It is a well-known saying “work smarter, not harder” and one of the best ways to this into a reality is through strategic use of marketing tools. At Oster and Associates, we manage our client’s social media through many different strategies. When it comes to working smarter, we especially like utlilizing social media management platforms.

Social media management tools have the power to help you take your social web presence and activity to a whole new level. They’ll also save you time and energy that you would otherwise have to spend trying to do everything manually.  More importantly, these social media tools offer a range of solutions that can help you easily organize multiple accounts and share information across several social networks without ever needing to post separately to individual accounts. Although many of the features, layouts and intuitiveness differ across each app, they all get the job done when you choose the right one to match your current social presence and marketing strategy.

Here are four different social media management platforms, each with a different focus.

• Hootsuite – Arguably the most popular social media management platform out there. It’s well-known for supporting a variety of social media platforms while offering a wide range of settings and dynamic features.
• Buffer – This social media manager is super simple to use and gives you full customization of your posting schedule and the ability to view your analytics. It also features an easy to use mobile app and the web browser extension.
• TweetDeck – This social media manager is different in that it only manages Twitter. However, it is free and perfect for managing multiple Twitter accounts, following specific hashtags, replying to a large number of other users and seeing exactly what’s being tweeted in real time.
• SocialFlow – For companies with a large number of followers and high engagement levels, this is the tool for you. SocialFlow takes a data-driven approach to social media with tools that let you publish according to when your users are most active, launch goal-based advertisement campaigns and more.

At Oster and Associates, we look at social media as another opportunity to convey your core messages and lead your customers into a deeper relationship with your brand. Need help navigating the waters of social media? Contact us to learn more about how we can manage your social media streams.