Information in this blog post was obtained from the HubSpot Blog and Sprout Social

Do you ever find yourself as a marketing student wondering “how will I ever manage multiple social platforms at one time?” Well, I can assure you that you aren’t alone! There are so many social media management tools out there that we social media marketers can use to our advantage and make the job easier and more manageable. As a marketing student sometimes the information given about social media marketing tools can feel overwhelming and endless. There are also times when the subject is brushed over without much detail. Lucky for you I have some tips and tricks on social media management tools. From how, when, and what tool you should be using!

Social Media Management Tools

Before diving in we should probably answer the question of “what exactly is a social media management tool?” This is a great question and I have an answer for you! If you were thinking that a social media management tool is something that helps you get the job done easier then you were right! There are many types of social media management tools that marketers can use from online publishing software to content calendar templates. According to HubSpot, “some are meant to help with a wide array of social media management needs. Meanwhile, other tools are meant for specific types of social media management (e.g. tools for agencies) or facets of social media management (e.g. social listening or analytics).”

Now that you know what a social media management tool is you may be wondering, what different kinds of social media management tools are available. In this blog from HubSpot, you will find many different tools. These are a few of my favorites that they mention:

• HubSpot Social Media Software

• Hootsuite

• Tweetdeck

Have you ever tried any of these tools? If not I highly recommend trying one or all of them out for yourself!

Content Calendar: HubSpot’s Downloadable Template for Excel

While not mentioned above as one of my favorite social media management tools. This is an amazing tool that was created by HubSpot. It is downloadable content that you will be able to use in Excel to create a plan for your content in an easy-to-view landscape! In this blog from HubSpot, we learn “You can draft and plan out social media posts in advance on the Social Network Update tabs. These tabs are for organizational purposes. After planning out your social media posts, you'll manually upload the content of the posts to a social media publisher.” This takes the guesswork out of remembering what content has already been created and where it will live once published. This is also a great way to keep track of past content as well. Since it is important to keep track of social media content so you can go back to it when conducting an audit you have already done the heavy lifting by using HubSpot’s content calendar.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an amazing tool for social media marketers. It is a publishing tool that will allow you to create, schedule and publish to social media platforms such as, FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram. All without leaving their platform. Further, we learn in this blog post from HubSpot that “Although there are paid plans with more capabilities, Hootsuite offers a free plan that works well if you’re a small business. With the free plan, you can schedule up to 30 social posts in advance.” This is amazing news for students like you! This means you could test out the platform with your personal social media pages to learn how it functions and become familiar with its features for free! When using the free version of Hootsuite you will only be able to link 3 different social platforms such as the 3 mentioned above. Also other people will not be able to access the account, thus removing the team interactive features that are offered by the paid versions of Hootsuite.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a tool used for Twitter. You can bring multiple feeds into one page rather than navigating to them individually. With this, you will be able to keep an eye on other feeds as well as your own or the company's feed. In this blog from Sprout Social they go on further to explain “The ability to view several feeds at once, like your home feed, notifications, a hashtag or trending topic, someone else’s profile, etc.” You can use feeds to follow conversations that mention your company, and so much more as you learned from Sprout Social. This is a great way to help aid you in your endeavor for social media listening. You can create a feed for something that is important for you to “listen” to at the moment and see everything in one space rather than browsing all through Twitter!

Check out this blog post from my college to dive deeper into social media content calendars!

Resources

Baker, Kristen. (2022, March 23). “Best Social Media Management Tools.” HubSpot Blog. Retrieved 23 Mar. 2022, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-social-media-management-tools.

Bernazzani, Sophia. (2022, April 21) “13 Social Media Calendars, Tools, & Templates to Plan Your Content.” HubSpot Blog. Retrieved 21 Apr. 2022, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-calendar-tools.

West, Chloe. (2022, September 13). “Top 18 social media management tools for business in 2022.” Sprout Social. Retrieved 13 Sept. 2022, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-management-tools/.