When it comes to social media management, one of the most important aspects of a successful profile and campaign is the engagement you get. After all, the more engagement you get, the more your other stats will go up as well: more clicks and traffic, more followers and so on. In this blog post, I’m going to share my top 5 tips on how you can use a social media management tool to improve your social media engagement. There is a plethora of social media management tools on the market, so I’m going to use the top 5 of the year, as rated by Ian Anderson Gray and G2Crowd in this infographic.
5 Tips on How to Use Social Media Management Tools
Use monitoring functions of social media management tools to find engagement opportunities
When the engagement isn’t coming directly to you … it’s best to go looking for it yourself. Most social media management tools have monitoring capabilities which allow you to set up searches for certain keywords and hashtags.
Think of a few keywords and hashtags that your target audience would be likely to use and then create a monitoring stream for them. You’ll most likely be able to find conversations surrounding your niche and area of expertise, which you can then jump into in order to build up your engagement.
This also has the benefit of helping you find potential new connections and leads, as well as more followers for your profile.
Monitoring hashtags can help you find the best and most used hashtags in your niche, so that you can use them more often yourself. The more a hashtag is used by others, the better your reach will be and consequently, your engagement as well.
Make sure to check your monitoring searches regularly so that you’re engaging as much as possible – this is especially useful for those who have just started their social profiles, or who have a small audience that doesn’t engage much.
Create a content calendar so that you’re always posting the right update at the right time
More and more tools are starting to add content calendars to make things easier and more organized for their users. Some of my favorites who do this are Agorapulse and Sprout Social, as their calendars look very clean and sleek.
Social media scheduling has always been a bit of a debated subject among marketers, but it’s become the norm in recent years. After all, it’s almost impossible for most businesses to keep up with posting 24/7, so often it’s necessary to schedule some of your updates.
For example, if you have a blog, use your social media management tool to schedule the promotion of your blog posts across your social channels. This way, you make sure your content gets seen by your audience and you will be able to increase your shares and retweets, likes, comments, as well as the traffic you get back to your blog and website.
Other types of updates that you can schedule include images, videos and other visual content, quotes, and generally, the types of updates that if sent manually would be the exact same.
With scheduling and content calendars you get to organize your updates better, plan for social media campaigns and drive engagement even when you’re not online.
Identify Influencers in Order to Build Relationships and Reach a Bigger Audience
Influencer marketing has become one of the top trends in digital marketing in 2016 and all signs point towards it being a big trend in the coming year as well. That’s with good reason: a relationship with a social media influencer can be of huge help to your success and massively improve your engagement.
First, start by identifying your influencers. Agorapulse, for example, will allow you to see if you have any influencers that are following you, which is great as you already have a connection with them so it should be easier to start building up your relationship with them. Otherwise, you can use a tool like Buzzsumo which will help you find any relevant influencers in your niche.
Next, use your social dashboard’s CRM features – Sendible, Agorapulse and Sprout Social have great ones – to organize your list of potential influencers and keep track of all your interactions and conversations. All of these tools allow you to make notes for each contact, add tags, see all past conversations and more.
This way, it will be much easier to make sure you never forget to engage with an influencer, and you’re always in the loop. And the more you engage with influencers in your niche and build up these connections, the more it will help you reach a bigger audience and increase your overall engagement.
Influencers, as the name suggests, have a certain sway over their audiences and because of that, recommendations from them can really help you improve your social media results.
Use Your Social Media Management Tools to Stay Up to Date with All the Latest Mentions
One of the best features to be included in many social media management tools is the so-called social inbox. Although many tools will have their own name for it they essentially do the same thing.
In my opinion, this is the best way to stay up to date with all of your most recent mentions. The way it works is you get all of the mentions from the social accounts you’re using into the same ‘inbox’ so that you never miss any of them. This is very useful for engagement as you want to be able to see all of your mentions easily as soon as they come in, so that you can jump into any conversation opportunities that otherwise would be lost.
Use Built-In Analytics to Find Out What You Can Improve
Checking your analytics is very important as they help you see any issues with your social media strategy, so that you can make changes as soon as possible and improve it. For example, you should look into your most successful content and vice versa: why are some of your updates getting more engagement and clicks? Why are some not getting any at all? Knowing this, you can then improve the types of updates you send out, whether it is the format (images, videos, gifs, text only updates, etc.) or the actual content of the update.
Another important stat to look out for in order to improve your engagement is times and days when you consistently get more responses and engagement. You can then focus more of your attention during those times, so as to reach a larger part of your audience, and therefore also increase your engagement.
Examine and Compare Social Media Management Tools to Find Your Best Fit
Before you can use all of these features you will, of course, need a good tool to help. You can use this cost comparison tool for example to find the perfect tool for you at the cheapest price. Having a good social media management tool can really turn around your results from social media, so long as you make full use of its features. Social media dashboards are not just about saving time anymore – they can be essential tools in your arsenal.
Using a tool in your social media management is essential to being able to keep up, respond and see how your social media efforts are working. Without them you can spend a lot of time trying to do it yourself manually and you usually won’t be able to catch everything. These tools will help you better manage both your social media and your time.
What is your favorite social media management tool? What are the most important features you are looking for in a dashboard?
