You start with a Facebook account … until you get two, three, plus Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, blog, and one company’s apps … no, two! Three companies! Do you find it easy to live with social media? Add to that frame a nice item: the deadline.
In a communication agency, with its niches and segments, the professional routine is based on the creation, production, feeding and interaction with the platforms that it needs to take care of one or several companies during the day. In order to take care of all these tasks, he must be prepared and master techniques of writing, designing, using image and video software and knowing the language suitable for each target audience, not just the clients, but the bosses. For those who think that social media is just the “face of Facebook”, is very wrong.
Nowadays, a social media manager rarely has the responsibility of managing only social media.
Whoever manages a Facebook page for a client usually ends up also managing Instagram or LinkedIn. But in this dynamic work, one of the great difficulties is to follow the posts, the answers and the reports in each of these social media! We all need agency’s social media approval process flawless!
I know this because this is a challenge that I have to face daily. And over the last few years, I’ve tried to get around those difficulties with external tools that allow you to work on various social media at the same time.
Let’s go to the list!
1. Buffer
My tool of choice when it comes to scheduling posts to Twitter. Buffer is an extremely simple and easy to work app. Its free version allows you to program up to 10 posts for various social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn). If you want more than that, you will have to pay a monthly fee. Another interesting detail of Buffer is that it provides the statistics of all your posts. How many clicks it took, how many retweets it generated, or even how many tans it received, are just a few of those data. In my case, I use the free version because I only use it for Twitter but if you want something more complete the investment starts at 10 dollars a month.
2. Hootsuite
If I did not use the Buffer, I’m sure I would use Hootsuite to schedule my posts. This app is extremely powerful because it allows you to schedule posts, check out your social media feed, your Fan Page messages, and so on. It also allows you to work on various social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google Plus. Its design is a bit confusing at first, but over time will eventually adapt.
3. Sprout Social
This is the most expensive tool on the list, but also the one that brings more features. The purpose of Social Spout is not just to schedule posts (far from it). The first interesting feature is to generate reports on all social media, giving indications of how many messages your customers were answered, the average response time and the possibility of turning messages into answer tickets.
For those who work in a team, Sprout Social is also very interesting. It has the possibility of the creation of Drafts, for later to be approved by the reviewer. CRM is another interesting point of Sprout Social. Each client that “enters” the platform can enter a CRM funnel, generating a ticket within the application itself. The minimum price for this app is $ 99 per month, and you may have a 30-day trial period.
So what did you think of the tools? All of them have different functionalities, depending on your goals. Try it, test it, and see which ones meet your goals.
