Many will answer this question with an example of the many well-known platforms. Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, and many more are increasingly part of our everyday lives. However, what is purely a hobby for one person is elaborate work for another.
Anyone who doesn't publish posts on a whim but uploads them according to a plan knows how much work this can be. This is where social media management tools come into play, helping to plan and organise posts efficiently.
Influencers and agencies need to have a concept behind their posts to be successful. It's about strategically published content.
The use of social media is revolutionising the way businesses and consumers communicate with each other. Platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook allow businesses to build personal relationships with customers, which guarantee positive customer experiences. They also enable content to be aggregated, organised, and disseminated, opening up access to an inexhaustible target audience.
But what's so difficult about social media management?
Most social media users will have already uploaded a post or two. It only takes a few steps to publish a picture or video.
However, when considering the whole picture in conjunction with the criteria to be observed, such as the algorithm, the task becomes more complicated.
Imagine you have this task not just for your own profile, but for a company.
You need to log into the company's profile – on every platform. The next step is creating the content. The image or video must be appealingly designed in the correct format. Once this is done, you try to upload the content at the right time. The different platforms work with different algorithms. So you have to find out when you have the best chances of reaching as many people as possible with your content. If you're unlucky, you'll log into the company's profile at different times of the day and upload an image or video. You also have to upload stories now and then.
Now imagine this situation, but replace the single company with several.
You log in to different companies at different times of the day and post the content scheduled for that specific company.
Is it getting a bit confusing? That wasn't all.
Your posts will receive reactions. Likes, comments, direct messages.
If you want to be successful on social media, you cannot ignore it. This means you'll respond to messages and delete or reply to comments – across various profiles.
From this point onwards, you probably don't think of anything fun anymore when it comes to social media. No wonder. At this level, probably only people who work professionally in this field use social media.
Teams, for example from agencies, usually take care of the profiles of various companies. However, reducing the effort through colleagues goes hand in hand with an increased need for coordination. The company has specific wishes that must be implemented. Nothing can be posted before the client has approved it. But how is this supposed to work?
Send the created content to the company on time, get feedback, make adjustments, send it for re-approval, ... And that's not all. Within the team, there are usually coordination and approval processes as well. Internal and external communication must be enabled. All of this involves a significant amount of time. Fortunately, there are now ways to reduce this effort. One such way would be to use a social media management tool.
What must the perfect social media management tool be able to do for maximum workload reduction?
Create content
To save time when creating content, it makes sense if this is possible directly through the tool. Ideally, selectable post formats, emojis, different fonts, royalty-free images, videos and sounds would be available for content creation. The ability to cut videos and sounds would also be important.
Scheduling
Scheduling is the act of planning posts. The social media management tool allows content to be scheduled in a calendar for the respective company across all platforms to be managed at a specific time on a day in the calendar. This is possible years in advance. Once the posts are scheduled, nothing else needs to be done as they are automated at the scheduled time.
be posted.
Internal communication
Within the tool, you can assign roles to your colleagues. These roles have specific permissions. This means an inexperienced employee can create posts, but cannot publish them without the approval of a more experienced colleague. You can also make assignments. The affected employee will then see within the social media management tool what they need to do. This avoids the disorganisation that would arise without a tool.
External communication
Since the post can only be published once the customer is satisfied with the content, this sometimes leads to multiple feedback loops. These can be minimised by the perfect social media management tool. Posts don't need to be exported and shared with the customer only to then come back with adjustments. The customer has external access to the tool, through which they can view planned posts and, if necessary, edit them or leave you a note about what needs to be adjusted.
Community Management
Managing incoming reactions and messages is greatly simplified by the social media management tool. Logging into multiple profiles to respond to all messages and reactions is no longer necessary. All interactions from all profiles are collected in a shared inbox. A filter can be used to specify which company and platforms you want to see interactions from, and you can respond to/delete them directly within the tool.
Reports
The social media management tool provides you with analyses and reports on posts on social media platforms. These allow you to see, for example, which hashtags have increased your reach. They also show how many followers you have gained within a specific period. These and many other pieces of information from the reports can also be of interest to the client. You can either download the reports and make them available to your clients, or ideally, you can set them up so that the reports are automatically sent to the client, for example, weekly.
The perfect social media management tool also provides competitor analysis and shows you on which platforms your company has been mentioned, allowing you to respond directly to those mentions.
Interfaces
Every company uses different combinations of the available social media channels. The perfect social media management tool must integrate all used channels. The most common ones are:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Google My Business
But does the social media management tool exist?
No. None of the existing social media management tools can fulfil all the criteria of the perfect tool. There are often cutbacks in the integrations, so you can't manage the profiles of all social media channels. However, if you have customers who need an integration that the tool does not have, you have to do the work for this channel manually. The scenario described at the beginning becomes reality once again. Creating posts is not possible with many social media management tools. Other possible disadvantages of some tools are that you cannot schedule an unlimited number of posts or can only schedule them a limited amount of time in advance. Automated posting takes a lot of work off your hands, but doesn't always work smoothly either. There are often problems with publishing videos in particular. These are either not uploaded in the first place or cannot be played in the published state. The automated posting of reels and stories for Instagram and TikToks is generally not yet possible with many social media management tools. It also happens that a planned post of an image is not uploaded. In this case, the better quality tools at least send a notification about this incident. Furthermore, some tools do not offer the possibility of internal and external communication. Community management is also not a matter of course. Unfortunately, social media management tools that have integrated community management often only have an inbox for some interfaces. The reports are not all of the same level of detail and quality.
In addition to these shortcomings in terms of content, there are many negative aspects in terms of pricing. The social media management tool is usually purchased in the form of a monthly or annual package. Depending on the price, this includes certain features and user access. The more people have to work with the tool, the more expensive it becomes. In some cases, you have to pay around €200 per user per month. So if several users need access, the price quickly adds up. But that's not the only variable on which the price depends. Depending on which package you purchase, you have different numbers of social media profiles that you can manage. This does not mean the number of customers, but the number of accounts. For example, if a customer has one profile each on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, they can already have 4 social media profiles. The number of profiles included in the packages is usually very low for the cheaper packages. It varies from approx. 5 - 20 profiles. If you have several customers, these slots are quickly filled. The result is that you have to upgrade to a more expensive package.
The large selection of social media management tools makes choosing difficult. So, if you're considering whether a social media management tool is right for you or your company, familiarise yourself thoroughly with the different providers beforehand. There probably isn't a single% perfect tool that covers all needs at the moment. Also, don't just consider the price, but also ensure that the features are the right ones to make your work easier. If you choose an inexpensive tool that only partially meets your requirements, the time saved by the tool will be rather small. Therefore, we recommend investing money in a high-quality social media management tool that meets your requirements as much as possible. However, before making your final decision, check for follow-up costs and whether the price-performance ratio is right.
