
Social Media
Social Media Management Tools Explained
By TechDogs Editorial Team

Overview
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Imagine, for a moment, what kind of social media presence Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry might have in today's always-on virtual environment. How many followers would they have? What type of content would they create? How often would they post updates? As it turns out, there is an official Muggle-managed Harry Potter Film Instagram account. It's got 6.6 million followers. Here's a plug for a live stream.

There's also an official Harry Potter Twitter account with almost 2.6 million followers and a Pinterest account with almost 140,000 followers (at the time of writing this post). With so many social media accounts and followers, the Harry Potter Film franchise likely uses Social Media Management Tools.
So how could Hogwarts, the most famous wizarding school in the world, possibly produce timely, relevant content and keep up with all the inquiries on Instagram stories, Twitter and other social media marketing platforms? The answer, our Muggle friends, is with the help of Social Media Management Tools (SMMTs), a technology that automates many of the tasks involved in maintaining a successful social media presence.
What Are Social Media Management Tools?
Social Media Management Tools help businesses publish, monitor, share and manage their social media accounts all in one place. They work, well... like magic! (Sorry, we couldn't resist.) SMMTs can be standalone tools like TweetDeck (owned by Twitter), which is basically a social channel dashboard enabling users to manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule and categorize Tweets.
There are also more robust SMMTs that are fully integrated platforms, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, that allow you to do everything related to social media platform including posting, scheduling and offer additional features such as social analytics and social listening.
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Social Analytics
Social Analytics: Data from social networks help you measure performance, e.g., likes, retweets, comments and shares. It can also include results from paid ad campaigns on social profile channels.
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Social Listening
Social Listening: This is simply the process of monitoring what people say about your company or brand on social media. This task can be difficult without a software to help keep track of everything.
SMMTs exist to make it easier for businesses to leverage their entire social media identity and stay connected to their customers and prospects.
History Of Social Media Management Tools
SMMTs are as old as the Whomping Willow that grows at Hogwarts, which was planted way back in 1971 (well before the halcyon days of social media).
Okay, maybe they're not quite that old. SMMTs showed up around the same time as the social media tool networks they support. Tweet Deck and Hootsuite were launched in 2008, two years after Twitter and four years after Facebook launched. Sprout Social launched in 2010 and the options, much like the Whomping Willow, continued to grow from there.
In the early 2000s, when social media platforms like Friendster (2002), Myspace (2003) and Facebook (2005) were either launching or gaining traction, there wasn't a huge need for social media management tool. People were still figuring things out, building their profiles and flexing their influence across the various networks.
The need for businesses to manage their social media presence emerged around 2007 as companies began creating social media profiles and customers started interacting with businesses using social channels. Consumers posting negative comments and complaints about a brand on social media could easily tank that brand's reputation, so social listening tools became important.
The tools we have today (Sprout Social, Hootsuite and platforms like Salesforce with built-in social media management capabilities) emerged because companies needed a way to manage their social content more efficiently as well as monitor social conversations about their brand or company and quickly respond to customers' issues and concerns. Got that? There will be a quiz.

How Do Social Media Management Tools Work?
SMMTs work by integrating with your social media account, effectively enabling you to manage them all in one place. Let's look at Hootsuite as an example.
Launched in 2008, Hootsuite is a social media management platform that emerged when Facebook was just four years old and had a paltry 100 million users (versus the 2.7 billion they have today).
The management tool helps users organize multiple social media accounts in one place, with hundreds of integrations and applications designed to simplify the process of planning, composing and publishing content. Hootsuite features include social listening/ monitoring and analytics tools.
Here’s a high-level breakdown of SMMT features:
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Publishing Tools
Plan, schedule and create posts across multiple platforms and work collaboratively with team members.
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Social Engagement Tools
Monitor all social accounts, respond to queries, manage messages and be a good, responsive magician.
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Advertising Tools
Create, manage and optimize paid ad campaigns on social networks.
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Social Listening/Monitoring Tools
Track keywords, hashtags and profiles in social conversations to make sure no one is casting dark spells against you.
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Analytics Tools
Central dashboards provide a 360-degree view of your social media performance, response times, interactions and more. It's kind of like looking down from your broomstick while flying high over Muggle territory.
Sometimes it’s easier to show than tell, so here’s an example of how an SMMT can benefit a business:
Acme Wands is enjoying explosive growth this year, thanks to the rise of Voldemort's evil army (everyone needs a new wand). However, Acme only has one physical location and evil wizards are located all over the world.
To address the needs of remote evil wizards, Acme launched an E-Commerce website and created Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles to showcase their new wands. However, they were having difficulty coordinating posts across social platform. This resulted in some information being inaccurate. Tragically, a wizard attempted to order an out-of-stock wand after seeing a Facebook post about it. The wizard in question was so outraged that he turned Acme's social media manager into a toad.
To address the issue of coordinating content across multiple social channels, Acme implemented an SMMT, which enabled them to manage all their social accounts at once, ensuring their content was up-to-date and there were no more…misunderstandings.
Types Of Social Media Management Tools
Within the landscape of SMMTs, there are a variety of different types of tools, as follows:
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Social Media Management Suites
All-in-one platforms that incorporate all (or most) of the features we spoke about earlier.
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Social Listening Tools
Focused on monitoring social media content and conversations to track brand/company mentions, analyze sentiment and basically, eavesdrop on social conversations.
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Social Publishing Tools
These tools help businesses plan and publish their social media posts, facilitating collaboration among teams across various social networks.
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Social Media Customer Service Tools
Features in these tools help automate and manage social media customer service tasks. They track customer inquiries, integrate with help desk platforms, and collaborate (e.g., a shared inbox).
Why Do We Need Social Media Management Tools?
Look, the social media landscape is ginormous. It’s literally too big to fit on the screen.
Mere Muggles cannot, realistically, manage so many social media accounts, ad campaigns and customer interactions without a bit of magic. Appropriately managing your social media presence can improve the impact of social media strategy on your business (e.g., 71% of feature consumers who have an excellent customer service experience with a company on social media campaign are likely to recommend that business). SMMTs help us manage content across multiple social media accounts, stay current and engaged with users across on-schedule posts and track what's working (and what isn't). They save businesses time by enabling teams to collaborate in a better fashion and efficiently manage their (increasingly complex) social presence.
They enable businesses to:
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Facilitate management of multiple accounts and social pages, aggregating profiles in one place so that companies can stay current and on-brand with their messaging.
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Enable the scheduling/automation of social posts so that content can be planned and approached more strategically.
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Keep up with customer inquiries, complaints and requests and provide adequate support across social channels.
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More easily monitor brand reputation across social channels by tracking keywords, accounts, hashtags and other signals.
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Provide analysis and insight into social media performance for paid campaigns and organic social media presence. This data is typically presented in a dashboard format, making it actionable and shareable.
Future Of Social Media Management Tools
As companies continue to embrace social media activity to reach out and interact with their customers, the need for SMMTs will grow. Tools that leverage AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning will transform how we perceive (and respond to) our social media users' identities.
Real-time intelligence that uses advanced AI-driven analytics will reimagine how we analyze and discover social media analytics and trends. Advanced tools will help businesses understand consumer sentiment and view their competitive positioning in ways as social media marketers that our simple Muggle brains cannot do (even with the most powerful spreadsheets and dashboards).
Who needs magic when you have technology?
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Social Media Management Tools (SMMTs) and how do they work?
Social Media Management Tools (SMMTs) are platforms or applications designed to help businesses manage their social media presence more effectively. These tools allow users to publish, monitor, share, and manage multiple social media accounts from one centralized location. They streamline processes like content creation, scheduling, and engagement, making it easier for businesses to maintain a consistent and active presence across various social media platforms. SMMTs work by integrating with social media accounts, providing features such as publishing tools for scheduling posts, social engagement tools for responding to messages and comments, advertising tools for managing paid campaigns, social listening tools for monitoring brand mentions, and analytics tools for tracking performance metrics.
What are the benefits of using Social Media Management Tools?
Social Media Management Tools offer numerous benefits for businesses looking to enhance their social media presence. Firstly, they facilitate the management of multiple social media accounts and pages, allowing businesses to aggregate profiles in one place and maintain consistency in messaging. Additionally, SMMTs enable the scheduling and automation of social posts, which helps in strategic content planning and timely delivery. They also assist in managing customer inquiries, complaints, and requests, ensuring prompt and efficient support across social channels. Furthermore, SMMTs provide valuable insights into social media performance through analytics tools, allowing businesses to track the success of their campaigns and adjust strategies accordingly. Overall, SMMTs save time, improve engagement, and enhance the effectiveness of social media marketing efforts.
What is the future outlook for Social Media Management Tools?
As businesses increasingly rely on social media to engage with customers, the demand for Social Media Management Tools is expected to continue growing. The future of SMMTs will likely involve advancements in technology, particularly in areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These technologies will enable SMMTs to offer more sophisticated features, such as real-time intelligence and advanced analytics, allowing businesses to gain deeper insights into consumer behavior and market trends. Additionally, AI-driven automation will further streamline social media management tasks, making it easier for businesses to maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving landscape of social media marketing.
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