The Social Media Manager is that mystical figure who at Christmas lunches is classified by relatives, who still haven’t understood what he does, to the one who “does the things on social”.
So, let’s start here: who is the social media manager (also shortened to SMM)? In simple terms, the SMM is that figure in agency, and sometimes even in a company, who takes care of a brand’s communication on social channels. He/she studies the most suitable strategy for each client, which includes the choice of channels to be covered, the tone of voice to be used and the mood to be followed. He also often takes care of the creation of the actual content, whether graphic or video.
More specifically, he then goes on to define the editorial plan and calendar, detailing the single posts, including the forecast of the day and time to post, the visual to be associated, and the relative copy.
Although up to this point it may seem to be an all-singing, all-dancing job, the social media manager may face several difficulties, first of all, due to being part of the digital world: missing publications, managing comments and, occasionally, crisis, multi-platform strategies and retrieving analytical data for reporting are examples.
Here, then, is a list of the best tools (for convenience divided by topic) that a SMM can rely on to simplify his work.
- Tools for social scheduling
- Tools for inspiration
- Tools for collecting analytics and insights
Social Scheduling Tools
Scheduling posts is one of the great dilemmas of social media managers: to schedule or not to schedule? Obviously, the first option would be the ideal one if it were not for the fact that the time wasted jumping from one dashboard to another to schedule on different social media is almost greater than the time spent manually posting.
So here come some tools that allow us to group all the social media channels we are interested in one place and, therefore, to schedule posts dedicated to different socials from a single dashboard.
- Hootsuite
It’s a pretty common opinion that Hootsuite is the best platform for social network management – a bit of an SMM paradise, in short.
The features it offers are plenty:- Of course, you can schedule your content on lots of different social networks from a single dashboard.
- The platform suggests the days and times when it would be best to post to gain the best engagement based on your audience’s activity on the app
- The platform offers a hashtag generator service that recommends which ones to use to increase the chance of hitting users in line with your target audience
- You can create a custom link in bio landing page to drive traffic to your website or e-commerce
- It groups messages and comments received on different social channels so you can easily answer them all, directly from the platform
- Its social listening system can be activated by keywords, hashtags, and mentions so you’re always ready to step in on the conversation of your interest
- Offers a neat dashboard where you can have access to all published or scheduled content
- Makes available the data and insights you need to analyze the performance of all social channels and it allows you to understand if your strategy is working.
Pro: Are you sure we need to repeat ‘all of the above’?
Cons: fairly high price, even for the basic subscription.
If you need to find a solution to its “cons”, there are several alternatives to Hootsuite that offer similar, although somewhat more limited, features:
- Later
It offers the possibility to schedule your posts on different social channels, create and customize the link in bio landing page to drive traffic to your website, offers an automatic caption writing service, allows you to explore the UGCs and repost them, and access analytics and insights to understand if your content is right for your audience.
Pro: very intuitive and well-organized platform at an affordable price, it is one of the most reliable platforms at the moment.
Cons: Due to the low cost it doesn’t offer some features offered by other similar platforms such as social listening or detailed reports - PostPickr
PostPickr is a Made in Italy social platform. Unlike other platforms it allows you to create multiple editorial projects to manage separately (very useful if you manage channels for different clients), and it has very wide integration with lots of different social networks, even Google Business and Telegram.
Its artificial intelligence is powered by ChatGPT and it supports more than 10 different types of sources including RSS feeds, blogs, and apps, so you can browse them at any time.
It also has an extension for Google Chrome that allows you to instantly share content you find while browsing.
In addition, of course, to all the features we mentioned above for other platforms.
Pro: offers several plans, including one completely free, and prices are affordable.
Cons: too few to mention.
Inspiration Tools
But what to do when you don’t know what to schedule? If you have a lack of inspiration don’t beat yourself up, it happens to everyone. In those moments, there are tools that can help you get out of social media manager’s block (oh, it wasn’t like this?).
- Google Trends
It is the most classic of tools but still one of the most useful: being a Google product, Trends has access to a great amount of searches. This then allows it to analyze a sample of these searches, in relation to a specific topic and period, and return a graph of the trend of searches on that topic. In addition, it provides a section in which it is possible to know the terms and queries related to your keyword that have increased in search volume over the last period.
But why can this come in handy for a social media manager?
Because, starting with a product, it is in this way possible to find all those themes or keywords that the users themselves are interested in related to the primary product.
Let’s take a practical example: I handle social media for a brand that sells dog food. At the time I’m writing this article, I searched the keyword “dog food” on Google Trends. Now I know that in Italy, in the last 30 days, the related topics that are growing in search volumes are “Arcaplanet”, “Royal Canin”, “Kilogram” and “Allergy”.
How can I translate this information into social material?- For example, the first two results make me aware of which store and brand is the most popular right now for dog owners. With Arcaplanet I could search for a partnership, while Royal Canin right now represents my main competitor: how does it communicate? What and how does it communicate on social media?
- The keyword “Kilogram” leads me to think that dog owners might prefer to buy the food in large quantities, rather than 500g packages. Does my client have these products? If the answer is yes, then it’s better to push these than smaller packs.
- Finally, the keyword “Allergy” tells me that many dog owners are looking for the best food for their furry friend who, unfortunately, has allergies. So perhaps it’s better to talk about the hypoallergenic food line rather than the sterilized dog line
- AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic was a wonderful discovery: it is what you call a search listening tool created by Neil Patel, a well-known American marketer.
In practice this platform allows you to discover what people are asking search engines for, thus creating a direct channel to the thoughts and fears of your target audience.
On a technical level, AnswerThePublic analyzes the auto-fill data of search engines (even YouTube) and extracts the phrases and questions most searched by users on the keyword entered. I mean, a true goldmine of information!
Besides giving an indication of the average cost per click, which is useful in case you want to activate search ads, the platform returns the questions, prepositions and comparisons most searched by users in relation to your keyword.
Let’s follow the previous example: searching for “dog food” we find that the queries with the highest search volume are, for example, “where to buy dog food online”, “how to make dog food at home” or “what food to give an adult dog”.
Now, then, we know that dog owners often are looking for the answers to these questions on search engines. Why not offer them on a silver platter on social channels with our content as well? This way we will have a double benefit: on one hand we will give some useful and valuable information to our target audience, and on the other hand we will create content that will probably do better than others in terms of engagement and interactions, precisely because it will be more interesting to our audience. - BuzzSumo
This platform is very useful in the analysis phase: with a huge database ranging from the last 15 minutes to the last 5 years, it allows you to group all the information you need to create your content.
For example, you can discover trending topics and content that is most popular among users in a given niche, track competitors, profiles of interest and brand mentions to receive alerts that allow you to take timely action, and, most importantly, find out who are the real influencers in your industry, those with a highly engaged community and who enjoy genuine authority.
Analytics and Insight Collection Tools
We’ve tackled the creative part, but it’s not a social media management job without some data. Since it is very often more like a love/hate relationship, here are some tools that will skew you more toward the first.
- Not Just Analytics
Founded in 2018, Not Just Analytics (formerly Ninjalitics) is a totally Italian project, born from the idea that Instagram is founded on communities made up of real people, who do not just play the role of followers (hence their slogan People not Followers).
In practical terms, the tool allows for the analysis of data and insights from Instagram and TikTok profiles in a completely transparent and cost-free way.
Just enter the username of the profile you want to analyze on the platform and you will receive, besides those easily available directly from the profiles (such as followers, follows, and posts), the following useful information:
- Average likes, comments, and video views
- Profile engagement rate
- Followers and following growth over the past week
- Whether the profile has recorded follow/unfollow or story viewer activity (a bad sign if, for example, you are analyzing an influencer’s profile for possible collaboration)
- A graph showing follower growth over a given period (it can be 7 days, 1/3/6 months, or from the very beginning)
- The most used hashtags
- An analysis chart of post interactions
- A detailed analysis of individual content with day and time of publication, number of likes, comments and views received, and mentions and hashtags used.
Obviously, by subscribing to the service you can have many other features and data that are super useful to understand how to improve your clients’ profiles or analyze those of competitors and influencers you might be interested in.
- TapInfluence
TapInfluence is a platform dedicated entirely to influencer marketing. Here, brands have the opportunity to activate collaborations with creators selected among a vast amount of categories such as food, lifestyle, and fashion, and learn about the possible price range of each influencer in order to make an aware and well-informed choice.
The platform will then help the brand understand the performance of these campaigns by providing metrics relevant to the business goals (defined in campaign construction), as well as its performance, related to industry benchmarks, ROI, and conversions. - Keyhole
Keyhole, on the other hand, is a useful tool for tracking trends and hot topics on social media. Through keywords and hashtags analysis, one can find useful information about related trends, such as user engagement and conversations around them.
But why is ‘hashtag analysis’’ so important? Because your potential audience will be exactly there when they are looking for the answers they need. Therefore, it will be essential to be there at the exact moment when your possible new customer will be actively interested in what you offer. And, in fact, that’s not the end of the story: the platform has developed an artificial intelligence service that can measure and predict the success of newly created hashtags.
It also allows you to identify the most relevant influencers for your industry, analyze their accounts, and identify those that boast genuine engagement from their community.
So here are all your new aces up your sleeve for a top social media manager job!
Of course, there are many other tools that can help with social media work, so our advice is to do a little research and find the platform that best suits your needs, both in terms of features and, naturally, in terms of price.
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