A Deep Dive into Social Media Management Tools and Platforms

In order for businesses to stay afloat and maintain their online reputation, a well-developed official website is not enough. If a business conducts its online services, it must conduct high-quality online communication with customers. This is precisely why businesses need social networks, where users have their own accounts purely for the communication and expression of their own opinion. According to Statista , there are more than 3.6 billion registered users in the world today. So if a company masters social networks in order to promote its own brand, the company will not only increase its profits, and will expand the recognition of its brand.

In this article, we will explain what social media management is, what it brings to companies, and also provide examples of popular social media management tools (noting our contribution to the development of these tools).

Understanding Social Media Management

Social network management is a set of strategies, methods and tools that contribute to the effective management of social networks by an individual or an organization that promotes its brand. This also includes content creation, communication with the audience, received data analysis using tools like Meta Business Suite. With the help of social media management, brands can think through the next steps of their marketing campaign, attracting new audiences and maintaining communication with a loyal base of old customers, etc.

As a rule, several main stages of social network management are distinguished, including

Platform selection and market research. First of all, it is necessary to pay attention to the popularity of these platforms. YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook are examples of the most popular social networks. In addition, when choosing a social network, it is also important to analyze the audience by age, preferences, gender, and education. Having defined a certain audience, it will be easier to choose the right platform.
Branding strategy development. It includes the buyer persona, the goals a company wants to achieve, brand intonation, etc.
Design, content and advertising development. Brand recognition is created by logo design, pages desing and advertising posts.
Content plan creation. It’s a plan with various types of content about the company and services that the brand will distribute on its page. The plan can usually be created in Excel and other convenient marketing tools. And if a company uses multiple social networks, it can use tools to automate posting, such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc.
Brand reputation management online. This step includes content posting and direct communication with users and tracking feedback from them.
Further monitoring and analytics. With the help of tracking tools for social networks, you can get reports on campaigns effectiveness and users reaction to the brand. Based on this data, the company can understand the reasons for success and failure of its steps, analyze them and improve its own strategy.

Tools and Platforms for Social Media Management

UCTRL

Our developers also contributed to a platform creation that both manages social networks and provides a convenient platform for online sales. UCTRL is a Multifunctional platform with Centralized Content Management System features for cross-platform sharing (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest), Marketplace functionality for trading/buying/selling different kinds of goods, internal Social Community where people can share their lifestyle, preferences and find like-minded people, personal cloud storage, and tools for increasing Marketing and Advertising Purposes.

This platform contains several sections including

Cloud storage. When a user logs into their account, they enter page with cloud storage by default. Depending on the subscription, the amount of storage can be from 5 to more than 30 gigabytes. Subscription for a user is determined not only by the amount of storage but also by the number of social networks to which the user can be subscribed – from two to eight. In total, we have approved 8 popular social networks to work: Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest. And a user can choose the number of desired social networks, according to the subscription. For example, a user can choose Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook, or Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok – depending on their needs. They connect to the social network, log in through it, and the user receives information about existing posts.

Content management system. On the Content Management System page, the user has a list of those posts that they have posted on different social media pages. By choosing one or more social networks, a user sees posts and the reactions people leave on the selected social networks. If a user receives a comment on one of these social networks, they can reply to this comment, and the comment will be published on Facebook or any other social media. In addition, the platform allows you to edit a post that was published on Facebook and publish it on Instagram, for example.
An account with a feed of those to whom the user is subscribed. A user has their own account, which resembles Instagram by work principles. A user on UCTRL creates a post, chooses a photo, and writes its description. They put tags here, and categories: (audio, video, etc), choose a social network for publication (Facebook and Instagram, for example), and click to publish. After that, this post does not appear in the general feed, it appears in the feed of those who are subscribed to the user. This post accordingly appears in the user’s profile.
Marketplace. A user creates similar posts as in the community, and a list of items (up to 5 products) is added. These items are marked on the photo and the price is indicated. The seller creates a product description, and the buyer, who is interested in an item, can add the product to the saved, and send a purchase request. As for the purchase of the product, there are two options available: to quickly buy it at the specified price or to make your offer with their price, which can be higher or lower. In turn, the seller, who sees this bid, receives the message: “You have received a bid.” Here, they open the offers tab and see what was sent to them. It is worth mentioning that we have implemented the Stripe payment system for the marketplace so that customers can pay for their purchases, and the seller can transfer money to their account through Stripe.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media account management app that is available both online and as a smartphone app. The application allows you to manage accounts in such social networks as LinkedIn, Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories and Pinterest.

Buffer enables users to plan and post content on different social networks, analyze feedback from social networks, see users comments and reply to them from one platform, create a landing page and generate ideas and content with the help of AI.

The application provides users with two types of service packages: paid and free. The user can connect accounts from 3 social networks for free, schedule and send 10 publications, get access to different default time intervals, which are determined by the activity of users in social networks, but the Buffer user can choose the activity times. The free version allows the user to track comments, likes, reposts, reactions, etc. The free version of Buffer can be installed as an API for browsers such as Google Chrome, Safari, and Mozilla Firefox, and as a mobile app on iOS and Android.

Speaking about the paid version, a user can connect a larger number of accounts for a separate fee, and the number of posts that can be scheduled is unlimited. The functionality of the paid version is more advanced, as here the user can manage hashtags, shorten links and schedule the release of video content. The paid version also provides more extensive opportunities for audience analysis, analysis of feedback from Instagram stories, tags, and receiving ideas from artificial intelligence.

Loomly

Loomly is another popular tool designed for brand development in social networks. This tool is also used by world giants such as BMW, Henkel, L’Oreal, Porche and others. Loomly is a paid service, but a user has the opportunity to try this tool for free for a trial period of 15 days. In general, Loomly includes options such as

insights for future posts,
library to save all media files,
preliminary review of the post before publication,
auto-generated post templates,
creating a posting schedule,
boost one of the posts to attract the audience,
the ability to communicate with customers across platforms
analysis of the success of accounts in various social networks.

Social media management platform Loomly works with 15 social networks and platforms, from Facebook and TikTok to Microsoft Teams, Giphy and Google Drive.

CoSchedule

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CoSchedule is another web-based platform and app that is designed to unify all marketing processes on one platform. CoSchedule is available both online and as an app for Android and iOS. CoSchedule offers several options, including:

Social calendar. A calendar with an AI assistant that allows you to create your own marketing strategy and place it into your own calendar. Also, this option allows user to change posts and move them to other days. Also, a user can optimize posts in social networks. Artificial intelligence, in its turn can generate ideas and provide more than 500 templates for marketing campaigns;
Content calendar. Similarly to social calendar, content calendar allows you to plan marketing campaigns, but this calendar is aimed at optimizing the marketer’s work with tasks, campaigns and projects;
Marketing package. A package of functions for the marketing team that allows user to optimize and organize teamwork on advertising campaigns and tasks;
Headline Studio. This tool analyzes headlines with AI on social networks like YouTube and TikTok, as well as in emails, podcasts and blogs. The check goes to the level of SEO optimization;
Marketing Institute. A library of marketing courses for acquiring new skills.

CoSchedule is a paid resource, but the user can order a free demo version of this application. Today, social media management is a key element for the development of a modern online business. By optimizing marketing campaigns and working with the audience, businesses work for their own brand awareness, profits, and also improve and maintain their own reputation. That is why social media management tools come in handy, becoming an integral part of a successful social media management strategy. Using these tools, companies are able to effectively monitor and analyze the activity of their accounts, interact with the audience, take further steps in planning content and campaigns, as well as optimize work with platforms and increase the efficiency of management in general.