Social Media Optimization For Dummies

Chapter 21

Ten Tools for Managing Your Social Media Presence

In This Chapter

• Finding great tools for managing social media
• Understanding how the tools can help you

In this chapter, I list ten of the social media management tools that I find the most helpful. Plenty of tools are on the market, and building the right tool kit is largely a subjective exercise. If you have tools that you love, keep using them. The list in this chapter includes things that I use on a daily basis and others that I've tried and liked but may not rely on. I've tried to avoid overlap, but invariably, some tools include the same features.

I suggest that you try all the following. I tried to select tools that offer free options, though many have more feature-rich commercial versions. I also encourage that you search for new tools periodically. The social media tools market is a very dynamic area, and new tools pop up every month.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media account management and publishing tool. The tool runs inside your browser, enabling you to stack your various Twitter accounts side by side in columns for easy viewing and management. Hootsuite includes publishing controls and autoscheduling to target the time when you can best reach your followers. Although most people use Hootsuite for Twitter, the tool can also handle Facebook and LinkedIn.

The free version of Hootsuite allows you to manage up to three profiles on a variety of services. In addition to publishing and monitoring tools, the ...