For this week’s assignment, we need to illustrate the importance of social media management tools (SMMS( and evaluate and compare two different SMMS and explain how these and other SMMS can assist with community engagement and social listening.
What is a social media management tool? Great question, let’s start there! Social media management software (SMMS) is an application program or software suite module that facilitates an organization’s ability to successfully engage in social media across different communication channels.
In short, SMMS cuts down on the work required to manage, monitor and schedule content across multiple social media accounts, leaving social media managers more time to apply themselves where they need to be in terms of their duties.
Now, the average person does not need to use an SMMS. Take myself for example, I manage three social media accounts for my gaming brand, DM Wyvern:
DM Wyvern
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJDElF5ftbahaL2nseoueeQ
DM Wyvern — Twitter
https://twitter.com/dm_wyvern?lang=en
DM Wyvern — Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/thedmwyvern
Well, two on a regular basis, really. I am not posting videos on YouTube all the time.
Little old me can get away without using an SMMS. But what if I am running a business that is spread across several social media accounts? Just take a look at the centerpiece business for one of our previous assignments: New Scooters 4 Less (NS4L)
They sport 1) a website (with a Facebook Messenger plugin) 2) Facebook, 3) Instagram,4) Twitter and 5) YouTube accounts.
How efficient would it be to log in to each account separately, absorb the analytic data for each account separately? Not to mention following up on all messages and engagements separately?
If I tried to do this manually, I would be at it all day, every day, and still behind the work curve! Try this at the risk of your own health and sanity.
That is why Social Media Management Tools are the salvation of every serious Social Media Manager.
SMMS allows social media managers to manage multiple social media accounts, all from the same dashboard.
Do you need to post to the same content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube? An SMMS like Hootsuite will have you covered; at the click of a button you are sending that content to all your accounts. Lifesaver!
Running a business? Getting messages about your products and services from several of your accounts? Again, SMMS have you covered. They allow social media managers to centralize all their incoming messages from across their social media accounts and have them all in one dashboard where they can review and respond to them. Amazing!
Just check out this image from the SMMS Hootsuite! Social media managers can jump to all their social media accounts and message inboxes at the click of a button. Game-changing.
Want to check out the analytics of your social media accounts to see how your accounts and content might succeeding or falling short?
Again, your favorite SMMS is likely to have you covered. Instead of having to log in to each account separately, review their analytic dashboard and then put them all together, to figure out their analytics all social media managers need to do is use their favorite SMMS and at the click of a button they can review all their social media analytics in one place.
Check out this dashboard below, notice at the top the listing of all the social media accounts it’s pulling data from. Big data at a glance, brilliant!
And I haven’t even dug into the rest of the Quality of Life features most SMMS offer.
The ability to set up, populate, and automate content calendars days, weeks, and months in advance. And specific to this assignment: the ability to listen and to engage across your accounts makes SMMS a must-have for any business.
What is social media listening? Social media listening involves tracking customer feedback, direct mentions of your brand, and any discussions that include keywords and topics relevant to your business.
In addition to tracking, social media listening involves packing all this data for deeper insights so social media managers can determine the best ways to act on findings and improve their social media presence, content, and engagement. It is one of the most important tasks for any social media manager.
Doing this manually would be an impossible task. Many SMMS can social media listen across social media accounts.
By automating core tasks like scheduling, publishing, centralizing inboxes — and social listening, SMMS provide social media managers the ability to engage in real-time with people interacting with their social media accounts.
Listening helps track social media managers and find those conversations, so they can jump in and represent their brand and address the needs of their audience.
Next up, let’s compare two social media tools: Hootsuite and Buffer:
Both Buffer and Hootsuite are popular SMMS but they take very different approaches as to how to operate social media accounts and how posts are scheduled. Buffer’s core focus is on content scheduling and posting. The heart of Buffer is the queue it uses to represent, track and schedule posts.
All your posts are presented to the left of the screen, showing you how much content you have lined up, ensuring you don’t run out of content for your accounts. You can also expand functionality with Buffer beyond their queue system through add-ons.
For example, what if you needed to do more than schedule and post? Perhaps you want to consolidate your social media inboxes and reply to each of your accounts through Buffer. Get the Buffer Reply add-on and that will enable you to respond to social conversations within a single inbox. Buffer starts out very basic and simple, with the ability to scale up depending upon your needs.
Like Buffer, Hootsuite focuses on social sharing and scheduling. Instead of using queues to line up content posts, Hootsuite emphasizes social streams. You create a tab for each of your social networks on the Streams page. Then, for each social account, you add a series of streams, each shows as a separate column. You can check out that looks like here:
Unlike Buffer, Hootsuite has a unified inbox for all your social media accounts featured right out of the box. It’s not a separate add-on, it is a core feature with this SMMS. When compared against each other, they each have their strengths.
Buffer makes sense if you are either running a small business or providing a lot of customer support through social media channels, thanks to the Buffer Reply functionality. If you’re running a bigger business and need to run a lot of third-party apps or craft heavy-duty posting schedules, then Hootsuite is likely the better option.
Every SMMS provides you the ability to more efficiently manage your social media accounts but how they go about helping you and how that help is presented through user interface varies significantly from tool to tool.
It is important for social media managers and businesses to spend time researching tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to check if these tools are appropriate for their needs and business. And it is important that any social media manager makes use of SMMS to streamline and simplify their social media management task.
