Streamline Your Social Networking: 4 Social Media Management Tools to Help You Save Time While Keeping Up With Your Social Marketing

As if you already didn’t have enough going on — keeping your small business afloat — friends and other business owners are probably telling you that keeping up with social media is essential to boosting your business. And it is, but when do you have the time to keep up with all the platforms that consumers expect to find you on?

Fortunately. several software designers have seen the need for multi-social platform management and have introduced a variety of social media management tools that make it exponentially easier to keep up with all your tweets, chats, pins, posts, links, likes, mentions, and comments.

Climb Aboard the TweetDeck

TweetDeck, as evidenced by its name, works best with Twitter, but it can connect with multiple social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+, and Facebook. Utilizing a side-by-side column format, users can customize their columns so that they can view all of their feeds, messages, friends, mentions, etc. at once. You can also use TweetDeck to update all of those social media accounts at once, or you can choose to update them one at a time. While the program does have some downsides, such as not being able to include more than one Facebook account and slowing down when your account activity becomes heavy, it does allow you to monitor an unlimited number of Twitter accounts, and you can use it to schedule updates in advance. It also has a desktop platform and a web-based platform that work together almost seamlessly.

HootSuite Tout de Suite

HootSuite — a take on the French term "tout de suite" (or "right away") — is a similar concept to TweetDeck, though it seems to be favored slightly more for its integration of social analytics and wider range of integrated platforms. HootSuite, for example, includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, and Google+, but it also includes Tumblr, Get Satisfaction, Trendspotter, Ping.fm, and Mixi. The pro version, which costs $5.99/month, also includes Google analytics so you can see how your social activity is helping your website, Facebook integration, and the ability to allow another person access to the platform so they can help you with management.

Chart it with SproutSocial

SproutSocial functions in a similar manner to TweetDeck and HootSuite, but it's designed to provide clear and easy-to-understand reporting for busy business owners, those with multiple subsidiaries, and companies that manage other business' social media activity. In a quick glance you can check reports about the effects of your marketing campaigns, see how well you are engaging friends and customers, or check to see if you are socializing better or worse than you did the day before. It also allows you to track relevant keywords, monitor blogs, schedule messages and track their performance, calculate the best time to send messages, and even create a real-time task list. The program works with several applications, including Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn, Gowalla, FourSquare, and other networks, and also includes a mobile app version for on-the-go multi-platform posting.

Multi-tasking with Digsby

While Digsby may not be as all-encompassing as some of the other social media platforms, it allows for a much more fluid method of multi-tasking. For example, pop-ups allow you to respond to social media chats while working on other tasks, and you can check emails from several different email accounts at once directly from the Digsby platform. Additionally, you can create floating columns that keep real-time track of your social networks and alerts. Digsby supports Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn and you can post to all of your accounts directly from Digsby. It's a great tool for small business owners who constantly need to manage their instant messaging, social networking, and email while also accomplishing general tasks online.

The number of management tools is constantly expanding and it’s very likely that there’s a platform out there that fits your specific business needs. What are some of the ways you’ve found to manage your online marketing? Have you found any social media management tools to work better than others for your small business?

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