By now, modern businesses of all sizes know that a social media presence isn’t just “nice to have.” It’s essential for anyone looking to make a splash in almost any industry.
But to succeed in social media, you’ll need more in your tech stack than just social platforms. You’ll need to apply a few specialized social media tools to create and implement a winning social media strategy. They can help automate the process and make your campaign easier and more effective.
But what kinds of social media marketing tools do you need? How can then give you your best chance at making a splash in your industry? This article will explore several essential social media platforms, going in-depth on how to form the most effective social media tech stack possible.
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Why do you need social media management tools?
Simply put, you need social media management software because you’ll use different social media channels to run a well-rounded marketing campaign.
With the right tools, you can manage all social media profiles from a single-task dashboard. Doing so will allow you to schedule social posts in advance, track social engagement, determine your brand reputation, view campaign success, create relevant content, and more.
One of the primary reasons companies like yours need social media management tools is that you must remain consistent to generate traction.
That includes consistently responding to comments, consistently running targeted ad campaigns, consistently checking up on the public conversation surrounding your brand, and, most of all, consistently posting.
Consistent posting is pivotal in growing social media accounts and establishing a solid online presence.
An excellent example of this strategy in action is Fender, a brand renowned for its great craft for musical instruments and gear throughout the years. Fender has adopted a proactive approach by consistently posting across all their social media networks. By doing so, it’s cultivated a highly targeted user base that’s genuinely interested in its products.
But without management tools, they’d have to figure out the right time for publishing content on each social network. Then, they must create a separate social media post for each of them, all while tracking engagement and responding to comments constantly.
The tools we’re going to list below solve all of these problems.
What social media management tools do you need?
Now that you understand why social media tools are so important, let’s review what tools you need in your tech stack. These are some popular tools used by marketing agencies worldwide.
Social analytics and reporting tools
The first and most important tool you should look into is social media analytics and reporting.
Why are analytics features and social media monitoring so vital?
While Google Analytics helps track KPIs and metrics on your website, it can’t monitor your social media channels. That’s why you need special tools to track social media insights.
Social analytics and reporting tools can provide insights into your social media audience.
When creating and scheduling posts on social accounts, you first need to know who they’re for. With a tool like this, you can analyze your marketing campaigns, engagement levels, and what the public says about you.
That’s some valuable insight because, without it, you’d be flying blind on all social channels. That makes social media planning all but impossible.
Using Keyhole as an example, you can use the platform’s range of features to:
- Track social media performance
- Social listening capabilities can monitor public conversations around your brand
- Analyze the growth and engagement levels of your profiles
- Analyze the performance of any influencers you might work with
- Find the optimal time to schedule your posts based on engagement levels
For these reasons, an analytics and reporting tool for your social media campaigns will be necessary.
Free AI writers
Content writing for social media can take up a lot of valuable time. While you could outsource relevant content to freelance marketing professionals, that’s an added cost you’ll have to work into your budget.
As social media managers, you want to have the best tools available while cutting costs on social content. So, if you can find a free tool that also helps you avoid a major expense, you’ve achieved a major win!
The AI writer can create social media captions, taglines, and copy for your posts in seconds. An online poster creator can edit the preexisting templates with your brand logo and colors. Tools like these will optimize your work, producing quality daily posts per channel in the blink of an eye.
The more you use AI tools, the more effective they become. Even dictation software will eventually become accustomed to your voice and preferences. Thanks to machine learning, these tools become even more useful the more you use them.
Social media scheduler
You’ll find that different social media platforms have different audiences and ideal post times.
As shown in the image above, posting schedules vary by platform. The ideal time to post on Facebook would be a Monday at 10am PST. On Instagram, you’ll get the most engagement an hour later. Twitter’s ideal posting time is the other side of the week, on Friday mornings.
Without a social media scheduler, you’ll have to remember to log into those social media accounts every week, one at a time. That means being available at the specified ideal times and making each social media post.
However, using a social media scheduling tool like HootSuite can simplify this. Just create the posts in your dashboard and set them to post at the opportune time. You can set up all your social posts in bulk and put the entire process on autopilot. Automating your Instagram posts along with other platforms ensures your content reaches your audience when they’re most active, without you having to manually intervene.
You can do more with this powerful tool than just schedule posts. Additionally, a scheduling platform will allow you to create a social media calendar and monitor likes, comments, shares, and all forms of engagement.
You can even respond to Facebook comments, Instagram comments, tweets, and more right from one location without switching platforms endlessly.
Social media schedulers are also great collaboration tools for scheduling content as a team for social media marketers in all industries.
Other team members can log in and view what’s going on. It’s then easy to make edits or add their own touch. Team collaboration for social media efforts is a must-have.
Authentication software
It’s crucial that you adequately protect your social media accounts. If a business social media account ever falls victim to a hacking attempt, it could be disastrous for your entire organization.
Someone with access to your business’s social media accounts could interact with your audience and get access to a wealth of company data. They could even make derogatory posts that could ruin your reputation.
That’s why you need to take security seriously.
One social media management solution you must implement is a reliable authentication system. Authentication is verifying the identity of your users and granting them access to your platform.
By protecting your social media accounts with a winning authentication system, you’ll be able to guard against attacks by hackers and other malicious cybercriminals. This extra step can help you achieve peace of mind.
AI chatbot
Your direct messages on social media can be an excellent way for your followers to contact you. It’s another channel they can use to get more information about your products or services.
By opening up this communication channel, you make your company more accessible to the average customer. But the main issue with this form of communication is that someone has to be on your end of the line to field customer questions and success.
Of course, that’s not always possible, especially as your company grows. That’s why businesses like yours are turning to the power of AI chatbots.
These automated systems run on artificial intelligence and can interact with members of your target audience like a human representative 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That, in effect, gives you a 24/7 customer support system. This kind of accessible customer service is something that all businesses should strive for.
Of course, AI isn’t a perfect system yet. For the sake of the user experience, you wouldn’t want AI to have long, involved conversations with customers or try to handle advanced, delicate issues.
Instead, AI chat systems can engage on a basic level, answering frequently asked questions and sending knowledge-based information to potential customers. If your customer needs more advanced help, simply program the bot to let them know it’s escalating their request to a human representative.
Additionally, you could get by with a simple automated chatbot that doesn’t use conversational AI. This bot can directly respond to customer messages by thanking them for their time and interest. It can then let them know that someone will get back to them momentarily.
FAQs
1. What is a social media management tool?
A social media management tool (also called a social media management platform) is a software solution designed to aid in or otherwise automate the functions of a business’s social media accounts. This can include scheduling posts, creating content, securing your social account pages, or generating analytics from your engagement and activity.
2. What are the three parts of social media management?
Social media management falls under three umbrellas. The first is the creation and publication of unique content. The second is monitoring the engagement driven on your posts. Finally, there’s their process of creating a community around your brand and helping that community grow.
3. Do I need a social media management tool?
A social media management tool is necessary for all businesses trying to leave their mark on social media. You can create, post, and schedule content with a social media management tool.
Conclusion
All businesses need a social media plan. Having a presence on social media platforms can make your business’s messaging more accessible.
Additionally, social media marketing efforts can open new possibilities for targeted advertising on platforms your audience frequents.
But you need social media tools to help you manage these different social profiles. If you want to succeed, you’ll need:
- A social analytics tool and reporting platform
- An AI writer and poster maker
- A social media scheduler to create a visual content calendar
- Authentication software
- An AI chatbot to monitor your social inbox
