Top 5 Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses

Today we will go through 5 different tools that will help you improve your social media management and add efficiency to your work flow. I will show you what each tool does. I will be sharing the pricing plans of each tool. So let’s get started with our first tool.

Buffer App

Buffer is a very popular social media scheduling application. The tool makes it easy to share content and automatically schedule the distribution to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+. Now it works by staggering content throughout the day. Buffer lets you add content to your queue without worrying when to post it or how frequently to post it. Buffer also gives you the Analytics about each post which lets you quickly see what ideas are working and what aren’t.

Buffer is available in both free and paid plans. In free plan you are restricted to one social profile for each platform i.e. one Twitter account, one Facebook account and so on. You are also restricted to 10 posts at a time.

IFTTT

IFTTT is an acronym for If This Then That and the whole idea of the site is that it allows you to create custom triggers to automate your social media workflows. With IFTTT you will be creating what they refer to as website. Essentially a set of instructions for what you want to happen. Now recipe refer to as source what they refer to as channel followed by a trigger and trigger is what has to happen before the tool moves on. So you might create something as if I post to Facebook then post the same update to Twitter.

So first you need to do is to choose the channels which you want to use. The number of channels available in IFTTT is 276. After choosing the channel you need to activate it simply meaning that connecting your account to IFTTT. After that you can create as many recipes as you want. Like, If I get a new follower on Twitter, then shoot me an email (If This Then That).

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media dashboard. It allows you to manage your content on multiple social media channels, listen to conversations and measure results all from one dashboard. Hootsuite is best if you are managing multiple social media channels. Hootsuite has lot of features: some are free but mostly are paid.

After signing up you need to add the social networks by authorizing Hootsuite to access your account. The strongest part of Hootsuite is the Analytics part. Hootsuite gives you the ability to create dynamic reports that just not bring one social media profile but you can compare things between your social media accounts to get an overview how things are working.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool and it allows you to explore and discover content to see what works and who is influential in delivering the message. There are 4 main features of BuzzSumo.

Content Insights: It allows you to search what content is popular on all social networks.

Influential Search: It allows you to search influential people what they are sharing on the social media and even reach out to see if they will promote your content.

Query: It allows you to set a query on a particular keyword and Buzzsumo will tell you when the content is published that contains that term.

Competitive Analysis: It allows you to search when your competition is getting mentioned and by whom.

All their plans come with a trial period with no credit card required. They do have a free plan but to get access to all the features you need to get access to a paid plan.

Raven

Raven is similar to function as of Hootsuite but it is for those people who manage a lot of accounts. With Raven you can do all the basics of social media dashboard such as plan and distribute content, review mentions and understand your data. They also look mentions for your brand around the web as well.

The dashboard also features SEO tools, Content management software, reporting and even Pay Per Click Management. It’s all in one solution although it is priced higher at $99/month it eliminates the need for lot of other tools. Another great feature of Raven is that it allows you to integrate with Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Twitter and Facebook thus bringing the data from all these accounts into a single dashboard.

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Top 5 Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.