Common Tools & Features

Social media software solutions combine multiple business processes such as marketing, advertising, and customer service. As such, most social media management tools need to have specific features and capabilities that enable users to effectively perform a variety of key tasks. Below are a few core tools and features that you might find in the majority of social media management and marketing software solutions available in the market.

Social Listening and Monitoring

Any social media software solution worth buying should have social listening and monitoring capabilities. If you want an effective and successful social media marketing strategy, then you need a tool that allows you to know what your target audience is saying about your brand, learn what they like and don’t like, identify content that has the best chance of engaging potential customers and even figure out what they think about your competitors.

All of this can be achieved through social listening and monitoring. This feature will keep you informed of existing conversations about your brand, product, or service so you can react accordingly and in real-time. For instance, if customers are discussing your product negatively on social media because one of them had a bad experience, learning about the issue in time you will be able to take the necessary actions to rectify the problem.

Additionally, this type of feature will also enable you to monitor your brand’s hashtags, relevant keywords, and account names. If someone on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @’s your brand in a post, you will be notified instantly.

Analytics and Reporting

This feature is very useful for any marketing firm, social media agency, or organization trying to implement a social media marketing strategy. Most social media management software offers real-time analytics, which can efficiently measure your brand’s performance on social networks. Through these advanced analytics, you will be able to evaluate your social media strategies and see which aspects are working for you and which ones aren’t.

If you’re a social media firm/agency, having a tool that shows key performance metrics will allow you to prove to your clients that your marketing efforts and strategies are working by giving them actual results and numbers. This is all achieved through the monitoring of several indicators, including likes and dislikes, impressions, content/post shares, reposts, retweets, and more. A few other forms of analytics features you need to consider are engagement analytics, daily data reports, and account comparison functions.

Scheduling and Content Calendars

Robust scheduling is another crucial component of any social media management platform. The key to an effective social media marketing strategy is timing your posts so the majority of your target audience will see them. There’s little point in posting content on social media if people don’t catch them at the right time. Your social media software should, therefore, have powerful scheduling features that allow you to plan and organize posts as efficiently as possible, enabling you to target particular time zones or demographics.

Multi-platform Support and Integration

Another important feature that you want with your social media management solution is support for all social networks. Seamless integration is vital when it comes to business process software, SaaS, and cloud-based solutions—and social media software is no exception. The software you’re using has to have support for multi-platform integration, since you’re most likely going to have to manage multiple social media accounts across a number of social media platforms.

Considering so many social media platforms exist, you really need a tool to help centralize all your social profiles and manage your posts and content from a single location to save time. This is why a clean, and easy-to-navigate dashboard is essential.

Social Inbox and Customer Engagement

Boosting customer engagement is one of the many reasons to use social media software solutions. As a brand, you want your ears on the ground where all your target audiences are all gathering and sharing stories. The whole point of leveraging social media and making it work for your business is to get closer to your customers, figure out their needs, and see how you can provide for them. A social inbox or customer engagement feature can help you do just that.

This feature allows you to view @ replies and social media posts that mention your brand, product, or service. You can use these tools to provide customer support, respond to customer queries, view customer feedback, and simply interact with your followers. This is how you will be able to elevate your customer engagement efforts to the next level.

Process Management and Collaboration

Social media strategies will sometimes require a level of collaboration among staff members. Social media software solutions with collaborative features allow team members to coordinate their processes, especially when it comes to message assignments and message sharing. For instance, if you have multiple people handling messages and queries from customers on social networks, you would want their responses to be well-coordinated and as seamless as possible.

This feature can greatly minimize the risk of your social media team posting different responses to the same questions and concerns.

Built-in Automation

Some of the best social media management platforms in the market come with built-in automation features. Systems with built-in automation will enable you to automate day-to-day tasks and processes. A good example is reposting content on other social networks. For instance, you can set the platform to automatically repost your created content from a few days ago onto your Twitter account or on Facebook.

Moreover, you may also want to schedule posts or set the system to automatically pull relevant reports and analytics on a weekly basis for a deeper analysis of your social media strategies. As such, there are a lot of tasks and processes that you can automate using a social media management tool.

Social Media Advertising Tools

An ideal social media software solution also offers social advertising capabilities. It provides you and your team with the ability to manage your advertising campaigns on various social networks. With this functionality, social media managers should find it easier and more efficient to manage their workflows and social marketing efforts.

Types of Social Media Software

There are many different types of social media software available. The type of software you need mainly depends on the type of user or buyer you are. For instance, if you’re a small business, a startup, or a freelance social media marketer with just one or a limited amount of social accounts, you might not need a fully equipped social media management platform. Consider the features that come with the software solution to figure out which ones you might actually use based on the size of your business’ social presence as well as the type of audience you are engaging.

If you’re a bigger organization, perhaps a more established social media marketing firm catering to multiple clients or audiences, then you might want to go with a more comprehensive social media management solution. This could include the ability to deliver localized content in various languages to hit specific time zones across multiple social media accounts. In this case, a solution offering the ability to store, manage, and distribute creative assets for use across various social platforms could be significantly beneficial.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to improve brand awareness and manage your brand's reputation on social networks, a good social listening software solution might be more suited to you. You can use this type of reputation management monitoring software to learn what your target audiences are saying about your brand. It can also be used to evaluate competitors and how they are being perceived by people on social media.

Social conversation and CRM social media software may also be useful if you want a more efficient way to respond to your customers’ queries and concerns posted on social media. A more comprehensive social media management platform provides this tool to allow brands to respond quickly to questions, provide real-time communication, and find clear opportunities to offer help to those who need it.

Social analytics software is another type of social media solution that provides critical data and reports you can use to learn how your social media posts and marketing efforts are being received by your target audience. If you ever wanted to know how effective your social media campaigns are, both as a whole and on specific social networks, this is the type of software you’ll want to check out.

Finally, social influencer marketing software solutions can provide the tools needed to identify and learn more about your social media followers who are influential in key areas of your targeted industries, generally through possessing a large following of their own. Knowing who these social media influencers are can be beneficial, as you can use their influence to promote your products and/or services on their social networks through sponsored blog posts and reviews.

Benefits of Social Media Software

Why should you buy a social media management tool? This is probably one of the most common questions people ask when they’re thinking of diving into social media as a means for marketing, brand management, and SEO. The truth of the matter is any organization that has a presence on various social networks cannot be without a good social media software solution.

While social media management platforms, as a whole, offer a number of benefits for SMBs, enterprises, social media agencies, and independent marketing professionals, each individual feature and tool these software solutions offer come with a wide range of benefits that you might find invaluable to your specific situation. Perhaps the most obvious benefit is the fact that you can collaboratively post engaging social media content at any time, even without needing to be logged in.

Another benefit is that you will be able to organize and monitor all of your social media content across multiple platforms. Creating content and publishing it on social media is simple enough, but it can be time-consuming when you’re managing multiple social media accounts. With good social media software, you will be able to save time by scheduling posts and publishing them at appropriate times to maximize views.

Social media management tools also allow you to monitor brand mentions and conversations on different social networks. Every time your brand gets mentioned in a post or a comment, you will be notified by the system so you can react promptly and appropriately.

For example, if a user mentions your brand in one of their posts, perhaps asking a specific question about your product or just complimenting you for a service well done, you will be able to address it almost instantly. This will help strengthen your customer support as well as boost customer relationships, satisfaction, trust, and loyalty—all of which will greatly benefit your business as a whole. It will also help mitigate the spread of negative feedback as it can be immediately addressed at its source.

Common Features of Social Media Software