Consider These 11 Critical Factors Before Investing In a Social Media Management Tool

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Shopping for a social media management tool is like traveling in a maze. Everywhere you turn, you see a tool someone swears is the best ever.

And now, the gushing recommendations have resulted in a list of 7 tools.

But how do you pick one among the enticing options?

First, no social media management tool works for every business. That’s why they all have 1-star reviews.

Second, investing in a social media management tool goes beyond pleasing your friends. It’s about selecting a tool that helps you achieve your social media marketing goals.

So, when you go through this list, focus on factors that align most with your business needs.

Check out these 11 factors before paying for one of those tools.

1. Supported social media channels

You need to focus on some social media channels because your ideal customers love using them.

For instance, if you run social media marketing campaigns for a B2B manufacturing company, you may focus more on LinkedIn and Twitter than Snapchat.

On the other hand, if you run social media campaigns for a chef, you may focus more on Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

So, what are your audience’s favorite social media channels? Which social media channels do you currently run campaigns on?

In another case, say you’re a member of a marketing agency, you may run social media campaigns on 6 or more social channels. 

In such a situation, you need a single tool that supports all those platforms instead of paying for 2 or 3 tools. This way, you can manage all your social media posts in a place.

Sure, this single tool or plan may be expensive. But compared to buying 2 or 3 tools, it will likely be cheaper.

For example, Loomly integrates with 9 major social media channels. And you can also activate a custom social channel like Reddit.

Before picking a tool, ensure it supports all the social media channels you want to run campaigns on.

2. Scheduling features

Ultimately, you want to be able to plan your social media posts for weeks.

Rather than visit your social media profiles to publish posts every day, you can spend a few hours and schedule posts for a whole week.

So, how well can a tool help to schedule those posts? The thing is, to schedule a post effectively, other features have to be present in a social media management tool. 

Content creation interface 

This is where you create content for various social channels. Here, the interface should allow you to add texts, emoji, images, and videos while creating your posts. 

Some tools also allow you to create posts at once for many social media channels.

An example is Pallyy, a social tool that lets you create posts for multiple accounts at a time.

You also have the ability to edit the post for each account to suit the social channel. 

Then, the interface should allow you publish, schedule, or save your posts. This interface should be simple and easy to use.

Post queue management 

Once you create posts, you need to organize them in a queue according to your preferred publishing order.

Sometimes, you need to publish some posts repeatedly to get the optimum exposure. 

You’ll find some tools that add a post to different parts of the queue once you indicate you want it repeated.

In fact, some tools will recommend the best time to publish your posts based on your past account and audience activities.

This will set you up for the highest reach possible.

Content curation 

It’s often difficult to keep up with your audience’s content needs. Meanwhile, only high engagement breeds more engagement on social media platforms.

Your new posts will appear close to the top of the feeds for users who engage with your posts.

Luckily, content curation supplies content to feature on your pages. 

Some tools allow you to connect content sources for curated content. Then, you can add these pieces of content to your schedule. 

ContentStudio has a robust content curation feature that can supply all the content you need to engage your audience.

Of course, curated content on your profiles must be similar to the content type you publish. It should also be relevant to your audience.

Content calendar 

The calendar provides an overview of your publishing schedule. Beyond that, it helps you publish social content consistently. Most tools offer this in the monthly and weekly views.

3. Pricing

The way I see pricing is, you either care about it or you don’t.

If you’re on a tight budget, you’ll care about pricing.

If you’re on a big budget, you’ll care less. You won’t mind that a social media management tool costs $500 if it can bring an ROI of $10,000 in terms of time saved and results delivered.

That said, pricing can differ wildly, even for the same tool. The amount you pay will depend on the features you want.

Then, tools have different pricing structures. For example, some tools let you adjust pricing based on variables like the number of social media accounts or users.

I think a great practice is to specify the number of social accounts, users, and other things you need before hunting for a social media management tool.

This way, you can determine how much each tool costs for the features you need.

Keep in mind that you can pay as low as $0 or as high as $1,000 monthly for a social media management tool.

4. Collaboration

If you work with clients (as a social media manager) or as part of a social media team, collaboration is a must in your social media management tool.

You want to assign tasks like post creation or inbox engagement to different team members.

You want clients to access your social media calendar, view posts, and approve them before they go live.

Of course, many tools offer social media collaboration features.

But what tasks can you collaborate on, and what actions can collaborators take?

What are the permissions you can set for a collaborator?

It’s important to answer these questions before you buy a tool.

Loomly and Sendible provide robust collaboration features.

Both tools also let you set up custom permissions for collaborators.

Loomly also lets you set up an approval workflow for your publishing process.

5. Ease of use

One thing I’ve discovered is that ease of use is relative and personal.

You can believe a tool is easy to use, and your team members will disagree.

However, generally, an easy-to-use social media tool should help you execute these tasks without needing help:

• Creating social content
• Scheduling posts
• Engaging with your audience
• Accessing post analytics
• Finding performance reports 
• Collaborating with team members

If you plan to collaborate with team members or clients, you have to consider their technical know-how while selecting a tool.

Will your team members and clients find the tool easy?

If they don’t, they won’t use it.

Unfortunately, that defeats the whole purpose of getting results from a social media tool.

You can go through a free trial to determine a product’s ease of use before paying for it.

6. Analytics and reporting

Analytics can provide insights into how your campaigns perform.

Once you define the metrics to track performance, your tool should provide these metrics.

For instance, if you aim to increase engagement, you can look at metrics such as the number of comments or clicks to your web page.

To further illustrate, if your campaign goal is to increase social traffic, then the number of link clicks helps measure this goal. Does your prospective social media management tool provide these metrics?

Some common metrics you’ll find on these tools are:

• Reach
• Likes
• Comments
• Clicks
• Shares

Beyond seeing these metrics, you may need to report to your boss or clients.

In this case, pay attention to a tool’s reporting feature.

Some tools allow you to customize reports with your preferred metrics. Then, you can schedule reports to deliver to clients at specified periods.

A social media management tool such as NapoleonCat allows you to create reports and schedule reports at intervals.

So, if you have clients or a boss who expects regular reports, all you need to do is enter their email addresses and the time interval. They’ll have those reports in their inbox without you lifting a finger.

7. Paid campaign features

Today, businesses get poor results with organic social media posts. So, most businesses now need to run paid campaigns to achieve their campaign goals.

If you want to run both organic and paid campaigns in one place, then your social media management tool must support paid campaigns. 

Ideally, such a tool will allow you to create these campaigns from your dashboard. Then, you’ll see campaign metrics in the tool.

Sproutsocial allows you to run paid social campaigns in the tool. 

In addition, you can get reports of your campaign performance and evaluate the ROI of your ad spend.

8. Social media listening

Many times, you miss a lot of things people say about your brand. Because, in those situations, they forgot to tag or mention your account.

Unfortunately, this can mean a lot of lost opportunities.

With social listening, however, you can catch up with conversations about your brand, even if users fail to tag your account. 

This will help you discover potential customers, angry customers, or happy customers.

Beyond that, you can also track conversations about specific keywords, your competitors, or your industry. A tool like Agorapulse allows you to track keywords, phrases, hashtags, and even user names on social media.

Put simply, social listening lets you uncover conversations and, consequently, take profitable business actions.

You can also set up alerts for these keywords whenever they appear on social media.

If this feature is important to your business, check if a prospective social media tool has it.

9. Integrations

Your social media campaigns are a part of your overall marketing strategy. So, your social media management tool needs to integrate with other marketing tools.

For instance, you can integrate a feed like Feedly for effective content curation. And if your tool integrates with Zapier, it can open up even more integrations.

Other integrations such as Slack, Bitly, Trello, and more can also improve your social media workflows.

For instance, Sproutsocial integrates with these other marketing tools:

First, list the tools you use for various aspects of your social media campaigns.

Does your prospective social media management tool integrate with them? If not, can you overlook it?

Access to needed integrations will help you execute other tasks beyond the capabilities of your social media management tool. 

10. Online customer reviews

Every social media management tool is the best. At least, according to the team behind it.

But in reality, that’s far from the truth. There are sloppy tools that do far less than they promise.

One of the best ways to detect these tools, before you flush your money down the drain, is to check online customer reviews. Since customers have little to lose from making negative statements about a tool, they’re more likely to do so.

After creating a shortlist of the tools you want to purchase, ensure you go on review sites to see what their past and current customers think about them.

What problems are customers solving with the tool? Which features work best on the tool?

What are the common problems they face while using the tool? Are the customer support reps responsive?

Once you go through reviews, you’ll find trends that can inform your decision about which tool to go for. You can check some common review platforms, including G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, Software Advice, and more.

See an example of a tool review on G2:

Apart from customer reviews online, you can also ask friends who may have experience with social media management tools.

11. Customer support

No matter how intuitive a tool may be, you may still face issues while using it. For instance, executing a task or using a feature can be challenging.

In situations like these, it’s vital to have access to robust customer support that will get you out of the problem. Of course, you don’t have to speak with a rep before you can solve your problem.

Some common customer support channels include:

• Help Center
• Email
• Live chat
• Social media

Ideally, most tools will provide support on all these channels. And most times, you’ll see a live chat button right inside the tool.

This way, you can always resolve your problems without leaving the tool or the task you’re doing. Apart from offering support on these channels, another matter is how responsive the customer care reps are.

One way to know is to see what customers say about their customer support in online reviews. 

Also, if the tool allows a free trial, you can reach out to customer support if you have an issue. Consequently, you’ll see firsthand the customer support’s responsiveness.

Conclusion

Buying a social media management tool is a significant investment for your business.

First, because of the amount of money you’ll spend. But beyond that, the boost in productivity that comes by exploiting an effective social media management tool.

So, it’s a decision you need to make carefully. Go through this list and consider the factors most essential to your business. 

The great thing is that most social media management tools offer free trials. So, you should try a tool before paying for it.

Have I missed out on a vital factor? Tell me in the comments!

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