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Five tools to help with your social media marketing management Most of my clients know that I am a ‘social media puriest’. What this means is I like to use the social platforms as they were designed without a lot of automation as I believe spending time on the platforms is a key to success as it allows us to better understand the platform capabilities and better understand our audience on these platforms. However most of us have a lot more to do than hang out on social media all day and generally have guests to attend to, staff to manage and suppliers to stay on top off. That is why incorporating the right additional social media management tools can help you better manage and deliver your social media plan. [Tweet "The right social media tools can help you better manage & deliver your social media plan"] There are so many social media tools out there and new ones entering the market all the time. I have selected five that I am familiar with that I think are worth the investment. Please note I am not affiliated with any tool and don't get any kick backs etc, this post is written to hopefully offer value to you and help you best manager your social media marketing. 1. MeetEdgar Meet Edgard is a tool to schedule social media posts especially for Twitter but it works for Facebook and LinkedIn too. Edgar recycles content and builds a library of social content so you never run out of posts. When you craft and send a Tweet not all your followers are going to see that Tweet, for it to really get traction it needs to be sent multiple times. What this tool does is once you create an update or post - you add it to a category say Blog Post or Fast Fact or Promotion and the update gets stored in your library. When every other update in that category has been posted, Edgar will post this one again, so it can be seen by a new audience. Until recently I had been using Hootsuite to schedule tweets however I was never happy with the way they displayed images and if I wanted to post the same tweet multiply times (and I think that is a smart thing to do) I had to write out each tweet, add the image multiple times and decide what time to send it. I am really happy with how Edgar displayed the images and how you can map out your schedule really clearly for each social channel. Also you can give Edgar your RSS feed and it will actually create posts for you and automatically update when you post new content. They offer a 14 day free trial so give it a go and see what you think. The only down side is its $50US a month - so about $15 a week - so you need to weigh up if it saves you $15 a week in time. Now a side note here: just because you are scheduling Tweets it doesn't mean your work is done on Twitter, what it should mean is that your time spent on that platform is engaging with others, their content and replying as thats the important stuff! 2. CrowdfireApp JustUnfollow.com have changed their name to CrowdFire - this is a mostly free tool - well I only use the free level. This tools identifies who on Twitter and Instagram is not following you, who your recent followers are, your recent unfollowers and the bit I like the most your inactive followers. It then allows you to bulk unfollow or follow accounts. Between 25 and 100 in one session. I use this for identifying inactive followers and unfollowing them - you can see who has been inactive for 6 months or more or 3 months or 1 month. I believe it is important to keep your social media accounts healthy and unfollowing inactive accounts is part of that. Now just because someone isn't following you it doesn't mean you shouldn't be following them - there are loads of accounts I follow that don't follow me but it can be good to keep an eye on things and do a cull every know and again. 3. Schedugram Scheduling Instagram doesn't sit 100% comfortably with me however I ...