Informative

5 Reasons for Investing in a Social Media Management Tool

Most businesses are running social media activities on multiple and different platforms, be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other platform. In order to maintain a clear overview, Social Media Management Tools are often the answer. In this blog we’ll take you through 5 of the most important reasons why investing in a social media management tool is definitely worth your time and budget!

Angelina Natividad

Online Marketer at The Next Ad

Feb 17, 2020

Regardless of the size of the company, being present on social media has become an essential part of almost all businesses – and rightfully so. With the vast majority of today’s consumers active on one of the many social platforms, there are many ways in which businesses can use these channels to their own advantage.

Some of the most commonly used platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat. As of lately, we have also seen one of the newest members of this group, TikTok, take off fast.

While not every channel might be relevant or effective to your business, chances are big that you, or your customers, are already active on at least 3 or 4 of them. This means that you are consistently spending time updating your accounts, posting relevant content or just trying to engage in conversations with your audience on different platforms.

This whole process can (or will) be quite time-consuming, and as the old saying goes: time is money. This is why looking into solutions that will help you manage your social media efforts in the most efficient way is definitely not a waste of time!

But first, it’s vital to have a good understanding as to why it’s really worth investing in a Social Media Management Tool, and that’s exactly what we’re going to help you within this blog.

Let’s dive in!

What is a Social Media Management Tool?

Let’s make sure we all have the same basic understanding of what a social media management tool is before we go any further.

Social Media Management Tools enable you to manage all of your social media accounts from a single interface or tool. They’re focused on making all parts of social media management easier for marketers, from engaging with your audience, to scheduling and publishing content and analysing data and generating reports.

What should you look for in Social Media Management Tools?

A quick search on Google for ”Social Media Management Tools” will land you with more than a few thousand results and platforms for you to choose from – so there’s destined to be one that fits your needs well.  The only way to find the one, however, is if you know what to look out for.

While there are numerous features, functions and competencies that these providers offer, there are a few core points that you should look for and assess:

1. User-friendliness
2. Flexibility in product plans
3. Are affordable or have the right price-quality relationship

Now, some features that you definitely should be considering:

1. Content management
2. Audience engagement
3. Data reporting or analytics

5 Reasons why you should invest in a Social Media Management Tool

1. Manage multiple accounts across different platforms

Let’s start with the most apparent and already briefly mentioned motivation, working with a social media management tool allows you to manage all of your social media accounts and activities from 1 single platform.

Instead of having to log into 4 different platforms with different usernames, passwords and interfaces, you can simply log into your social media management tool and have access to all of your accounts from 1 clear place.

In addition to that, you should take into account that social media platforms were built for consumers and not for businesses, so using a social media management tool you won’t have to navigate all extra functions that have to relevance to you.

A great tool for managing your Instagram and Facebook accounts is Iconosquare. The platform allows users to manage multiple social profiles, use customized dashboards that quickly visualize the metrics most important to them and publish content automatically with a number of built-in features.

If you are looking for a platform, however, that enables you to manage your accounts from more than Instagram and Facebook only, The Next Ad’s Social Media Manager and Engagement tools might be more suitable for you. With the ability to connect with all of the most commonly used platforms, you would be able to manage content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many more!

2.  Always know what’s happening around your brand

With the way social media works today, it’s never been easier for consumers to reach out to businesses or to talk about a brand on a large and international scale. This could just range from asking simple questions about the good or services a company offers to people sharing their experiences with peers or voicing their complaints publicly on all different platforms.

If you happen to miss some of these interactions, you could possibly miss out on a great opportunity to strengthen your brand, or even worse, you could severely damage your brand by missing an unsatisfied customer!

A good social media management tool will allow you to easily keep track of all these conversations in one place. Not only should you be able to respond to messages that are straight directed to your company’s social accounts, but a good social media management tool should also show indirect messages that involve your brand or comments on your social ads.

3.  Schedule content in advance

Now, one of the features that you’ll be using the most, is a content scheduler. As a marketer, it’s vital to have a solid social media content strategy which also takes the most optimal days and times into account when posting the content per channel. 

It could very well be that these moments are outside of your conventional working hours or even working days, so utilising a content scheduler can definitely help you to post your content at the right time and the right place. 

In addition to this, a scheduler allows you to work in teams more effectively and keep track of what has been posted in the past and what is in the pipeline for the future. 

Lastly, you’ll no longer have to share passwords and accounts with the entire team, as all social accounts can easily be managed from one tool – great stuff!

Facebook also offers a Post Scheduling function, which is a great way to start out in case you’re still in the beginner’s phase of social media marketing and are solely posting on Facebook. 

4. Analyse results of your efforts

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.  In order to have a good and reasonable plan for what you are going to do in the future, you need to know what has proven to work in the past and what hasn’t.

This information could include the number of comments a Facebook post has received, the number of retweets a tweet has gotten or the overall weekly performance of your account per channel. This could, for example, enable you to do different tests in regards to timing, format, visuals or copy. 

Understanding the data you’ve collected will help you to see through the numbers and optimise your social media game accordingly. 

Of course, each social network provides their own simplified tools that could help you with some activity and performance analysis, but to maintain a universal oversight of on the data on all of the different platforms can be a real pain.

5.  Justify social media marketing efforts

Most marketers will know: it can be quite hard to show and convince your management team the (monetary) benefits social media marketing can have for your company. And in a metric-centred world, it’s very important to be able to show the return on investment (ROI)  on each activity. Hence why it’s crucial for you to analyse the results of your efforts! 

This is where a solid social media management tool can help you collect the data from all separate channels and provide you with a clear and concentrated report – only showing the key performance indicators (KPI’s) and metrics that are relevant to you or your managers.

To wrap it up

Alright, now that you know why it’s definitely worth investing in a good social media management tool, you can start looking for the perfect match that will fit your specific needs. 

As you might have already noticed, here at The Next Ad we also offer a social media management and engagement tool!

If you would like to check out if our platform could be a nice fit for you, feel free to learn more by clicking here or simply send us a message to find out what we can do for you!