Managing more than one social media account can be time consuming, often causing those accounts to lose followers. Discover how to organize your accounts and post to all of them at once for free using an online tool in only a few steps.
Are you managing multiple social media accounts but running out of time to keep them all up-to-date? Learn how you can use one account to post to five of the most popular social media sites.
The Social Media Manager’s Guide to Staying Organized
Keep an updated content calendar.
Planning out social media posts is time-consuming, so keeping track of it all with a content calendar can help cut down on time. “I keep an updated content calendar that includes all our social networks and the types of content we’ll be posting on each one,” says Georgie Morley, Creative Communicator at Bai. She then creates both a daily and weekly to-do list based on the calendar. “I make sure there’s flexibility because something always comes up — you have to be prepared to fight some fires.”
Schedule social posts ahead of time and in bulk.
Scheduling posts saves a lot of time, and it allows you to focus on other parts of your job instead of being constantly distracted by the need to publish at certain times of day.
HubSpot Social Media Manager Robyn Showers tweets from the @HubSpot account 24 or more times per day, not including replies to other Twitter users. To save time, she uses Social Inbox to schedule tweets in bulk by uploading them from a spreadsheet. (HubSpot customers: Learn how to use the bulk scheduling tool here.) “I also tend to schedule Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ posts several days ahead of time,” says Showers.
Use the free app Wunderlist to sync your to-do list across all your devices.
Social media managers would be lost without their to-do lists. Oftentimes, the question is: What’s the best to-do list app out there? “Wunderlist,” says Showers without hesitation. “It’s just a simple to-do app, but it syncs between my work computer, my home computer, and my cell phone, and allows me to drag and drop tasks between days or categories as well as set alerts and due dates.”
You can also share lists with colleagues, add notes to make sure all your ideas are captured, and turn emails into to-do list items by simply forwarding them to the app. And did I mention it’s free?
What Exactly is a Social Media Content Calendar?
A social media editorial content calendar is your secret weapon in your social media marketing plan. It’s used to plan and schedule your social media posts in advance. Your editorial calendar helps you to decide which content you plan on sharing and also helps track deadlines. It keeps you focused and takes a lot of the headache out of social media content planning. Rather than thinking about what you are going to post every day, you plan all your content in one go for the next two to three months.
With so many social media channels to stay on top of, a calendar could be just what you need to spread your message consistently. Typically, social media calendars are either built using spreadsheets or specific software. Spreadsheets are the more cost-effective option, however, software services can help save time and have powerful automation capabilities. Spreadsheets are definitely a workable solution when you’re first starting out but as your social media planning matures, software tools and services are extremely useful.
Why Should You Use a Social Media Content Calendar
A social media content calendar gives your team one place to focus on. Without it, it can leave your staff in the dark when it comes to your social media strategy. This can lead to frustration and confusion. It’s hard to effectively engage your audience and build your business with no strategy and content calendar in place.
Save Time and Stay Organized
There’s nothing worse than scrambling to put together a post five minutes before it needs to go live. With calendars, you can plan out weeks’ or even months’ worth of social media content in one go. This helps to free up your time in the future. Otherwise, you end up spending more time each day crafting posts and thinking about how it fits in with your overall strategy.
Customize Posts for Each Social Media Channel
Instead of pushing the same message across all your social channels, a content calendar lets you customize your post for each channel. You can craft a custom message for each channel that suits the platform and your audience. For example, you may use Instagram to push out a snippet of your latest video while using Facebook and YouTube to push out the full video.
Track Performance
Scheduling and planning content with a calendar allows you to track post performance more effectively. You have access to the bigger picture. Your team can look back at certain pieces of content and find out which one performed the best. This helps to improve your social media content and learn from both your successes and mistakes.
Boost Efficiency and Maintain Consistency
Inefficiency can impact the customer’s experience with your brand. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 72% of B2B marketers consider the development of their content strategy a major factor in their success. When you have all the information you need in one place, it helps your team to maintain one consistent message across the board with a regular posting schedule.
The Feel Good Social Media Podcast has an excellent episode on content planning. The episode shares three tips on how to be more effective and efficient on social media and stop wasting time.
Top Social Media Management Tools for Businesses of All Sizes
1. Buffer
The platform for successful social media management
Prices: Forever free plan, $5, $10, add $10 per month per social channel connected (with a 14-day free trial).
Description: Buffer is an intuitive, streamlined social media management platform trusted by small businesses and individuals to help drive meaningful engagement and results on social media.
We have a suite of products for publishing, engagement, analytics, simple landing pages, and team collaboration. Our products are carefully considered and highly refined in order to help social media marketers and teams work more efficiently and effectively.
Unique value: What we’ve heard from our customers is that they love how clean and intuitive our tools are, how friendly and timely our customer support is, and how helpful our content is.
2. Hootsuite
Manage all your social media in one place
Prices: Free plan, $29, $129, $599 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Hootsuite, probably the biggest social media management tool, is used by over 15 million people and more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies.
There’s a good reason for their success: it’s an all-in-one platform that allows you to curate and schedule content, measure your social ROI, run social media ads, and more.
Unique value: Being such a comprehensive platform, there are several things that people love about Hootsuite: being able to monitor multiple accounts and keywords, connect with over 35 social networks, and bulk-schedule social media posts.
3. Sprout Social
Real people. Real brands. Real connection.
Prices: $99, $149, and $249 per user per month (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social combines several social media tools into one platform — from social media scheduling to monitoring, to reporting.
Sprout Social is one of the few social media management tools that provides customer relationship management (CRM) features. Having a complete profile of your customers help you serve them better and build stronger relationships with them.
Unique value: The most common praise I’ve heard about Sprout Social is its amazing reports. Many social media managers found the reports so great and beautiful that they would download and send them to their managers or clients without editing them.
4. Agora Pulse
Social media management simplified
Prices: Free, $79 per month, $159 per month, plus enterprise options
Description: Like the social media management platforms mentioned above, Agora Pulse is also an all-in-one social media platform with scheduling, responding, and reporting features.
Unique value: Unlike the rest, Agora Pulse has several unique features such as competitor analysis and Facebook contest apps at a very affordable price point.
5. Sendible
The #1 social media management tool for agencies
Prices: $29, $99, $199, $299 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Sendible is a social media management tool built specifically for agencies with several clients. On top of most features that social media management tools provide, Sendible allows you to customize your dashboard according to your branding to attract new clients.
Unique value: Sendible has some impressive integrations such as the Canva graphics editor, royalty-free image search, and YouTube search. It also provides some automation for those who want to save time on repetitive tasks.
Conclusion
Do you have too many social media accounts to manage? Are you finding it difficult navigating between all of their official websites and profiles? Do you spend most of your time updating, monitoring and managing them individually? If the answer to any of the above is yes, then this article is for you.