Social Media Management Tools For Small Business

What Is Social Media Management?

Brands rely on Social Media accounts to promote their products or services, engage with customers and reach new audiences.

With several potential platforms to share across and skillsets required, businesses should consider dedicated staff – or outsourcing – to manage their Social Media presence.

Social Media Management can involve many things, from copywriting to graphic design, marketing knowledge and analytical skills.

What Are Social Media Management Tools?

Digital marketing, especially running Social Media accounts, can be overwhelming at times so it’s important to arm yourself and your team with the right tools. The more Facebook pages and other Social Media platforms you’re responsible for, the bigger the workload.

A successful Social strategy will require a complete understanding of what’s happening in the industry, both yours and Social Media itself, what your customers are engaging with and how best to use your various Social Media accounts to meet your goals and objectives.

Timing is everything, especially in a small company, so any tools to help manage the workload and be more efficient will be welcomed.

Utilising Social Media Management tools is all about working smarter not harder – because we know you already work hard enough!

Choosing Social Media Management Tools

Selecting the right tools is crucial to Social Media success.

Marketing Needs

Firstly, consider your actual marketing needs. For example, you may be looking for a scheduling platform to help you share across Twitter, LinkedIn and your Facebook Pages in one easy swoop, which means you need to find a platform that is integrated with all of your required Social Media channels.

Reporting Features

Data analysis is also essential to Social Media strategy success so it’s important to have suitable tools to help your track results across all your social media channels.

Each Social Media platform will have its own reporting features but a single site that collates all of the data will make life much easier. It may be that you can utilise these type of social media management tools for other areas of your digital strategy too.

Mobile App Feature

On the go a lot? Several Social Management tools, such as feedalpha and the Facebook Business Suite app are available as mobile apps which allows you to manage and schedule posts whilst out and about.

Which Social Media Management Tools Are Best?

Company needs differ so it’s about finding the right Social Media Management tool(s) and features for you. There are several scheduling platforms, content creation sites and analytical insights available to companies of all sizes.

In fact, Facebook themselves offer both the ability to schedule and create content across their Facebook and Instagram platforms.

Social Media Scheduling Platform

A scheduling platform will help you manage all of your organic content in one place. Schedule content in advance, post over weekends or evenings without having to actively be online and share content to multiple accounts with ease.

Most Social Media scheduling platforms offer incentives such as a 30-day free trial to get a taste of the site and available features before fully committing. feedalpha offer a FREE account to get you started with your social media scheduling.

Engagement Management

One time-consuming element of running Social Media accounts is conducting Social Listening and managing the comments, shares or direct messages – especially if you’re responsible for numerous social channels.

By setting up notifications, or utilising an engagement management tool, companies will be able to save time and keep audience interaction levels high across Social Media.

What Are The Best Free Social Media Management Tools?

Small businesses will likely be limited to how many financial outgoings they can justify when it comes to Social Media management. However, the good news is there are many fantastic and free tools on hand!

feedalpha

feedalpha is an easy to use Social Media scheduling tool that helps you save time and increase audience interactions across your social platforms.

feedalpha is designed to help businesses source and share relevant content across the top four social networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The feedalpha Social Media management platform has features like Custom Content Feeds to help you discover topical content and a handy calendar format that lets you plan, create, search and schedule all within one platform – or handy app (see here).

It also has a neat Canva integration so you can create your social media posts from start to finish in the tool.

If that’s not enough, Feedalpha is currently offering a free account with no credit card required.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the ultimate platform when it comes to understanding website traffic, where it came from and what your audience did next. Plus, it’s completely free to use.

By including a trackable link in your Social Media posts, Google Analytics will be able to tell you how much website traffic you’ve generated and how many enquiries have been captured for each post, platform or campaign.

Google Sheets

If there’s more than one of you working on the Social Media copy then using a platform such as Google Sheets, which is free and updates in real-time will help everyone see exactly what’s ready. This can be helpful for proofreaders, graphic designers and other involved members of the team.

Linktree

Instagram accounts are unable to share clickable links in their captions so instead of constantly updating the ‘link in bio’, set up a Linktree. Linktree is a single URL that leads to a landing page where brands can host multiple links.

No more manually updating the bio for every Instagram post!

Canva

Canva is a content creation platform that Social Media Managers can use to create engaging visuals to support their posts for all their Social Media accounts and other areas of digital marketing.

Thanks to Canva, it’s never been easier to design engaging Social Media content for your accounts.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck, now owned by Twitter itself, is a free Social Media management tool that helps users keep track of their Twitter interactions. TweetDeck showcases mentions, retweets, direct messages and more in easy to monitor streams.

Facebook Business Manager

Facebook have many helpful platforms that making running social media accounts easier. For example, within Business Manager, companies can connect their Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts with different user roles.

Here, you will be able to run Facebook and Instagram Ads, schedule and post content via the Creator Studio and manage your Facebook Tracking Pixel.

What Other Social Media Management Tools Do I Need?

Mailchimp

Multiplatform communications are the key and this includes Email Marketing. Mailchimp is a digital marketing platform with built-in email scheduling and free landing page creation that helps you manage all things e-commerce.

With email templates, data management and segmentation, automation and dynamic content – it really does it all.

InShot

Getting creative in your digital marketing? InShot is a video editing tool that helps users trim videos, add music, emojis, filters and more.

Video marketing has been on the rise for a while with no signs of it slowing down so the sooner brands develop their skills in this area the better.

LastPass

Last but not least – see what we did there?

As easy as it makes things, using the same password to access everything is never a good idea. Especially if it could mean your Social accounts getting into the wrong hands.

LastPass is a super helpful platform that allows users to stick to one ‘master’ password while it safely stores the rest. LastPass will enable you to auto-populate passwords online without being high-risk.