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Social Media Managers are professionals with multidisciplinary skills who work in the field of Digital Marketing and have the task of managing the presence and advertising of a brand on Social Media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest or LinkedIn. Their work does not end by choosing the most suitable platform for the communication project they have to develop and by creating company pages; they must have the right skills to:
  • define strategies with which to achieve the expected goals, for example the affirmation or strengthening of the image of a brand;
  • identify the right target for the proposed message;
  • create content to share on Social Networks;
  • manage and moderate the activity of their community;
  • increase inbound traffic to advertised applications or websites;
  • increase user engagement and loyalty;
  • take care of the management of support or information requests via social networks;
  • find the right solutions to convert followers into customers;
  • create a network of contacts and collaborations that multiply the effectiveness of Social Media Marketing campaigns and contribute to the visibility of the brand;
  • evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies adopted by identifying their strengths and correcting the most problematic aspects.
To adequately carry out all these tasks, skills and experience are required in areas such as Content Management, Community Management and Digital Advertising management, as well as in the use of tools that allow you to speed up all the steps ranging from planning to campaigns of Social Media Marketing, to insight analysis, that is the most relevant data to understand trends. Those who want to become part of the next generation of digital marketers have the opportunity to participate in the Digital Marketing Master of Talent Garden, a training course available to those who want to master the main communication and digital marketing channels, apply methods and frameworks with which to analyze the performance of the campaigns, as well as optimizing them with a view to continuous improvement. The course is aimed at students from different backgrounds such as Economics, Communication, Marketing or related to creative subjects.

5 tools for Social Media Managers

As already mentioned, competent Social Media Managers are also a professional capable of choosing the most suitable tools for their work. Currently the market offers various solutions that allow you to organize, manage, monitor and analyze multi-platform or platform-specific strategies, so we propose below a selection of the most tested and winning strategies among the operators in the sector.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a complete tool designed to easily manage multiple Social Media and save time in scheduling content to be published on the various platforms. In fact, it supports the scheduling of posts, allowing them to always be kept under control through a convenient calendar view mode. In Hootsuite everything has been designed to speed up the work of the Social Media Manager, for this reason it allows you to centralize the resources available for publication, such as images that can be downloaded directly from the service Dashboard. It also provides features for the distribution of workloads within teams, such as the assignment of tasks related to the creation and sharing of posts, and there are also data analysis tools with which to understand what content might be appealing to the masses, allowing you to grow your brand business. It is possible to activate a trial period of 30 days to test the potential of the service.

Postpickr

Postpickr is an all-Italian solution that allows you to deal with all aspects relating to the management of an editorial plan for Social Media. Each project can be organized within a dedicated directory, independent from the others, to which a specific social account can be associated. The features provided allow you to insert scheduled posts, create topic sections and generate SmartFeeds by taking articles from feeds of specific sources, and publishing them according to your needs. You can manage Facebook profiles, company pages, Facebook groups and events, LinkedIn profiles, pages and showcases, Pinterest boards and content from other platforms such as Instagram, Telegram, Twitter, YouTube, and Google My Business. The SmartPicker extension for the Google Chrome browser also allows you to quickly share the most interesting content identified while browsing. Anyone interested in testing Postpickr can take advantage of a free trial period.

Canva

Anyone looking for a tool natively oriented to the work of creatives can find in Canva a valid ally. It is in fact a service that allows you to create, modify and optimize images to be used in Social Media. One of the major advantages of the platform lies in the large availability of ready-made templates with which to create graphic components such as Facebook and Twitter cover images. Any operation is supported by editing tools that enable to quickly obtain the desired result without advanced skills in graphics or photo editing. Canva offers various photographic images to customize and insert in your own designs, the opportunity of uploading images from your device, lots of graphic elements (arrows, frames, geometric shapes, icons, backgrounds...), numerous animated GIFs, a rich selection of fonts for writing texts, as well as audio and video clips. Most of Canva's features are free to use, but additional resources and tools are also available via a paid subscription.

Karma Fanpage

Fanpage Karma is a Social Media Management Suite that allows you to analyze an unlimited number of profiles and create detailed reports in PowerPoint and Excel format dedicated to both the progress of your projects and the results obtained by competitors. Tools are available to plan, write and publish content, and thanks to the integrated features for team management it is possible to develop social media marketing campaigns in a collaborative environment. Data and analysis can be shared with customers, and all Social Media Management and Community Management tools allow you to automate procedures in order to optimize your communication strategies. One of the strengths of Fanpage Karma is its centralized user interface that is equipped with a Dashboard where you can view the insights from all the platforms in which you operate. Various features are accessible for free through the appropriate Free Tools. There is also a paid business version with more advanced tools. Also, a free trial period of 14 days is offered.

NotJust Analytics

"People not Followers", this is the slogan of NotJust Analytics, a platform created with the aim of "helping Instagram to be a better place." The service is authorized directly by the Meta Social Network and currently it analyzes over 7 million profiles by providing useful data to define Social Media Marketing strategies. NotJust Analytics offers valuable help to understand how much a profile has grown over time, find the most effective hashtags from a performance point of view, analyze all posts created in collaboration between companies and influencers, and find out which content produces the best results when shared. Thanks to the available functions it is possible to download reports in PDF format of the analyzed profiles and personalize them with your logo and then automatically send them to customers who request consultations. You can check the insights of your customers and analyze all data relating to the Stories for up to 6 months. The 30-day free trial period allows you to analyze an unlimited number of posts and download unlimited reports.

Conclusion

A valid tool for Social Media Management must provide functionality with which to plan, manage, coordinate and monitor a Social Media Marketing campaign. The selection of tools proposed in this article was done taking into account the most widely used solutions on the market among those that allow you to simplify the creation of content, automate the procedures for sharing that content, and analyze the insights relating to the results of the campaigns. Photo by Merakist on Unsplash
Article updated on: 09 August 2023
Talent Garden
Written by
Talent Garden, Digital Skills Academy

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