9 social media management tools to make your life easier

Managing social media is time consuming, daunting, and often overwhelming. It’s impossible for one person to offer customized attention to each and every site, especially when the number of accounts and sites you need to manage crawl up well into the double digits. How can you keep up-to-date with the on-goings of each platform, maintain several conversation chains, keep your content regularly updated, and know if all of it is even effective – all at once?

Life is hard when it comes to social media. But it doesn’t have to be. Several amazing tools have been created to help lighten the load – and even make your efforts more successful. Here are nine social media management tools that will free up your time, make you more effective, and keep your hair from going grey.

1. Everypost

Jumping from one social media site to the next isn’t just a long process – it’s a real headache. Everypost, however, is the tool to make your life easier. If you have a post or a picture you’d like to upload across multiple accounts, you can simply pop onto Everypost, write your update, add necessary tags or images for different sites, then with a click of a button, sit back and enjoy as it immediately publishes to every single location. You don’t have to worry about the clash of different platforms – it can automatically shorten that Facebook post to work for Twitter’s character cap.

2. Spredfast

Spredfast is a tool focuses all about data. While it’s limited to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr, it serves as a host for all the information you can possibly gather from these heavy-hitting sites. You can then view it all at your leisure with simple, easy-to-understand graphs. You can gain insights on what audience is most interested in your content and why; when they’re engaging and when they’re ignoring; and who the untapped audience is based on who your content is reaching. In the theme of ease, it also has a specialized calendar, making it simple to determine the best tweet times.

3. Hootsuite

No social media toolbox is complete without HootSuite. It’s earned its fame for a reason. This program lets you schedule your posts across several networks whether they’re big-name or just starting out; gain insights via analytic reports on the reach of your content; learn the best times to post, your profile’s traffic, and trends in your audience; handle all your social media accounts in one convenient online dashboard; and especially unique, track ongoing conversations so you don’t leave a user hanging due to your busy and diverse schedule.

4. Sprout Social

Data can be more of a headache than a help sometimes, especially if analytics isn’t your forte. Sprout Social offers the unique advantage of presenting all its data findings in surprisingly simple-to-read graphs with actionable results – to a degree some other social media tools lack. Staying in the vein of easy and quick, it allows you to manage, update, and gain insights on all your accounts from one dashboard – so you can schedule a post on Facebook, favorite a tweet, update your profile details on LinkedIn, check up on Google+, and reply on Instagram all from a single location.

5. Crowdbooster

When it comes to tailoring your marketing approach to be more affective and discovering if what you’re posting, where you’re posting, and when you’re posting is actually getting the job done, Crowdbooster is your best friend. This tool focuses on analytics, and while it doesn’t put all your accounts on one dashboard, it does offer detailed suggestions on when you should be posting your content and where to adjust your strategy. You can gain insights on your reach and level of engagement, and suggestions on which unengaged users you should reach out to.

6. Schedugram

Instagram, as the name suggests, is all about the instantaneous. If you don’t want to be left in the dust by the site’s fast pace, then you need a program much faster than you to keep your account updated; enter Schedugram. You can handle all your accounts from one location, publish several posts or just a few, and receive email notifications to keep you updated on what’s published. To give your images that extra touch, it has an editing tool that lets you handle any last-minute or rush touch-ups without wasting time, so you can keep the instant in Instagram.

7. Buffer

Buffer, unlike its name suggests, has nothing to do with wait time. Instead, this option is all about making sure you never have to wait for your updates, allowing you to take action and change course in real time. One of its most impressive features is its Chrome extension, so it can do its job in the background while you do yours; should you need it, it’s only a simple click away. Its analytics are thorough and comprehensive, with suggestions on the best times to post and the ability to schedule your content accordingly.

8. Bitly

When you think of Bitly, you think of a place where you can shorten URLs so you don’t end up posting a link the length of your arm. But Bitly brings a lot more to the table when it comes to making social life easy for you; it gives you the ability to track how many hits you receive on certain content, offers analytics that are as fast-paced as social media itself is, and it keeps track of your favorite sites so you can stay updated on the go.

9. Followerwonk

Followerwonk is famous for offering the kinds of analytics some other options don’t. It not only tells you the times your followers are most active and likely to see the content you post, but also gives you insights on their location and other habits, so you can do more than customize your publishing schedule; you can see where your marketing strategy needs to change and realize who your audience really is, which you may be incorrect on. It’s limited only to Twitter, but is also compatible with Buffer, so you can use the advantages of both.