One thing that makes a Social Media Manager’s life easier, is knowing that there’s great technology to back us up. We’ve tried and tested out so many different social scheduling tools over the years, in search of the ultimate tool that’ll streamline all our efforts online. The question we’re always wondering: which tool is right for us? (in kindergarten social speak, who’s our bestie?) So we compiled this quick comparative guide to social media tools.
Why Social Media Tools Are Your Friends
We all love getting vanity metrics such as likes, follows and shares. They’re the everyday wins and obvious results that make us feel like we’re getting the job done. But the big kahuna goal at the end of the day is to:
- Establish a helpful and authoritative online presence
- Drive traffic towards your website, and ultimately drive conversions
All of your efforts across social media are in pursuit of these ends, so an ad hoc approach isn’t the best. Strategic and campaign oriented social media marketing is crucial to building a fanbase and social advocacy that makes a difference, rather than the existence for your social profiles.
For this reason, building a social media toolkit is important for your marketing team. Building a strategy plan, having personas, using consistent posting styles and ultimately an automated distribution tool will help you to streamline your approach. With the right tool kit, you’re more able to:
- Post regularly
- Monitor brand mentions and interactions
- Monitor competitors
- Analyse results (and adapt for more effective campaigns)
- Get more transparency across team members working on the campaign
Often the hardest part is just staying on top of everything. The internet is a fast moving beast! Ultimately, with a streamlined approach you’re better able to catch what’s important and respond in a timely manner.
The Right Tools Will Help You To:
Easily Craft Posts For Your Social Channels
Crafting and scheduling posts is the bread and butter of it all. Whether it’s HubSpot, Buffer or Hootsuite that’s your jam, the following functionality is standard for a great social media tool:
- A character count, to keep your tweets below that pesky limit
- The ability to attach an image or link preview
- The option to post now or schedule for later
- To be able to replicate the post across multiple social platforms
Buffer
Hootsuite
HubSpot
Bulk Schedule a Week or Month of Socials
Planning up to a month’s worth of socials in advance is a great way of ensuring there’s always something new across your business’ social channels. With a healthy frequency of posts taken care of, it leaves you more time to actively engage with followers and respond to current events and trending news. Thankfully, HubSpot, Buffer and Hootsuite all offer a bulk schedule feature (on paid versions) that allows you to schedule 10s or 100s of posts.
Pro Tip: Try our free template for making your bulk uploads a breeze.
Share Great Content From Wherever You Are
Being able to work from any device is a convenience we love about working in digital marketing. Whether you’re on your desktop or on your phone, all three of these tools offer a Chrome extension and an app. In Chrome, the extension allows you to share an interesting post without ever leaving your tab. The apps allow you to quickly schedule posts sharing any gems you’ve found throughout your scrolling travels. In many ways, the most common social media tools are alike. They’re your trusty pals day in and day out. However, where Buffer excels at a user friendly (and GIF Friendly) experience, Hootsuite’s extensive monitoring features let you listen in on online conversations with ease.
Why HubSpot Is Your Social Bestie.
Experimenting with different tools and techniques is all part of the fun of life as a digital marketer and social media manager. Though we love Buffer and Hootsuite to bits, HubSpot continues to shine through as our Bestie! Do you want to know why?
With HubSpot You Can Better:
Leverage tight integration with your CRM and CMS
HubSpot’s the all in one tool for the data-driven marketer, combining your CRM (customer relationship manager) and CMS (content management system). All touchpoints between you and your potential customers are tracked; everything from a social post they’ve liked, an email they’ve opened or an offer they’ve downloaded. This lets you see the big picture of their journey, and therefore see how all your social efforts are driving conversions. Furthermore, as you’re scrolling through Twitter, you can see your leads and opportunities highlighted in orange. This allows you to intentionally engage with prospects and start the conversations wherever they love to hang (whether that’s on Facebook, Twitter or their inbox).
Manage Socials With A Campaign Driven Approach
A unique feature is the ability to tie every social post to a specific campaign. Depending on how you structure your marketing campaigns, this may be a monthly, persona centric campaign. By tying social posts to a campaign, you can examine the results of your socials overall for a specific time period AND examine how well a specific campaign is performing and driving conversions and revenue.
Get The Stats On What's Working With Robust Analytics
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess"
- Ronald Coase, Economist
The best campaigns are data-driven. We all know gut instinct can lead you to great things, but having the right data and being able to adapt quickly enough is what can more reliably put you on the path to success. When you check into the HubSpot reporting dashboard, you can filter results according to:
- Time (specific time frames, monthly or quarterly results)
- Specific platforms
- Leads
- Engagement
Over To You
What social media tools have you tried and tested? At the end of the day, the social tools each have their pros and cons depending on the specific needs of your business. Though we’re still friends with Buffer and Hootsuite, we’ve found we’ve fallen for HubSpot specifically because of the robust analytics and integrated approach.
Check in on the other areas of your HubSpot portal with the Audit. A quick, free, user friendly tool built to assess your portal usage.
