In the latest in our blogs, we asked our team for their favourite social media software tools. What makes their life easier? What makes scheduling more straightforward? How have they measured engagement rates?
Your use of social media will, of course, vary in complexity but in today’s content-hungry, multi-channel digital landscape you’re likely to need a helping hand. Bringing order to the process of getting your brand seen in people’s feeds can feel like a challenge.
Like with many things in life, the secret is timing. The right social media tool will help you create and maintain a publishing calendar that pushes out your content just at the right time whether you’re there or not. The right tool also becomes home to your posts and creative assets. It can truly drive your digital marketing effort, which is why it’s important to choose the right one for your team and your business.
Get it right and you’ll find yourself working more efficiently. Get it wrong and you’ll be stuck with a barrier to success.
With this in mind, we have summarised our favourites here. They are in no particular order and all have a range of unique features and benefits. The good news is that many offer a free trial to get you hooked. As a result, we would recommend a try-before-you-buy approach to any of the below. See which fits the gap in your marketing armoury.
Planable
First on our list is Planable. We love it because it allows you to collaboratively create, preview and edit posts within the tool itself. This is great if you or your client wants to allocate different review, edit and sign-off rights across your team. Designed to save you the hassle, Planable claims to be six times faster than its competitors. We believe it.
ContentStudio
ContentStudio is an incredibly powerful online resource across all content marketing. As well as creating and scheduling social media content, it includes a suite of analysis tools. Good to know, if you like to crunch the numbers.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is great if you are busy letting you schedule up to ten social media channels from one account. It has a very simple reporting dashboard that allows you to easily track and share post engagement, follower count and other performance measures.
SocialPilot
As well as schedule posting, SocialPilot allows you to create social media team workflows that schedule tasks from creation to approval of posts. If you are doing a lot of direct messaging through social media channels, SocialPilot’s centralised inbox management might well be of interest.
Zoho Social
Zoho provides a wider software suite including finance, customer service and HR alongside marketing. Their social media tool includes a very intuitive and visual publishing calendar that might appeal to you if you have had your fill of spreadsheets and tables.
However you create your social media content, any of the above tools could be a strong addition to your delivery strategy. Increasingly social media is moving on from ‘nice to have’ window dressing to be a valuable engaging tool in its own right. It follows, choosing the right tool to support it is becoming more important too.
This Almond Team selection isn’t exhaustive, but it is based on direct experience with a range of clients delivering a range of social media strategies. If you’d like help with any aspect of your social media content creation and delivery, feel free to drop us a note.
