Social media has changed the world and it continues to do so. As certain governments struggle to adapt to this technology, we see how this change has been crucial in shaping the way that governments are run. Today we look at government social media management tools, as well as how governments interact with the public using social media.
It’s no secret that social media has become the most popular way for people to obtain information about an election. However, there are still some politicians and public servants who don’t understand how important it is to be on Social Media. Voters want to see you on Facebook and Twitter — they want to connect with you! Here’s a list of social media management tools that can help you improve your online presence.
The Benefits of using a Social Media Management Tool for Government Agencies
Security: With a social media management tool, individual users have limited access
to your social media accounts based on predetermined user permissions and roles. You
can also configure the software so that all messages must be approved by administrators
before they are published. Individual user accounts, permissions, and a controlled workflow
work together to ensure that inappropriate content and honest mistakes never make it past
your administrative team.
Collaboration: Rarely is an agency’s social media strategy carried out by a single
individual. Social media management tools are built for collaboration. Again, each user has
his or her own account with specific permissions and user roles which means there’s no
sharing of passwords required. Multiple team members can share ideas, contribute content
and view reports in one place.
Efficiency: Social media management tools typically include tools that help to drive
efciency such as scheduling tools and idea generation. For example, rather than logging
into a social media account every few hours and struggling to find something relevant to
share, many social media users spend a block of time preparing several weeks of posts and
then schedule them to appear every few days.
Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a powerful social media management tool that helps businesses and agencies manage their social media accounts. It allows you to schedule posts, monitors mentions, create custom dashboards, and more.
Like other tools, Zoho Social offers a free plan that includes one team member, a zShare browser extension, and publishing on seven social channels. And, of course, premium plans come with more advanced features.
Using this tool, you can schedule unlimited posts, track social media activities, create custom reports to analyze your performance, and get notified when someone shares something about your brand on the web. It also comes with an easy-to-use interface and intuitive design that makes managing multiple accounts easier.
One of the features I like most about the collaboration. It allows you to collaborate with your team seamlessly. You can also assign custom roles to your team members so that they can work on different projects.
Overall, Zoho Social is a great tool for social media management and a free alternative to Hootsuite.
Pricing: They have four different plans. Also, each of the plans offers a 14-day free trial.
- Free plan: 1 team member, one brand, publishing on seven channels, access to zShare browser integration
- Standard plan ($10/ mo): Everything in the free plan, including multi-channel publishing, user tagging, drafts, Twitter location
- Professional plan ($30/ mo): Everything in the standard plan, including Livestream, CustomQ, bulk scheduling, RSS feeds
- Pro plan ($40/ mo): Everything in the professional plan, including SmartQ, content approvals, workflow, collaboration, content targeting, lead ads.
Combin
Are you looking for a way to grow your Instagram following? Then look no further than Combin.
Combin is the perfect tool for anyone who wants to increase their followers and engagement on Instagram. It’s simple, easy-to-use, and can help you quickly gain real followers.
Combin offers two different plans – Growth and Scheduler. The Scheduler tool is completely free to use and includes 15 Instagram accounts management, bulk image uploading, location tagging, user tagging, etc.
You can use Combin to find influencers in your niche or industry so that you can collaborate with them and get more exposure. Or, if you want to promote your account, then this is the perfect tool as well.
Their growth plan includes more powerful features such as it can detect who doesn’t follow you back, checking your Instagram audience quality, monitoring audience activity, and more.
Pricing: Combin comes at three price tiers.
- Free: One account management, two simultaneous searches, 25 search results for posts, stories mass looking.
- Personal plan ($15/ mo): unlimited simultaneous searches, 1000 search results for posts, statistics, search results refresh ability.
- Business plan ($30/ mo): 5 accounts management, unlimited simultaneous searches, 1000 search results for posts, stories mass looking.
PromoRepublic
PromoRepublic also doesn’t include a free plan, but it does offer you a free 14-day trial. Its cheapest plan is also a minimal $9 per month.
The critical point of difference for PromoRepublic is its design focus. Indeed it feels like a merger of Canva with a social media management app. You can design and schedule beautiful posts without leaving the app.
You can use it to schedule and share posts with all the major social networks, including Instagram and Pinterest. PromoRepublic suggests a suitable posting schedule for each of your social networks, but you can easily modify this. You organize your posting schedules across a centralized calendar.
It comes with 100,000 post ideas, and these cover a wide range of topics. Most come pre-designed, with eye-catching graphics. You can easily modify and customize their post ideas to suit your business with PromoRepublic’s full graphics editor.
PromoRepublic is currently trialing brand reputation management. You can request beta access so that you can get live updates about your brand from the web and social media.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite’s main app focuses predominantly on social publishing. You need to buy a separate app (Hootsuite Insights) if you want social listening capabilities.
It offers a free plan, with three social accounts, one user, and up to 30 scheduled messages. You gain unlimited scheduling with the $29 per month Professional plan, along with a series of other upgraded features.
The core of Hootsuite is Streams. You set up a tab for each of your social networks on the Streams page, and then you add a series of streams for each social account. You can use these streams as a replacement for the individual social account apps. For example, you might have the following streams from your Twitter account: Scheduled Posts, Mentions, your Twitter Home page feed, a list of tweets you make, and a stream for each of your Twitter lists.
You have multiple ways of making posts, including the Publisher screen which features a calendar view.
Socialoomph
Socialoomph has provided scheduled social posting services since 2008. It offers three paid plans, as well as a free plan. The Free Plan allows a single user to schedule unlimited posts to one social profile (limited to a maximum of three posts per hour). Even the most expensive Business Suite is reasonably priced compared to competing apps.
Socialoomph has a much more spartan interface than its competitors. It does, however, provide numerous benefits, and techies will love it. Most other people will need to make use of the help files as setting up your social accounts is the most challenging part of the entire process.
A central concept in Socialoomph is that of teams. With a free account, you automatically have one team – called “My Account.”
Socialoomph offers a variety of ways to create posts. You can both schedule and queue posts. You can begin posts from scratch; you can bulk import them, you can set up various queues, and collect content from RSS feeds.
You can also use Socialoomph to post to your blog. You can create content for your blog and publish it at set times using Socialoomph’s queue. You can then use another queue to publicize your blog posts across your social channels.
Rival IQ
Rival IQ is targeted toward large organizations and designed to help you analyze social media data and performance. The tool’s top features include competitive analysis, social post analysis, social reporting, and social media audits. You can try the platform for free before investing, and pricing plans range from $199 to $499 per month.
SEMrush
SEMrush is a social media tool best known for its SEO and competitor research capabilities. This tool will help you identify keywords to use within your content to help improve your search engine rankings and social presence. The tool can also help you with your content marketing strategy and web page optimization. SEMrush offers a free trial, and upgraded plans range from $119.95 to $449.95 per month.
Conclusion
The world is moving faster than ever before with almost instantaneous communication from any part of the globe to another. Thanks to this, more and more businesses are beginning to realize that their social media presence is not just something “nice to have” but a necessity for success. This even includes the government and social media has become an indispensable way for them to reach the people who matter — i.e., the constituents of their states and countries.