Simple Social Media Tools With Big Impact

In the fast-paced world of social media, brands often find themselves in a “sink-or-swim” situation when it comes to effectively managing accounts. Luckily, savvy third-party services arise almost daily, acting as life preservers for all those who feel like they are drowning in the ocean that is social media.

We could spend countless hours (and blog posts) outlining and reviewing every social media aggregator out there, but out of respect for your time – and ours – we will delve into just two today, which are great for any social media skill level, from beginner to expert: HootSuite and TweetDeck.

HootSuite (hootsuite.com)
This is a great, all-encompassing tool for managing your brand’s social networks. Perhaps the greatest benefit that HootSuite has for brands is its team workflow functionality. With HootSuite, you can assemble teams of social media managers, all of whom will be capable of monitoring and contributing to content across your brand’s social platforms. When assembling a team to handle your accounts, keep in mind that your social media efforts are only as good as the person/people handling them. Do yourself a favor and check to make sure your team is knowledgeable and experienced before you grant them access to your accounts.

Additionally, HootSuite has a plethora of functions that can take much of the stress of social media out of the equation. With HootSuite, you can monitor just about every type of social media account in one place. You can even customize its interface to show you only what you want to see. Here is how HootSuite can help your brand:

• Manage your brand’s followers, as well as who you are following
• Instantly post to any or all of your accounts with the click of a button
• Save messages as drafts for later or schedule posts to go out later
• Easily search for conversations about your brand across multiple platforms
• Customize URLs and analytics for tracking
• Upload and share files instantly
• Easily customize, maneuver and organize columns & accounts


TweetDeck (tweetdeck.com)
TweetDeck is great for social media managers on the go. Not only does it work great on Mac, PC or Linux, you can also download the TweetDeck app on your iPhone, iPod Touch and Android (currently still in Beta). For those of you who tend to stay on the move day in and day out, you know how handy mobile apps can be for staying on top of communications!

In addition to its clean, functional interface, TweetDeck boasts many of the same great features and functions as HootSuite. The following are just some of the ways that TweetDeck can help your brand:

• Manage your brand’s followers, as well as who you are following
• Instantly post to any or all of your accounts with the click of a button
• Schedule posts to go out later
• Easily search for conversations about your brand across multiple platforms
• Customize URLs and analytics for tracking
• Upload and share files instantly
• Easily customize, maneuver and organize columns & accounts

There are certainly a litany of functions and features that each of these applications offer users that we haven’t covered here, but we don’t want to get too technical this go around. If you have any questions about HootSuite or TweetDeck and how you might be able to use them to better manage your brand’s social media efforts, feel free to drop us a line here and we’ll get back to you. Even better yet, leave us a comment on this post!