Social media has completely transformed the way people interact with each other, it allows people to connect with others that they would easily lose touch with and quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. There aren’t many people who don’t communicate via social media, and in 2010 alone 25 billion tweets were sent via Twitter and 30 billion pieces of content were shared on Facebook.
With statistics like that you’d be mad not to use social media for your business. The two big players for businesses are Twitter and Facebook, both perfect for regularly updating, and most importantly, connecting, with your customers. Twitter’s 140 character limit is ideal for news updates, and initial customer service, whilst taking advantage of Facebook’s dedicated business pages and their analytics is child’s play.
Keeping up to date with your social media accounts can get overwhelming, especially if you have more than one – businesses offering social media services, for example, have an array of accounts to keep up to date. That’s where social media management tools come in handy, why make life harder than it needs to be? We’ve picked out the best of the best for you to take a look at, from finding tweetable content to managing multiple social networks:
This is a pretty impressive app which is available for free. Set up an account and log into all of the accounts you want to manage separately, Flipboard then presents all of the content of each account in a fantastic layout that includes status updates, as well as news, images, videos, links, and much more. The app allows you to reply to comments and browse other content, including ‘Flip Tech’ which provides the user with relevant news articles.
Flipboard works best on iPhones and iPads, but there is an android version of this app available, and the best part? It’s completely FREE!
Glossi
Glossi is still in its beta stages so you have to request an invitation to join. Currently, the site only allows you to add five social accounts and showcases all of the content from each account in a Facebook style layout. The site also offers a ‘shuffle’ feature that will show your profile to any other user.
Rebel Mouse
This site currently only allows you to work with your Twitter and Facebook accounts, but there are plans to expand, and the site will become a lot more interactive. For now, it acts as a personal bulletin board and allows you to change the order of posts, add comments to original posts and change some HTML.
Sprout Social
One of the very best social media tools available, Sprout Social offers a site, as well as a handy app. This is a site that boasts some fantastic features. As well as posting statuses, and scheduling them for later dates and times, Sprout Social lets you set alerts which will tell you when anyone mentions a keyword set by you, or a specific topic is mentioned online. Sprout Social also offers a fantastic set of analytics as well as exportable data and great looking reports.
Hootsuite
Hoosuite is aimed at both individuals and businesses, allowing you to monitor, post and explore your accounts, and others. It also offers custom analytics that aim to improve the productivity of businesses. The home dashboard is a little on the cluttered side and you are only able to add five social accounts.
