting is a key feature of many social media management tools. These tools differ in the types of reports they offer and the amount of data they provide. Reports should include data on the posts that you shared to a network during a given timeframe, as well as data on post-performance and your profile’s audience.

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The reporting and analytics capabilities of your social media management tool of choice should be able to help you with basic decision-making and strategy for the months ahead.

At the very least, reporting should take into account:

  • The number of posts on each social profile (not just what was done using the tool)
  • Following the engagement (likes, comments, shares, clicks)
  • Visibility of the post (reach, impressions)
  • Size and growth of the audience

With that minimum level of reporting in place, you can determine which posts did well and which ones didn’t, and extrapolate from that on how to change or improve your future posting tactics. Some tools offer additional analytics—some that they get from the networks, others that they’re able to calculate based on available data—that can be very useful.

In short, it can be very useful in helping you to understand what’s working and what’s not, and in turn, help you to create more effective content.

5. Collaborates on social media

You should check the collaboration features of the tool if you have:

  • The team that plans or responds to the reports
  • Customers or employees who need a certain level of visibility in your social media management

First, you want a tool that allows you to create separate user profiles for each member of your team. While sharing a subscription can be tempting (and cheaper), it’s better to use different profiles.

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Here’s why:

  • Different users may have different levels of access and availability.
  • Different users receive response time messages to users.
  • Allows multiple users to access the remaining collaboration features. 

When you have more than one user set up in your preferred social media management tool, you may be able to take advantage of true collaborative features. These will vary depending on the tool, but they may include:

  • Assigning posts/comments to team members for review
  • Internal notes on content and profiles for team members
  • Indication of which team member posted which posts/comments/replies

6. Integrates with different apps

Several other tools can be used in conjunction with a social media management tool. For instance, many brands and social media marketers use Bit.ly and a custom domain to create branded short links for social shares. If that’s an important part of your social media toolkit, you want to make sure your tool supports it.

Hipsocial Integrations

You should also consider what other types of platforms you plan to manage. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution that covers multiple platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, then you’ll want to make sure the tool supports those channels.

Finally, if there are any specific features or functionality that matter most to your business or campaign goals, make sure those can be found in your chosen social media management tool. If you don’t usually use any other tools for social media marketing, skip ahead to the next section.

7. Provide a great user experience

When it comes to the user experience, functionality is important but it’s not the only thing that matters. Every user has their preferences when it comes to colors, sizes, and processes, and those preferences can vary greatly from one person to the next. Additionally, users interact with different devices, monitors, and browsers, all of which can create different user experiences. As a result, it’s important to consider the user experience when designing any tool or website.

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The way one tool guides you through the publishing process or displays analytics is not the same as how another tool does it. So before really purchasing a tool ask these questions to you

  • Is this tool easy to use for daily social media management tasks? (This is especially important if you have to use it every day.)
  • Do the publishing, listening/monitoring, and reporting process correspond to how you prefer to work?
  • Will it be simple for you to explain how this tool works to others?

When deciding which social media management tool to use for your team, it’s critical to give each one a thorough test. Consider all of your questions about the tool and make use of the provided onboarding materials. Many tools have a help center or FAQ page where you can find answers to common problems. Others offer introductory webinars to assist you in getting started with the most commonly used features.

Take notes on what you liked and didn’t like about each tool as you try it out. Compare and prioritize the things you didn’t like with other tools you’re evaluating. Finally, you’ll find a tool that has all or most of the features you require while also providing a pleasant user experience.

8. Excellent customer support

When considering a social media management tool, it’s important to think about customer support. Inevitably, you’re going to run into a bug or an issue at some point, and you’re going to need help. Make sure that the tool you choose has good customer support, so that you can get the help you need when you need it.

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The question now is, how do you evaluate customer service?

I don’t recommend inventing problems just to see how a customer service representative responds. Instead, use existing public support channels such as the tool’s Twitter profile or Facebook Page. If the tool has been around for a while, the company is most likely receiving customer support requests via social media, and you can see how they’re responding for yourself.

Even if you start with a public post, you’ll never get the whole picture but at least you’ll get a sense of things like the responsiveness of the team, their tone, and their knowledge of the product. Of course, if you have questions during your trial, you’ll see how the support team responds to you firsthand. This can be useful when deciding whether or not to subscribe.

9. Decent pricing

The price of a social media management tool is an important factor to consider. It can also be a difficult one for the more powerful tools.

Basic social media management tools are typically available for a monthly or annual subscription fee, with only a few tiers to choose from in terms of features and cost.

decent pricing

Other factors that must be considered by more advanced tools include:

  • How many users must be added?
  • How many social profiles would you like to manage?
  • In addition, the volume/amount of usage

To begin, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples as much as possible. That begins with determining whether you’re looking at true month-to-month pricing or an annual cost broken out by month.

The ease with which you can obtain and understand the pricing of a social media management tool is one factor to consider. The price of a tool should not be hidden behind layers upon layers of pages, forms, and sales calls.

Check to see if a tool offers an annual pricing plan. It requires a larger initial investment but saves money over the year.

However the complexity of some tools could rationalize requiring an explorative call to determine an organization’s actual needs and custom solutions, the pricing for the majority of tools should be simple and transparent.

10. Look for reviews and recommendations

When you’re shopping for a social media management tool, your final consideration should be to find and/or solicit reviews and recommendations. Fortunately, there are plenty of sources for tool reviews out there but Cloudfindr is a great place to start Where the search for the name of the Social Media Management tool you’re considering to find “reviews” that are unfiltered reviews by real users of the tools you’re evaluating, which can be helpful in making your decision. Just be careful not to let the reviews and recommendations of others override your own evaluation process.

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After you’ve reviewed all of the important factors and considerations, take a moment to determine what your company truly requires in a social media management tool. Some functions are absolutely necessary, while others are mere “nice-to-haves.”

What are the best tools for social media management and marketing?

It can be quite overwhelming to consider all of the tasks that social media marketers must complete on a daily basis, from content creation and publication to analytics and reporting.

Fortunately, there are a plethora of fantastic social media management tools available to assist. These tools can help you streamline your workflows, save time, and even ensure that your content reaches the right audience at the right time.

However, how do you choose which product to use?

With so many great social media management tools available, we thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of the best ones to help you decide which is best for your business.

The following are some of the tools 

1. Buffer

Buffer is a user-friendly, streamlined social media management platform that small businesses and individuals rely on to drive meaningful engagement and results on social media.

It offers a product suite for publishing, engagement, analytics, simple landing pages, and team collaboration. The products are thoughtfully designed and fine-tuned to help social media marketers.

Buffer
Buffer

Buffer’s content scheduling feature is the ability to draft and schedule posts for sharing across multiple social networks including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. This is an extremely valuable tool for businesses and individuals who want to make sure their content is being seen by as many people as possible. Buffer makes it easy to create and share high-quality content that will help you reach your goals.

Top features

  • Share faster with Buffer’s browser extension. 
  • Clip and queue text and images as you find them. 
  • Send your tweets at the perfect time. 
  • View, track, and recycle your top-performing posts

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite, the most popular social media management tool, is used by over 15 million people and more than 800 Fortune 1000 companies.

There’s a reason for their success: it’s an all-in-one platform that enables you to curate and schedule content, track social ROI, run social media ads, and much more.

Hootsuite
Hootsuite

 Top features

  • Activity monitoring
  • Approval process control
  • Assignment management
  • Automated scheduling
  • Automatic content scheduling

Hootsuite’s Analytics tool allows you to track both post-level and page-level metrics for Facebook and LinkedIn. This is valuable because it helps you understand which content is performing well and adjust your strategy accordingly. For example, if you see that a particular post is getting a lot of engagement, you can create more content like it. Conversely, if you see that a post is not performing well, you can modify it or take it down altogether.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social, like Hootsuite, combines several social media tools into a single platform, from social media scheduling to monitoring to reporting.

Sprout Social is one of the few social media management tools with customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. Having a comprehensive profile of your customers allows you to better serve them and build stronger relationships with them.

sprout social
sprout social

 – Top features

  • Ad hoc Reporting
  • Alerts/Notifications
  • Assignment Management
  • Audience Targeting
  • Automated Publishing

Limit your audience: Limit the Audience of Your Post if you want to limit the visibility of a post on your Facebook Company Page to a specific audience segment. Regardless of whether or not the post is shared, this post will only be visible to those in the targeted segment.

Note: To target a specific State/Province or City, you must first select the Country in which that target is located.

If you want to ensure that your post only appears in the News Feed of a specific segment of your fans, target your post. Unlike restricting your post’s audience, targeting a News Feed will not limit the post’s visibility on your actual Company Page.

4. Sendible

Sendible is a social media management tool designed for agencies with multiple clients. Sendible, in addition to the majority of features provided by social media management tools, allows you to customize your dashboard to attract new clients.

Sendible
Sendible

 – Top features

  • Contact Management
  • Multivariate testing
  • Auto-Responders
  • Click-through tracking
  • Drip Campaigns
  • Event-triggered Email
  • Mailing list management

A script that automates email responses is known as an autoresponder. The script is triggered by user actions on a website or when a user sends an email directly to another email address that has an autoresponder set up. Confirmation emails are the most common type of autoresponder, but they can be used for a variety of purposes. If you wish to purchase this powerful tool and need further details then you can go through   https://www.cloudfindr.co/software/sendinblue/

5. Awario

Awario is a social media tool that helps professionals track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and identify sales opportunities. It’s ideal for businesses all over the world looking for more insight into what people are saying about them online, as well as those looking for ways to get involved with trending topics through niche influencers.

Awario dashboard
Awario dashboard

 Top features

  • Alerts / Escalation
  • Campaign Analytics
  • Commenting/Notes
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Configurable Alerts
  • Customer Engagement

Other social media tools to checkout

  • Commun.It
  • Viralwoot
  • SocialPilot
  • Minds
  • MeetEdgar
  • IContact
  • Brand24
  • https://buffer.com/
  • https://sproutsocial.com/
  • https://www.sendible.com/
  • https://eclincher.com/
  • https://www.agorapulse.com/
  • https://eclincher.com/
  • https://statusbrew.com/
  • https://www.cision.com/
  • https://www.zoho.com/social/social-media-marketing.html
  • https://emplifi.io/
  • https://hipsocial.com/
  • https://www.hopperhq.com/
  • https://locobuzz.com/
  • https://bulk.ly/
  • https://mavsocial.com/
  • https://www.meetsoci.com/products/social/
  • https://swat.io/en/
  • https://reputation.com/products/social-suite/
  • https://mention.com/en/
  • https://www.crowdfireapp.com/
  • https://sharethis.com/
  • https://fanbooster.com/
  • https://socialhub.io/en/
  • https://www.meltwater.com/en/products/social-media-publishing
  • https://www.semrush.com/social-media/
  • https://socinator.com/
  • https://hotinsocialmedia.com/
  • https://www.planoly.com/
  • https://www.socialchamp.io/
  • https://www.socialbakers.com/solution/social-media-management
  • https://www.loomly.com/social-media-management-software
  • https://seranking.com/social.html
  • https://socialbee.io/
  • https://later.com/
  • https://postoplan.com/
  • https://sociality.io/

Final Words:

Use this checklist to determine the most important factors to consider when selecting a tool to manage your social media profiles.