There are a plethora of social media tools which can help you schedule, monitor or manage the social media component of your digital marketing campaign which can save you time and help you get better results.

Key however is finding social media tools that do indeed save time, and don’t take too much time learning to master, or which become costly in terms of the number of subscriptions you end up with.

The tools you use can very much depend on your personal preference, but in this lesson we will introduce you to the tools we use the most, and how to get the most out of them. We’ll also point you towards many other tools which may suit some people and situations for you to conduct your own investigations into.

As always, its important to first consider the problem you are trying to solve in using tools. Are you too busy too create social media posts regularly? Do you need a better insight about how your ads are going? Do you need to find influencers who can potentially promote your products, service, event, business, campaign?

Get clear on this first, and then go looking for the tools which may help solve your problem.

It may be difficult to go looking for social tools if you don’t even really know what they’re called or what category they may fall under in the realm of Social Media Tools. Here’s a quick run down on them:

Dashboard/Management Tools

A social media dashboard is a program or website that allows you to manage many of your profiles in one place. For instance, you don’t have to go login to Facebook, Twittter, Linkedin, Feedly, etc. You can make updates, manage notifications, mentions, direct messages, etc all from your dashboard, which helps you manage multiple social media networks easier.

Twitter Tools

No sooner have you mastered Twitter then you realise there is a plethora of Twitter tools to help you do everything related to your Twitter activity including analytics, scheduling, discovering, unfollowing, and anything else you may need in the realm of Twitter.

This link features a wide range of Twitter Tools to explore: https://blog.bufferapp.com/free-twitter-tools.

Facebook Tools

Facebook has a lot more built-in tools than the other social networks so you’re likely to uncover a smaller stash of third-party tools for Facebook than you might for a network like Twitter. Still, there are some fabulous Facebook tools out there, and they can help push your Facebook marketing campaign forward with contests, insights, advertising, and more.

This link features some Facebook Tools to explore: https://blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-tools.

Social Media Analytic Tools

If finding out how your social media networks are performing is a key problem you wish to solve, you’re in the market for social media analytic tools. You my be asking ‘How have my followers grown this month?’ ‘Which posts seem to perform best?’ ‘Which times make the most sense to post?’ The answers are out there, and there are tools to help you find them in the form of social media analytic tools.

This link features some Facebook Tools to explore: https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-analytics-tools

Social Media Monitoring Tools

Social media monitoring (also known as social listening) allows you to gain powerful insight into your customers, competitors, and industry influencers. You may like to track your brand, your name, your staff names, key products you sell, your event, a specific hashtag and more. To do a good job of this, you will likely need to utilise social media monitoring tools, of which there are many.
This link features some Social Media Monitoring Tools to explore: https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-monitoring-tools/

WordPress Plugins

If you’re running your website on the WordPress platform, it’s incredibly easy to integrate social. There are hundreds of ready made social media plugins for WordPress to choose from. We’ll explore these in future pages.

This link features some WordPress plugins for social (thought there are many more out there): https://smallbiztrends.com/2014/03/social-media-plugins-for-wordpress.html.

We also have a page on our website listing a bunch more cool technology you may like to try out, not just for social media, but for generally running your business online here.

What social media tools are you currently in the market for? What are your favourite social media tools? Comment in the section below…