Digital Insights
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Top 5 Social Media Publishing Tools

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Published: February 25, 2015

There’s a little more to effective social media marketing than just slapping together an occasional Facebook post and tweeting your Twitter fans whenever you get the urge. Engaging with followers, building traffic, and generating leads with social media requires dogged persistence, solid communication skills, and the ability to manage your outreach across the top social networks most popular with your target audience.

That’s a lot of moving parts to juggle, and even the best social media marketing experts can’t do it without a little help. They rely on social media software and management platforms to do the heavy lifting necessary to publish, track, and manage their social campaigns across multiple social networks. Here’s a look at some of the most popular social publishing tools used by the pros.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is the premier social media management tool of choice among professional social media managers and businesses ranging from single-location retailers to multi-national corporations. Manage your social profiles across more than 35 of the most popular social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and YouTube. A variety of options ranging from free, pro, and enterprise versions enable you to manage unlimited social profiles, schedule messages and tweets, track brand mentions, receive detailed analytic reports, and seamlessly integrate with popular platforms such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.

SproutSocial

SproutSocial is a robust platform that simplifies collaborative social message creation and posting. Drafts of posts can be easily accessed by team members or senior management for review and commenting prior to publication. A shared team content calendar permits each social team member to view and update scheduled releases, and revise post content as needed to meet rapidly changing conditions. Messages from multiple social media profiles, including brand-related keywords, are merged into one filterable inbox for easy monitoring. SproutSocial is offered in three different service options, each available with a “try before you buy” 30-day free trial.

Buffer

Buffer offers unmatched post scheduling flexibility that enables you to designate customized content delivery to match the needs of your various audiences. This allows your content to be shared at optimum times so that fans and followers get exposed to more of your updates. Small businesses in particular will benefit from the simplified two-click process for adding new content quickly and easily. Just load your Buffer account with fresh content, and your updates are automatically drip-fed throughout the day. Three different business plans are available, and you can get started with an unlimited-features, seven-day free trial.

Social Flow

Social Flow is a powerful analytics suite that follows real-time conversations across the social media community, allowing you to predict the most opportune times to connect with your audience. A variety of social signals are measured to help determine whether paid strategies such as Promoted Tweets and Sponsored Stories would improve your content’s reach and engagement. Social Flow also enables you to score potential content before it’s even published, providing more predictability in choosing material that will best resonate with your audience.

Viralheat

Formerly ArgyleSocial, Viralheat is a favorite of business-to-business social media marketers, and offers a complete suite of social monitoring, analytics and content publishing within one easy to use interface. Social metrics can be effortlessly integrated with sales and marketing data to identify, qualify, and quantify prime prospects. The Flint browser extension works with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers, allowing you to easily share content directly from your website with a single click.

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