A Social Media Manager's Dream Come True!
Since my ultimate decision to take the plunge, and pursue my business full-time, I've been incredibly blessed with some amazing clients coming on board with us! Several of these amazing businesses are in need of social media management and I am gladly assisting them in that regard as I'll always stand by the fact that social media plays a giant part in a brand's online image.
With 2-4 social accounts per client, I've been vehemently looking into social management software in order to choose the best option for my client's differing needs. I've been entering trial after trial, making my team watch intro-video after intro-video in the effort to establish some sort of connection through these platforms and what I'm trying to accomplish for my clients; an authentic, honest representation of who they truly are and how they can help their ideal customer.
While many platforms have very similar capabilities there is various recourse through two main actions. Most of them allow you to schedule through Facebook and Twitter, then some add in Pinterest and Instagram (which only acts through push notifications to a mobile phone which is the only way IG remains truly "Instant".) The two main differentials that have helped me make my decision through the process are their user-interface and consistent programming, and the ability to create detailed and lengthy campaigns based on a specific article or blog post.
The ability to simply schedule posts has been utilized for many years now through older companies such as Hootsuite and Buffer, but the new kids on the block have added features that make for interesting combinations with these standard scheduling abilities. Some added the option to have your client weigh in and approve your post schedule without allowing them to see what you've planned for your many other accounts (I found this particularly valuable.) However, this ability required said client to be well versed in technological online efforts and proved to be harder than we techie's assumed it would be. Another unique trait was the ability to search by hashtag and repost or retweet those posts that applied to your brand. This made searching for content easier but really only saved one minor step in searching on this hashtag yourself in a new window. I didn't find this feature to be useful enough to commit to this platform. Others had difficult interfaces that weren't cohesive enough for my team to get used and seemed to be slow-loading when large files were being uploaded and multiplied through channels.
It was after 3-4 months of weighing the pros and cons that led me to my ultimate dream manager find, CoSchedule. Thank you Lord! Co-Schedule provides all of the necessary features I was looking for and even a few extra things I didn't know I needed!
One of these fine features is the ability to create a social campaign based on the blog post you create through your branded site. You can set up this campaign through your calendar for the dedicated account, connect your WordPress blog directly and proceed to plan your campaign day by day (as customized with dates and times as you want,) and be able to see the entire campaign laid out in all it's glory before you decide to follow through the post. The visual set-up of this campaign option is what truly sold me on this platform. You also has the ability to add "guests" to singular accounts and allows them to preview the scheduled campaigns and make suggested comments or changes on your efforts without being privy to any of your other client's business.
Another feature that I truly loved about CoSchedule was the genius effort of making a google chrome plug-in that works seamlessly alongside your calendar allowing you to pinch picture, video links and articles in real, web-searching time and schedule them on your queue while you continue to work within your Chrome browser. This is genius and removes that extra step of copying and pasting and then forgetting the link existed all together (is that just me or can I get an amen?) Brilliant, just brilliant to bring the power of instant sharing to our finger tips and acting in tandem with google to ensure we continue to use their browser, a win-win if you ask me. This feature really threw me over the edge of finally deciding on who to go with.
Don't get me wrong, CoSchedule is NOT cheap, but with the available features that I listed, I am confident that this platform will take my social management up to another level and if it doesn't well, live and learn. Full disclosure, I do use it in tandem with a couple other free managers only to spread out my accounts out a little but I'm trying to keep that down to one with CoSchedule as the main.
If you are looking for something for your small business and small team to assist your social platform efforts, CoSchedule should be your best bet, most especially if your website is built in WordPress. Trust me, I've done my homework.
If you're interested in learning more there's a handy little tutorial pasted right below! >>>
More fun tips and tricks to follow as I pursue this exciting and terrifying journey of entrepreneurship!
- Kristen Rose