Becoming a social media manager can be challenging. You’ll work on every nitty-gritty detail, from creating engaging posts, responding to comments, and deleting spam to monitoring your accounts for suspicious activity and more. With so much on your plate, it’s easy for social media management to take over your life – and even keep you awake at night.
Social media automation tools let you work on so many tasks without overwhelming your mind. With these tools, you’re able to respond to comments, schedule a post, find suggestions, as well as to measure your content analytics. This way, you will spare a little bit more time to research your next campaign.
Don’t spend another sleepless night thinking about all the work that needs to be done – we’ve found the eight best tools that can automate part or all of your social media activities. You’ll save countless hours and be able to focus more on what you’d rather be doing than clicking ‘refresh’ on an endless stream of dashboard updates.
Why Do You Need Social Media Automation Tools?
Social media automation tools are designed to simplify the process of managing your social media accounts. These tools can help you schedule posts, track your analytics, and engage with your followers, all with minimal effort on your part.
But why exactly do you need social media automation tools? Here are a few reasons:
Save Time
Managing your social media accounts can be a time-consuming task, especially if you’re trying to juggle multiple platforms. Social media automation tools can help you save time by allowing you to schedule your posts in advance. This means you can plan out your content in one sitting and then let the tool take care of the rest.
Consistency
Consistency is key when it comes to building a strong social media presence. By using automation tools, you can ensure that you’re posting regularly and at the optimal times for your audience. This helps you build a strong following and keep your brand top of mind.
Analytics
Understanding your social media analytics is crucial if you want to improve your social media strategy. Many automation tools provide detailed analytics that can help you track your performance, identify what’s working and what’s not, and make data-driven decisions to improve your results.
Engagement
Engaging with your followers is an important part of building a strong social media presence. However, it can be difficult to keep up with all the comments and messages you receive.
Automation tools can help you stay on top of your engagement by providing notifications and allowing you to respond quickly and efficiently.
Popular Social Media Automation Tools to Streamline Your Efforts
By utilizing automation tools, you can perform various tasks automatically, such as scheduling posts, responding to frequently asked customer inquiries, generating reports, and monitoring mentions of your brand.
Instead of manually adding these tasks to your to-do list, relying on these automation tools mentioned below can help you to accomplish them.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that lets you schedule messages for specific times in advance across many different social networks simultaneously. This flexible, enterprise-level service has reduced the time spent managing pages and boosted sales conversions through more relevant posts with higher engagement rates.
This business tool is the perfect solution for brands who want to stay in touch, turn followers into paying customers and keep your message full of life. With this tool, you can monitor many different social media platforms at once or schedule messages upfront. Hootsuite lets you put content where it needs to be when it needs to get there.
2. Buffer
If you’re looking for a free alternative to the previously mentioned tools, you’ll love Buffer’s easy-to-use system that lets you manage multiple networks at once. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to plan out your future content calendar or share what others have posted on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Buffer helps you perfect your posts by letting you know how many people have interacted with them and if they went viral or not across multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even YouTube marketing. This tool lets you reach out even when your followers are asleep – just set times for different days of the week so Buffer can optimize posts at all hours.
3. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is the leading social media management platform that helps brands and agencies work with multiple networks by automating routine tasks, boosting engagement, driving toward goals, and providing real-time analytics. Hence, you know what’s working and what isn’t.
With Sprout Social, you can generate quantitative data like customer profiles from your social media handle across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. That way, you’ll be able to make a report, create a benchmark for your future campaign, and track conversion.
4. Meet Edgar
MeetEdgar helps you take charge of your social media marketing. This tool is easy to use, helps save time by handling all the needs in one place, and helps build connections with followers through genuine engagement.
With MeetEdgar’s simple setup process and business-focused tools, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better way to manage your social media marketing for your small business or startup.
5. AgoraPulse
This social media management tool has many different posting options for all of your needs. AgoraPulse lets you automate social media in many ways, such as scheduling, bulk uploading, curating content, quick publishing, and scheduled republishing.
AgoraPulse also offers robust analytics reporting with interactive dashboards giving insights about mentions and engagement rates. If you’re new in a business like LeadLearnLeap, this tool will greatly facilitate you because it is easy to use in managing multiple social media platforms.
6. Sendible
Sendible is an all-in-one social media management tool created to help manage your social networks from the office. There are a few features that Sendible can help you save time by creating interactive content, posting content, and engaging with your followers across multiple social media channels.
Sendible is designed for agencies, organizations, and even individuals with great social networking habits. It’s a platform that allows you to use all of the most popular networks in one spot. With Sendible, it’s easier than ever to keep up with your busy day while giving back attention to the people who need the most help–your customers on social media platforms.
7. Buzzsumo
BuzzSumo is the leading, cloud-based platform for finding the best engagement opportunities on social media and search. It can track trending topics and find out what’s most important to your brand with customer questions/concerns or content success by inputting any keyword. Without any complex marketing skills, you can even monitor all of these things simultaneously.
This social management tool is a fast, intuitive way to research content and optimize your marketing efforts across social media. Leveraging the power of big data, BuzzSumo helps build successful campaigns through shortcuts that once took hours and analysis.
8. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a social media management tool that helps you publish and schedule social media posts for various social media platforms. With just a few clicks, you can have content pushed out to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, or Google+.
There are templates ready-to-go with pre-designed layouts in various popular formats like guides, blogs, and explainer videos. Since visual content like images is attractive to the audience, you can easily choose the content from Social Pilot’s free stock photos to optimize your campaign.
Choosing the Right Social Media Automation Tools
With so many social media automation tools available, choosing the right one for your business can be overwhelming. Here are a few key factors to consider when selecting a social media automation tool:
Features
Different automation tools offer different features, so it’s important to choose one that aligns with your social media goals. For example, if you’re looking to schedule posts, make sure the tool you choose has a scheduling feature. If you want to track your analytics, look for a tool that provides detailed analytics reports.
Integrations
Consider the other tools and platforms you use in your business. Does the automation tool integrate with those platforms? If you use a CRM tool to manage your customer relationships, make sure the automation tool can integrate with that CRM.
Ease of Use
The automation tool you choose should be easy to use and navigate. It should not require a lot of technical knowledge or training to get started. Look for tools that have an intuitive interface and clear instructions.
Pricing
Automation tools can vary widely in price, from free options to expensive enterprise-level tools. Consider your budget and the features you need when evaluating pricing options.
Customer Support
If you run into any issues with the automation tool, you’ll want to be able to get support quickly. Look for tools that offer responsive customer support, whether that’s through email, phone, or chat.
Takeaway
All of these tools are great on their own, but when paired with other complementary marketing tools like email marketing software or webinar software, they become even more powerful. When you can find a way to engage users beyond social media and get them further entrenched in your brand, that’s when you’re able to build a highly engaged contact list that leads to more conversions.
Social media platforms have been a great medium for marketers to spread their message. However, maintaining different, multiple accounts at once can be daunting. Not to mention, marketers have to spend more time handling queries and interacting with followers.
With social media automation tools, marketers can save countless hours in managing various accounts. Using these tools allows them to invest time in more valuable activities like researching future content and measuring the metrics.