Article Series #1: Tools to help you better manage your brand on social media

Note: This is the first of our 3-article series on how to leverage social media to grow your business

When you share something about your business, whether it’s an upcoming event, a promo or the launch of a new product, you’re not just helping your audience decide whether or not to click on the link and visit your site – you’re also reinforcing the connection you have with your audience, making them believe in your brand and the online community you've built.

Sharing fun and interesting posts on social media as well as important business updates are essential to achieve online marketing success. We have listed 5 tools below to help you better manage your brand’s social media accounts and maximize results.

1.       Hootsuite. This tool supports major social media platforms and is perfect for you if you want to add Foursquare into your social media campaign. You can also respond to comments and monitor brand mentions within the Hootsuite dashboard.

• Supported social media platforms: Facebook (includes Facebook Pages and Groups), Twitter,  LinkedIn (includes Company Pages and Groups), Google+, Foursquare
• Supports automated scheduling? Yes
• Available mobile apps? Yes. Apps are available for Android phones, iPhones & iPads
• Free Plan: Allows up to 5 social media profiles
• Paid Plan: Price starts at $8.99 and can have up to 50 social media profiles & 1 team member (if you want to add extra team members you may do so at an additional cost)

 2.       Buffer. This tool has fewer options than Hootsuite but it’s clean and user-friendly interface are easier to navigate. You can manually schedule each post you add or create a daily posting schedule. If you have created a posting schedule, all you need to do is add all your posts and Buffer will send them out in the order they were added based on the schedule you set.

• Supported social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook (includes Facebook Pages), LinkedIn (includes Groups), Google+, and App.net
• Supports Automated  scheduling? Yes
• Available mobile apps? Yes. Apps are available for Android phones, iPhones & iPads and Blackberry
• Free Plan: Allows up to 10 scheduled posts daily per social media account
• Paid Plan:  Starts at $10/month; unlimited posts on 12 social media profiles and can give  access to two team members

3.       Tweriod. This is a Twitter tool that helps you determine which times of the day your followers are most active. You can use the result of the analysis when creating your Twitter posting schedule.

• Free Plan: The free version of this tool analyzes the tweeting behavior of up to 1000 of your Twitter followers and lets you know the times of day they are most active.
• Paid Plan: The paid version of Tweriod analyzes the tweeting behavior of up to 5000 followers.

Over to you..

If you have any helpful tools in mind that have helped you better manage you social media campaign, please don’t hesitate to add them through the comments section below. Ready to take our 7-Day Challenge to Catapult Your Online Business to Success!? Click here:  http://www.macswomen.com/7-day-business-kickstart-challenge.html