I spend a lot of time crafting messages and content for not only my personal networks online, but also for the ones that I work for. One thing that I have found to be one of the key essentials for success with any social media effort is the art of Listening and Engaging.
For you to be successful in listening and engaging, you need the right tools. There are dozens of different platforms that cater to your every whim and fancy for social analytics, reports, etc. Because I am a freelancer, and have to pay for my own tools, I tend to side with what's the best bang for the buck, and I wanted to share with you what I use on a daily basis.
Buffer is my first go to tool here. I manage multiple accounts daily, and having relevant content that is crafted for whatever campaign, messaging, or engagement needs is without a doubt, necessary. I work on planning ahead with all of these, and have content crafted specifically for the next few weeks, and with Buffer, I can schedule my content to go out at specific times each day, tailored to my exact needs. Buffer also gives me quick analytics on each post as to how well it did with engagement, retweets, favorites, and the like. So many good features packed into one quality tool, that has apps for whatever mobile device you use. I pay $10/month for the Buffer Pro account, and if your business needs a team approach for this, they have that too! Simple is sometimes best, and now they have been recommending content based of your history, which has been surprisingly accurate and very helpful!
Hootsuite is the king of integration of all things social. You can create columns for any profile you manage, keywords, searches, location-based conversations, as well as app integration with multiple social networks. Custom analytics, team-based tools for assigning responses to tweets/posts; there's almost nothing Hootsuite can't do to fit your needs. For another $10/month you can have a Hootsuite Pro plan, and they provide 50 points for your analytic needs. It gets a bit pricey if you need multiple analytics to be created, but for the convenience of time saved, and having it delivered right to your inbox, it's worth every penny. I personally pay extra ($21/month) to be enrolled in the Hootsuite University, which has an abounding resource of webinars to teach best practices for social media, straight from the professionals who created some of the networks, and who are key influencer's.
TweetDeck is always running on my desktop or laptop when I'm working. The one feature that keeps me having it installed is the pop-up notifications. I work with a couple monitors, and having the pop-up and sound notification pings me to whatever I tell it to remind me of. I only have the "Notification" columns for my social networks on here, and that alerts me to any retweets, favorites, mentions, and new followers. That gives me the ability, in real-time, to respond. Now Hootsuite does do this as well, but the pop-up feature isn't there, and with how many columns and networks I have set up on Hootsuite, TweetDeck has been the better option for me. Plus, when I am engaged in a Twitter Chat, and have my usual multiple-personality online disorder going (running two accounts in a Twitter Chat), having TweetDeck there with the hashtag column, and a different account as the default, really helps. Best of all, it's free!
I hope you find this helpful, and both Buffer and Hootsuite offer free versions of their programs so that you can kick the tires and see how they go. These tools have helped me gain more followers, become more influential, and grow communities better, than I could have without them.
Cheers!
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