5 Time-Saving Social Media Management Tools

As a solopreneur, I often find myself faced with the challenging task of effectively posting content to my social channels. I love engaging with my followers, but it’s daunting trying to post frequently and keep up with the conversation. I find that I’m spending way too much time focusing on one channel or the other (usually Instagram and Facebook) while neglecting my other accounts. Don’t even get me started on the time-suck of scrolling through my feeds once I’m logged in! To make matters worse, I end up posting too much promotional content because it’s what I have at hand, rather than curating and posting purposeful and helpful content that my followers will enjoy. Kind of defeats the purpose of my social media efforts ~ I won’t even call it a strategy since it’s so haphazard. Oh, and analytics? What are those?! Time to get a handle on social media management.

If this sounds like you, read on.

Social media marketing is all about getting the most reach for your limited time and resources while building relationships with followers. It’s supposed to be efficient. Why does the process have to be so cumbersome and time-consuming? It doesn’t. There are some awesome tools available for scheduling social media posts across your social platforms. Using a social media scheduling tool will not only streamline the process but increase your engagement. By having a steady stream of purposeful content posted to your accounts, you’ll have greater reach. More eyes on your content can mean more business for you! This is especially important for small to mid-size business owners who have limited budgets and resources.

Using a social media management tool is the next best thing to having your own Social Media Administrator.

Here is a round-up of 5 time-saving social media management applications and their features:

Hootsuite

• Schedule across all the major social media platforms.
• The bulk scheduler will schedule as many as 350 posts at a time.
• The Autoscheduler feature selects the best time to post for you, taking out the guesswork about the best times for your content to be seen.
• It will suggest content to share so you have a continuous flow of posts on all social channels.

Buffer

• Includes an image creator so you can create content within the application.
• The browser extension and mobile app let you schedule content as you discover it on the web.
• There is a free account available that posts to Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook. To schedule for Pinterest, you’ll need a paid account.

Rignite

• Rignite has many of the features the other applications offer with the addition of a “campaign” feature which allows you to run a series of posts and view analytics on that campaign to see what’s working and what’s not. You can also compare campaigns against each other.
• Offers team collaboration features.

Sprout Social

• Social content scheduling across all major platforms, while monitoring team performance.
• Sprout Social is great for businesses that need more advanced features including reporting on trends and engagement.
• You can manage social engagement and responsiveness, as well as team effectiveness.

Hubspot

• Social media management is part of Inbound Marketing so naturally, Hubspot includes this feature as part of their service.
• Create and schedule blog posts directly from your dashboard. They are then housed within the Hubspot portal for social sharing again whenever you want to repost the content.
• Choose accounts to follow to curate, schedule and share their content across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
• Analytics are included, making it easy to monitor your engagement.

This is only a small list of the dozens of social media management tools available. Do your due diligence and find the one that will work best for you. Take advantage of the free accounts or 30-day free trials to give them a test drive. As a small business owner, you may find that a simpler tool is all you need. But find one that will allow you to scale up over time. After all, the goal is business growth, right?

Check out this guide to help your social media prospecting efforts. And, be sure to comment if you use any social media scheduling tools that we should add to the list!