What is Social Media Management Software

This is a handy software suite developed to facilitate an organization’s ability to engage successfully across social media networks. The application has the ability to monitor inbound and outbound traffic from the social media pages of the business. It also helps to document different campaigns and in evaluating the usefulness of strategies set in place.

 

Whether you are a soloprenuer or a corporation, managing your social media pages as well as engaging in successful marketing is impossible without third party tools. So many decisions have to be made along the way and this is possible when users have access to real time data. The data is only available in readable reports generated by the application.

 

Today, it can be said that social media has changed the way businesses communicate with customers. To ensure a brand is able to realize its short and long term goals; social media presence is a must. Third party applications like social media management suites allow users to collaborate on content, draft and send messages, provide access to all social networks, has report generation capability and provides access via mobile devices.

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Who uses social media management tools?

Social media networks have become more that platforms for users to interact in. Businesses have identified the potential social media networks pose especially towards their brands, products and services. This is why every business has developed social pages in order to be closer to their customers.

 

Today, there are many social media networks and a business can find it hard to track and monitor all the activities across its social pages. Thanks to social media management software suite, the labor intensive work has now becomes easier to track, converse, monitor and manage.

 

So, who uses social media management tools?

a.) Internet marketers

b.) SEO experts

c.) Bloggers

d.) Website owners

e.) Social media managers.

 

Benefits of social media management tools you need to know

 

Easy ways to collaborate

To effectively manage social media pages for any brand, a team of experts needs to work together. Third party app developers have seen the benefits of collaboration and many have incorporated this capability in their tools. A team of experts can now share the workload easily which speeds up the accomplishment of goals and objectives. Thanks to collaboration, the team can send messages and no duplicates will be made. They can manage tasks and responses, saving time and improving the quality of responses.

 

Highly secure

Third party developers have incorporated the best security measures in the software suite to ensure that you or the team does not make mistakes. You can find a social media management tools with the double approval system. This is beneficial in that one cannot send a message to the wrong user or account. This feature helps to reduce the risk of employee error.

 

As discussed earlier, the application comes with a collaboration feature. While this helps to manage your team, any team member who no longer belongs to the team, can now be locked out of the dashboard thanks to the security feature. It helps to prevent unauthorized access.

 

Offers efficient engagement

The application can help to create a list of top social influencers as well as important clients. This is how you get to listen to people who matter to your business. It allows for quick engagement when it comes to responding to customers’ messages and comments. This is done via the available dashboard. The team of experts can respond to common questions or requests by saving pre-approved and on-brand responses for future use.

Why Use Social Media Management Software

Ability to manage multiple social media pages

Every business wants to have a profile or brand page on all social networks that are relevant to them. This is done with the purpose of marketing the brand, the products and the services. Doing so without a proper tool can spell disaster. Logging in and out of the many pages is impossible and if accomplished, it is tiresome.

 

Today, there are many social networks that allow you to open a page for your brand and they include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest among others. With a social media management tool, all messages can be sent and managed from one spot. This is the same for your profile. In the end, it saves you time.

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Manage customer relations

Social media pages have become the best platform for businesses to address a customer’s problems. Since every customer is unique, it is wise to treat them so. One thing that needs to be avoided is canned responses. Social media management apps help you to avoid this. It helps you track your conversations and keep notes resulting in a personalized experience.

 

Manage your team members

Social media management application developers know how important collaboration is to a business or an agency. When working with a small or large account, a team will come in handy. It can be confusing when everyone is trying to respond to one message or performing the same task. This will lead to duplication. Social media management tools like SproutSocial, Sendible, Hootsuite and Postfity have ensured collaboration is possible with their application. The application provides a unique dashboard that allows your team to complete and manage messages, tasks, feeds and reports.

 

Improve social media engagement

Today, more than 2 billion people are active on social media according to research. Out of 10 users, 7 are active on social media and 4 out of 10 actively use social media apps. Statistics also reveal that 50% of Facebook users are active each day, 28% on YouTube, 27% on Twitter and 24% on Instagram.

 

Research conducted by Zendesk reveals that close to 40% of customers use social media to have their problems addressed by a business. As a business looking to retain and attract customers, it is important to engage with customers online. With social media management tools, your customers will receive the right feedback and they will know you care.

What To Look For In Social Media Management Software

1. Monitoring capability

The best SMMS application for your business needs to have the ability to monitor activity across different networks. It should help you and your team of experts to discover trends and identify opportunities for a business. The software should allow you to monitor hashtags and keywords too.

 

2. Simplifies your engagement strategy

It is important for a business to answer customer questions on social media. The best application should allow you to do this across social profiles on a single dashboard. This helps to prevent duplication, allows you to know if a message has been replied to by another team member and also allows for message categorization according to tags.

 

3. Intuitive dashboard

It is quite tiring when you have to use several applications in order to manage your several social profiles. The best application should have an intuitive dashboard that connects to all your social profiles. This makes it easy for you to engage with your customers, monitor your brand and track results.

 

4. Ability to collaborate

Managing social media pages is not a one man’s job. It requires a team of experts. When selecting a social media management application, look for one that offers collaboration facilities. This allows a team of experts to ease the workload, assign tasks to a specific individual, create, share and maintain customer records.

 

5. Analytics

As a business, it is wise to analyze data across all your social profiles. The best application should allow for this. The feature helps to measure traffic providing real time data that can be used to generate different reports.

 

6. Report generation

At the end of the day, reports have to be generated. The best tool should have a drag and drop report builder. This allows for development of customized reports that display relevant data for easier understanding and improved decision making.

 

7. Data export

Data is useful now and in the future. When it comes to the best social media management tool for your business, look for one that can export data via a wide variety of formats. This not only makes report generation to be easier but it allows for the extended storage of data on independent servers for example the cloud.

 

8. Report scheduling

As a digital marketing agency, keeping your clients in the loop is vital. The right tool should have a report scheduling feature. This helps to automatically distribute reports to key stake holders, team members and clients depending on the schedule set. You can choose daily, weekly or monthly period. Each report generated will have a unique URL.

 

9. Ability to publish across multiple social networks

When selecting the best tool, look for one that allows for publishing of posts across social networks. This should be done from a single intuitive composing window. The tool should allow for application of custom tags, assignment of user based permissions and have an advanced scheduler.

 

10. Flexible

A social media management tool that allows for flexibility is the right fit for your business. Regardless of the size and structure of your business, the tool should complement and not reshape your organization’s structure.

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11. Helps to define role

Even though the right tool has the collaboration feature, it cannot be useful without defining roles for every team member. It should allow for establishment of a hierarchy by providing specific profile and group access for clients and team members.

 

12. Highly secure

Majority of social media management tools are hosted online. This provides easy access to the dashboard but this can pose as a security threat. The right application should provide better security like two-factor authentication which needs to be incorporated in collaboration and user defined roles.

 

13. Mobile ready

Smartphones and tablets have enabled work to be easier. Experts are able to accomplish tasks even when on the go. When selecting the right social media management tool, look for one that is mobile ready. It should allow your team members to continue working with full access to all features.

 

14. Helps you build better customer relations

CRM capability is important and the right application needs to help in managing the entire sales process, from lead generation right to nurturing and closing. The prospecting tool needs to help you build profitable relationships with your customers based on interest and needs.

 

15. Auto watermarks

Your images can be shared on social media pages but they need to be protected. Automatic watermarking feature helps to accomplish this. You can set up watermarks in form of text or logos. This will be added automatically every time you publish a photo to your social media pages.

Social Media Management Strategies, Tips and Tricks

Publishing of messages across all social profiles

Messages can be developed that center around the brand, the products, the services and any news the organization wants to share. Connecting to all social networks can be difficult without an effective social media management tool. With this tool, you can utilize the publishing feature.

 

This not only allows you to compose the messages thanks to the intuitive composer but it allows your team to publish posts across all your social profiles. This eases the work load and ensures that your customers get to receive the message right in their inbox.

 

Post scheduling

Precise post scheduling is an amazing feature. It comes in handy when you have content that needs to be published sometime in the future. All you have to do is set the time for a specific message needs to be published and the rest is left to the app to complete the request.

 

The tool queues all messages that have the automated future delivery option set and when the time comes, the system will automatically publish them. This saves the team time and helps to ensure customers get the information at the right time.

 

Replying to messages via a single dashboard

An SMMS is designed with an intuitive dashboard that provides a single view to all tools and features. It saves an agency or a business that had been using multiple tools to track and monitor many social profiles precious time and resources.

 

The dashboard comes with an easy to use composer that allows message composition. The message can include text, photos, links and emoticons. Once the message has been composed, it can be sent to a customer or a select list of customers on different social networks. This eases the work load and improves social engagement.

 

Monitor your brand mentions

With a social media management tool, it is possible to monitor what customers are saying about your brand across different social media platforms, blogs, news and in comments too. When used together with an analytical tool, it helps to highlight mentions that need your attention immediately.

 

By monitoring your brand mentions, you will be able to prove the effectiveness of your distributed content. You will have the ability to identify messages which resonate well with your audience. This will be helpful especially when it comes to attracting new customers.

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Report scheduling

Social media management tools help a team of experts to track, monitor and collect real time data on the performance of social campaigns and strategies. This data is useful and it helps a business to know where they stand, where their competitors are and which decisions need to be made.

 

The report scheduling feature helps to make report development easier. Even though collaboration allows for a team of experts to work on many social profiles, it is quite hectic when it comes to report generation. With report scheduling, not only will the expert generate customized reports at a given time but they can make the same reports available to their clients within a specified period. Each report will have a unique URL that allows for real time access.