Those who work in the world of social media marketing know that tools are indispensable for achieving good results. There are some tools that serve to speed up a series of operations that would be difficult (perhaps impossible) to carry out in minimum time. Others, on the other hand, make an important contribution to group work. Today I want to focus on this point.
Which are the best social media marketing tools to work in teams and simplify all the operations necessary for those who have to move in a group but in a simple and precise way?
I am not a supporter of the big lists, of endless lists that never give a definitive answer. Here are 5 really useful tools for your social media manager team.
Use Mention to manage your quotes
One of the best solutions to get the messages about your brand on the Internet under control? Mention is the answer, not only because it allows you to work with any platform and also monitors citations that are made on forums, web pages and public social networks.
With this social media marketing tool you can work in teams and assign specific messages to the right people to face the job in the best possible way.
Define the workflow with Trello
Do you know the agile methodology? It’s a real philosophy to manage the workflow that you can exploit in different ways. Although it is particularly dear to programmers, this solution adapts to the work of the social media manager and its colleagues. Just use the right software like, for example, Trello. What is it about?
This tool allows you to create job boards divided into flows that split the tasks in progress from those performed and from everything that is still in draft. You can enrich each element with text, bullet lists, attachments and images. Therefore, you can imagine how much it can help you manage the various social updates in a team that has to operate on different online channels.
Share materials on Google Drive
What is the best way to create a text file – for example a brief or an editorial calendar on Excel – that will have to read all? Again, how to share the photos you need to have to create the graphics to be published in Facebook, Twitter and Instagram updates?
The answer for me is clear: you have to use Google Drive. There are many tools that offer cloud archives that can be reached from any device and from multiple locations. But with Google Drive you have immediate integration with Document, Gmail, Calendar and all the other Mountain View tools. So for me it remains the best way to share useful material at work on social networks.
Best alternative: Dropbox
Are you not satisfied with Google Drive or are you simply looking for something simpler that does not involve an entire office suite? You can activate the always valid Dropbox, a cloud application that offers a good amount of free gigabytes and different paid profiles that allow you to share and archive practically everything. Even endless amounts of photos.
Hootsuite: organize flows and tasks
Many know the importance of this operational suite to update different social networks. You can also monitor hashtags and keywords, and then on Twitter it becomes a fundamental resource for updating and following different accounts. But not everyone knows that this social media marketing tool is perfect for sharing work among the various team members.
With the advanced versions of Hootsuite (the free version does not offer similar solutions) you can assign specific tasks to the members of the social team, limiting the actions and giving the authorizations to intervene only to those who serve. All this to increase the efficiency and precision of work.
Alternatives: Tweetdeck and Postpickr
The aim of these professional utilities: to reduce publication errors of responses and significantly reduce waiting times. Are there any alternatives to Hootsuite? Tweetdeck and PostPickr have similar features but different functions to evaluate for the individual case.
Organize the social visual with Canva
Powerful and reliable tool. It is now difficult to give up on Canva because in the paid version you can create a working base for your social media team. This means, for example, that you can design a post template for Facebook with precise graphics.
Next step: share the template with your colleagues. You can do the same with almost everything: Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter posts. Without forgetting the possibility of creating Facebook and YouTube covers, the thumbnails for videos and infographics for use in posts.
With this tool for the visual of corporate and personal social networks, you can collaborate in a simple and intuitive way. Saving a lot of time between sending emails, sharing graphics and working on Photoshop. Which remains ideal for more complex operations.
What are the favorite tools for the team?
There is always a need for a good job of selecting tools for doing social media marketing. The reason is simple: so you can save time and get better results.
Advice? Evaluate these elements as a means, not an end. They are only tools: they will have negative sides or weak points, but investing your days in finding the perfect tool is not the best. Better to aim at the result, do you agree? Which tools do you choose for your team?