No business survives out there without social media. Social media is the stuff of life and the only major viable way for sustainable growth over time.
Yes, the landscape changes. Platforms come and platforms go, so you can expect a shakeup here and there, but that’s also the charm of social media. It’s alive, evolving, and always reinventing. Brands can only welcome new opportunities to present themselves in a fresh way to a new audience.
It’s not, however, without its challenges.
Social media can be overwhelming!
You don’t need me to tell you social media can be a lot. Even small brand pages and accounts can generate a sizable amount of work in a typical blink-or-you’ll-miss-it fashion.
Outside of looking into your DMs and mentions, social media monitoring becomes even more time-consuming to a point where doing it manually doesn’t make much sense. You can’t very well dedicate one or more people to sit around and manage your digital presence and perform necessary customer research.
Some other means are in demand! A tool greatly improves results without the mind-numbing work that comes with social media listening.
Why do you need social media filtration?
To receive only the information you care about
The Internet is as deep as it is wide as it is mercilessly quick. It’s no place for people with FOMO as a whole (but even just as a need to see it all). You have to accept the fact that you won’t be able to keep with everything being posted on your timeline. It’s also futile to sift through thousands of posts for relevant content when you can filter your social media to receive posts that directly have to do with your interests.
Whether that’s done through hashtags or lists of creators, there are options to narrow the scope to what truly matters to you as a brand.
To skip over harmful content
Live long enough on the Internet and you’ll see some disturbing, harmful content. Hate speech and threats are part and parcel of the social media experience, but that doesn’t mean you should have to endure them.
Wherever you may be – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, there are always ways to filter the content whether it’s by muting certain keywords (bless the mute button on Twitter) or by limiting the very content that appears on your feed.
To save time browsing
Ultimately, it’s all about convenience.
Brands or personalities with high subscription numbers and high numbers of accounts they follow run the risk of lagging behind. You don’t have to invest so much time when the most important posts, pictures, and videos find their way to you. Less time browsing means more time analyzing social media presence and entering conversations relevant to your business.
To help manage your time
Time management is especially key in running a digital business. Face it; in 2021 who really went out much anyway. The share of digital businesses has certainly skyrocketed and to be visible on the great yonder of cyberspace is no small feat.
Monitoring social media should only be a starting point. Follow it with analyzing, creating content, scheduling posts, following up on sales leads, engaging in conversations. The more optimized your social feeds are the more effective you are overall.
To have everything in one place
Turning to a social media management tool is smart for when you have invested in several different platforms. Consolidate in order to manage your presence better. I’m going to look into the various options you have to do this, but first, let’s talk about why you need to merge all feeds and channels.
Although some of your audience will be on both Twitter and Instagram some will be on one or the other, and that’s where it gets really interesting. How do these two groups differ from one another? Having everything in one place shows you the full picture.
What are some of the tools you can use?
Social media management whether that’s just to automate a brand’s presence or for social listening purposes is a thriving business, and you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to solutions. There’s some cost associated with the tools out there, so definitely consider your options beforehand. On the lowest rung, you can always repurpose RSS feed readers to filter out and organize your social media feeds across multiple platforms.
RSS feed readers have made the jump towards productivity tools as a whole. Netvibes, Feedly, and Inoreader possess the capabilities to deliver a well-rounded experience. Netvibes sits at the high end in terms of pricing. Inoreader is definitely the best option if you want a feature on top of features – built-in advanced support for Twitter and Reddit, superior discovery tools, and a Chrome browser extension.
Do what is needed. No hassle. RSS feed readers are definitely best suited for the smaller, still emerging businesses with underdeveloped followings on social media and still limited funds. Once you cross over and see the full potential of social media unfurl, then you need something a little more powerful to handle the demands.
You can start really simple. Buffer, for example, is the simplest and most streamlined tool on the market today and presents a good entry point for individuals and businesses to curate meaningful experiences on social media. The tool is simple to use and provides an omnichannel overview of your social media presence that allows you to narrow down the conversations that concern you the most.
Another fantastic resource is Hootsuite, which is one of the original tools to emerge right when Twitter became the social media used by professionals around the world. You can organize your dashboards in as many feed columns as you like that contain accounts, lists, and search terms.
On the higher end of the price spectrum, there’s HubSpot. You might know HubSpot better from its highly respected blog often regarded as the modern marketer’s Bible, but that’s only a resource for the main course – the social media management tool! HubSpot is the be-all, end-all tool with a central dashboard, which unites all social media platforms, and an incredible report feature.
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