46 Experts Share Their Top Social Media Management Tools

In the following post you will find some incredible insights that will help you take results from your social media campaigns to a new level. Contributors to this group interview include some of the most influential and successful people in the marketing space. Please note, this post is huge and I advise you sit down with a cup of coffee and maybe even a snack to get you through to the end, you may need to go through it in a few sittings.

Back in September of this year I published a post on social media management tools (you can find the post here) where I shared some of the most useful social media tools that I have used.

This got me thinking – there is a crazy amount of social media tools out there that I haven’t tried, but what are other experts using? and why?

And, not just social media experts or social media influencers, but successful marketers and business owners too.

I then set out to contact some of the most influential people on the web and the result was simply amazing.

I asked: What are your top 3 tools for managing social media campaigns and why?

The response was overwhelming, 46 experts ended up taking part which was simply amazing.

I received 46 fantastic responses, far more than I had possibly hoped for.

Which tools came out on top?

In the results below, there were a few expected results along with some unexpected and very unique tools mentioned.

The idea here is to get a little perspective on just how popular particular tools are – not to create something specific and official that tells you what tools you should be using. Ultimately it’s how you use the tool that’s important.

1st – Hootsuite – 24 votes
2nd – Buffer – 16 votes
3rd – Google Analytics – 9 votes
4th – Sprout Social – 5 votes
5th – Tweet Deck – 4 votes
6th – Bit.ly, BuzzStream, Commun.it, Followerwonk, Nimble, Tagboard – tied with 3 votes

Who took part?

Here is a list of all of the great people that took part in the group interview, to make it easier for you to navigate you can click on the names below to skip to their response.

I do hope you give everyone the time though because everyone has shared some great insights.

Experts have been listed in the order that their responses were received:

Ian Cleary
Aaron Hoos
Jerry Low
Laurie S Hurley
Shane Melaugh
Kathryn Aragon
Erik Qualman
David Meerman Scott
Matt Gratt
Niall Devitt
Jessica Miller-Merrell
Hugh Anderson
Joe Pack
Cori Padgett
Saul Fleischman
Francisco Perez
Jon Morrow
Jennifer Hanford
Rebekah Radice
Nick Kellet
Eric Siu
Debbie Hemley
Timo Kiander
Ron Sela
Ben Pickering
Jenn Herman
John Lee Dumas
David Risley
Martin Shervington
Ashley Faulkes
Michele Welch
Aaron Lee
Viveka von Rosen
Bonnie Andrews
Sean Clark
John Paul Aguiar
Lori Ruff
Kristi Hines
Brent Carnduff
Michael Nelson
Melonie Dodaro
Patricia Redsicker
Evy Wilkins
Rick Mulready
Mike Gingerich
Christian Karasiewicz

What are your top 3 social media management tools?

Ian Cleary

1. Buzzstream – Buzzstream is great for managing and tracking a blogger outreach programme.

2. Agorapulse – A very useful tool for running campaigns on Facebook. What I particularly like is that it builds up profiles of users that are interacting with any apps (e.g. competition apps).

3. Grouphigh – Grouphigh is great for building a list of bloggers that are relevant to your niche. It has a very comprehensive database of over 13 million blogs.

Ian Cleary – Author, speaker and founder of Razor Social.

Aaron Hoos

I run fairly simple campaigns for small clients (especially real estate professionals) so I try to strike a balance in the tools I use — between simplicity, flexibility, and robustness — and I try to avoid the “shiny new tool” syndrome. My choice of tools really depends on the social channels and goals identified for each campaign. Here are three tools I consider essential to many of my campaigns (but there are obviously other tools as well)…

1. Campaign Development: All of my work starts in Evernote. I use Evernote as my main organization/scheduling system and each campaign gets its own note(s). Within these notes I’ve listed goals and metrics and these notes are usually where I start writing content integral to the campaign. Once the campaign is running, results are recorded in Evernote. This keeps me focused on managing the campaign as part of my daily activity, plus the ability to easily share notes is helpful.

2. Campaign Deployment: When the social campaign involves Twitter, one of my favorite tools for scheduling tweets is Twuffer.com. It’s really simple to use and if I need to hand a campaign back to a client for their employees to manage, it’s an easy-to-learn, no-cost interface. Obviously there are other great tools that provide a broader range of functions across multiple social channels but I constantly refer my clients to Twuffer for this one function. Since many of them are new to social media, it’s an easy first step for them.

3. Campaign Measurement: The right measurement tool depends on what you want to measure but my go-to preference is Google Analytics: When possible I set up landing pages that are tied to the goals of the campaign, and I use encoded links to show which social channel the traffic is coming from. I also like being able to share reports with my clients.

These are three tools that work for me and they keep things simple and focused.

Aaron Hoos – Copywriter that specialises in business, finance and real estate.

Jerry Low

Tweet Deck is the only social media tool that I can’t live without. I use Tweet Deck to interact, discover new tweets (tip: add a few columns on ‘search’, boom!), and to manage my tweets. The tool loads fast and it is very user friendly.

IFTTT is a huge time saver. I use it to “synchronize” most of my social media activities.

Last but not least, Google Social Analytics. The tool was introduced more than a year ago and it is now the go-to place when I need data to backup my decisions.

I believe social media is more than getting likes and re-shares. SMM campaigns should fulfil business objectives such as bringing in new leads, giving a boost to business revenues, and so on.

Is my SMM campaign delivering? How do visitors coming from these social media networks interact with my site? Is the campaign generating new leads and business opportunities? How much should I spend on the next campaign? To answer these questions, I use Google Social Analytics.

Jerry Low is a professional blogger who is passionate about SEO and web development. He writes helpful web development guide, Internet marketing tips and web hosting reviews at Web Hosting Secret Revealed.

Laurie S Hurley

1) I use Sidekick for scheduling my social media posts. I love this scheduler because I can have multiple campaigns going and can give access to my VA’s. They can sign in to either stage posts for my review or schedule them directly. Additionally, I can “auto-schedule” by defining the days and a time range for posts to go out. Best of all Sidekick includes a Content Creator – for those days when I can’t think of anything specific to write. The Content Creator lists at least 100 suggested posts – all I do is fill in my content as it relates to my clients’ needs or my own. Quite simply, it’s amazing and I find it easier to navigate than some of the other popular scheduling platforms.

2) Get Pocket – Definitely one of my favorite sites out there. Who has time to read everything the moment one sees it? As a content curator, I do research for my clients and myself and Get Pocket is a must-have! I can save articles for which I don’t have time to read immediately, organize them in my “pocket” and go back to read later.

3) Not sure this counts as a “tool” but I have a scheduled 30-minute phone call or Hangout with each of my clients weekly to stay abreast of their burning issues. A typical call consists of me sharing new requests for connections on LinkedIn and circle requests on Google +. Additionally, I encourage them to share even the seemingly mundane activities in their business/company because I can create a great image (Picmonkey.com) out of it and share an engaging post that their target market will be able to relate. My experience managing others’ campaigns has taught me it’s a best practice to keep the client involved. The results are a win-win for all.

Laurie S Hurley is a social media consultant and speaker.

Shane Melaugh

There’s only one tool I consistently use: Hootsuite.

Social media is a secondary focus in my business (at best), but with Hootsuite I can stay fairly active in social media without having to spend too much time on it. I mainly use the scheduling feature. I schedule out tweets and other social media updates in batches. When I find interesting stuff I want to share, I usually make sure that it gets tweeted out several times over the course of a few days.

Apart from scheduling, I’ve found that interaction is the most important factor on social media. Tools can help with that, but never do it for you.

Shane Melaugh is a successful internet marketer, business owner and founder of IM Impact.

Kathryn Aragon

My favorite tools for managing social media campaigns are HootSuite and Buffer. I love how these tools integrate, allowing me to schedule posts in advance while also giving me the freedom to post on the fly, follow interactions, and more. For creating trackable URLs for my campaigns, I like Bit.ly.

Kathryn Aragon is the Editor of the Crazy Egg blog, content marketing strategist, author and award-winning copywriter.

Erik Qualman

Hootsuite – allows me to see who is talking about my keynotes and books across all platforms.

LinkedIn Card Munch– allows me to scan and auto generate contact info from all the business cards handed to me following my keynote speeches and book signings

Twitter – I love the one on one interaction it allows with my fan base and readers – especially international. It is also great to use as a follow-up using the hashtags around keynotes I deliver at conferences or Fortune 500 companies.

Erik Qualman is a keynote speaker and author of Socialnomics.

David Meerman Scott

I reject the question. A “campaign” implies that you can plan ahead. People plan email marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns. But the whole point of social media is real-time engagement. You’ve got to be in the moment and it cannot be planned. If somebody wants to engage at 4:00 am on a Sunday morning, that’s when you need to engage. Yet that doesn’t fit into companies ideas of a “campaign” because nobody is in the office then.

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker and best selling author.

Matt Gratt

My three top tools for managing social media campaigns are:

Buffer – We use Buffer to schedule social updates and curate content. It saves me tons of time, and keeps getting better and better.

Topsy – We use Topsy to find who’s sharing our content, find influencers we should engage with, and measure the success of our campaigns in terms of social share of voice.

BuzzStream – I know it’s a plug, but it’s pivotal to our efforts. We use our own tools to reach out to influencers and let them know about new content that they’d be interested in, or content that references them, leading to shares, links, and mentions.

We’ve found the marketing power in social media lies in other people talking about your brand – not using social as a new channel to talk about yourself.

We also use FollowerWonk, Twitter Ads, and Tweetdeck.

Matt Gratt is a marketing expert working with BuzzStream.

Niall Devitt

The campaigns I manage are multi-channel, involve a team and require me to make the best use of my time. My top 3 tools for managing social media campaigns are Hootsuite, Podio and Google Analytics.

Hootsuite – I find Hootsuite excellent because it allows me to collaboratively execute, schedule and track campaigns across social networks, and all from a single dashboard. In fact, I liked it so much that wrote a guide about it if your readers would like to check it out.

Podio – Another tool I’d recommend strongly is Podio which is an online work platform. It’s a fairly complex platform and little hard to describe but it’s like a cross between a social media, a CRM and a project management platform. Podio allows us to take more of a strategic and collaborative approach with our clients, therefore ensuring that our projects/campaigns are designed to target business goals and ROI.

Google Analytics – You’re going to want to track the business benefit of traffic to your website and more often, two of the important goals of any campaign will be traffic and conversions. Google analytics remains a very powerful tool because it allows you to set up goals, track conversions and see where this traffic is coming from.

Chief Digital Strategist & Founder at the Ahain Group, an independent, ideas-led social business consultancy with experience of working with all types of clients and sectors– from large blue-chip multinationals to the 1 person SME. Niall is also co-founder of TweakYourBiz.com.

Jessica Miller-Merrell

I keep it simple when I’m managing social media campaigns with regard to tools. It’s easy to over engineer the process and often times I find they there are benefits, leads and opportunities that occur as a result of the campaign that are hard to qualify or happen long after the fact. A social media is a channel strategy so it’s important to keep in mind your long term goals. Don’t expect that a single campaign is going to go viral and drive traffic or business.

We often use events and conferences focused on resources to the attendees who are our reader audiences to build relationships and drive social media buzz and traffic to our site.

My go to tools are HootSuite for scheduling messages across multiple accounts, Google Analytics particularly the real time dashboard and referral reporting as well as TwitterFeed allowing for automatic sharing when blog posts publish to social media sites complete with customized hash tags for Twitter.

Jessica Miller-Merrell is a Forbes top 50 social media influencer, CEO of Xceptional HR and Editor of Blogging4jobs.com.

Hugh Anderson

Hootsuite – brilliant for managing, monitoring and scheduling activity across several platforms, but Twitter in particular.

Nimble – for keeping track of the activity of influencers across all social streams plus email and more.

Inkybee – because I own it! And because it tells me which the best blogs are to target and automatically measures my outreach.

Hugh Anderson is an entrepreneur, co-founder of Forth Metrics and InkyBee.

Joe Pack

Followerwonk – I know that Followerwonk is not strictly a tool for managing social media campaigns but nevertheless I had to talk about my love for it. When working on building my own brand, I always start with Twitter because it’s so easy to get in front of your ideal audience. Once the relationship is made you can expand it across other platforms.

There’s no better tool out there for finding your target audience than Followerwonk. Once you establish relationships, you can analyse every last bit of your audience to optimise the growth of your brand online.

Tweet Deck – Tweet Deck is great for managing multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. I only really started using this recently. I love that it saves me so much time when I am promoting articles that I have written, or articles written by someone else at Jigsoar.

I can share the same article immediately across all of our accounts at Jigsoar, which of course saves me having to load up each account and post separately.

The biggest benefit though, is the convenience of being able to interact with everyone that engages with both you and your business at the same time, without having to open anymore than one page.

Hoot Suite – The ultimate free tool for managing all of my social media accounts in one place is Hoot Suite. If you manage a team, then the ease at which you can delegate social media marketing tasks to different team members is invaluable.

I can’t get enough of the weekly analytics reports that it provides, especially as an added bonus that we can deliver to our clients. In social media, nothing is more important to a successful campaign than data. Reading data effectively and improving the campaign with that data, can be the difference between success and failure in social media marketing.

Joe Pack is the co-founder of Jigsoar, an inbound marketing agency.

Cori Padgett

I’m pretty simple when it comes to social media. I only really focus on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for business and blog related stuff. I sometimes dabble with Pinterest and have a personal Instagram account, but I wouldn’t call myself actively running campaigns on those platforms.

When it comes to managing Twitter I use the TweetDeck web app, because I can customize my columns and only see what I want to see. Plus I can manage more than one account, which is useful as I’m running two blogs.

I also use Triberr for blog promo on Twitter, because it’s a great way to create connections with other bloggers and a great way to spread awesome content, whether it’s your own or your fellow Tribemates. Kind of the whole pay it forward methodology.

Facebook I usually publish straight from Facebook, although sometimes I use Buffer App to schedule stuff. Kind of depends on my mood really. hehe As I said… I’m a pretty simple one when it comes to social media. Beyond those things, there really aren’t too many tools I use consistently enough to recommend as useful.

Cori Padgett is an entrepreneur, blogger and freelance copywriter.

Saul Fleischman

RiteTag – whatever I am posting, I want to reach a topic-interested audience, and reach beyond my followers. RiteTag suggests hashtags from topic words and gives me the information I need to decide whether a hashtag is relevant, in play, and likely to be searched and tracked (disclaimer: I am the founder of RiteTag).

Google+ – the community is communicative and engage with quality, informative posts. I don’t see this in Facebook, and far less in Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer or app.net.

Hootsuite – Good for watching mentions, replies, retweets and engaging with those who interact with me in Twitter, mainly.

Saul Fleischman – Lean startup founder – IdeasWatch & RiteTag. Product designer, community developer, PR man and UX dabbler.

Francisco Perez

There are so many social media management tools out there that it can be really overwhelming to choose which one to use. Also, I believe that there may be somewhat a bit of a confusion as what a “social media management tool” actually is. Well, I think that, that depends on the user :)

Anyway, I actually have only two that I use on a daily basis, that being Hootsuite and BuzzBundle.

Hootsuite is my favorite. I manage multiple social accounts and “listen” a lot to relevant #hashtags, questions, etc. Hootsuite allows me to manage all this in one cool interface. Although I use the PRO version, there is a free version where anyone can use, test and even stay forever free. Hands down and IMO, it is the best social management tool currectly available.

BuzzBundle is coming on a very close second in my arsenal. This tool is not as popular as most of the ones you hear of every day, but it is definitely been improving since it was released. This tool is developed by the same makers of SEO Powersuite (Link-Assistant) so, constant upgrades are being made. I use this tool more to “monitor” some things that’s going on out there for brands, clients, etc. It is an “all-in-one” tool that goes way beyond “just social”. There is also a free version.

Francisco Perez is a small business consultant and founder of iBlogzone.

Jon Morrow

Buffer – Sharing links from other bloggers is still one of the best ways to build social goodwill. The more I share, the more influencers I notice sharing my own posts. I also get lots of thank you notes from followers for curating such great content. It’s a win for everyone.

BuzzStream – If you want to get good results from social media, you have to be strategic about outreach. BuzzStream helps me keep track of all my relationships with influencers and my interactions with them. It also makes it really easy to set up email templates and get in touch with everyone fast without seeming like I’m sending a mass email.

Hootsuite – While I use Buffer for sharing links, I find Hootsuite really useful for organizing the streams of influencers I want to watch, as well as manage interactions with followers. Within a few moments, I can see what people are saying about me, find out what’s going on in the lives of influencers, and respond to a few dozen people. It’s very efficient.

Jon Morrow is associate editor of Copyblogger and Founder & CEO of Boost Blog Traffic.

Jennifer Hanford

Buffer – This one has been my favorite since the first time I used it a little over a year ago. I have the $10/month version which allows me to schedule more tweets and Facebook posts for myself and my clients. (It also allows for posting on other platforms, but I only use it for these two). It’s been a lifesaver in that capacity. One of my favorite things about it is that I am able to see exactly who has retweeted a scheduled post from Twitter so I can immediately thank him/her/them. Buffer also provides some simple analytics – I used to obsess over the numbers of clicks each post was (or was not!) getting, but that doesn’t concern me as much these days. Quality over quantity is my goal, and Buffer does give me a good snapshot of what my followers like the most. Also, I like being able to integrate Buffer with Scoop.it for sharing curated articles. Super easy and efficient!

Hootsuite – I use Hootsuite, but only for engaging, conversing and monitoring on Twitter. I like being able to set up specific streams based on hashtags so I can jump into a conversation (when relevant). It’s easy enough to change between handles, but I’ve accidentally tweeted from the wrong account a few times. Nothing that couldn’t be corrected, but it’s still something to think about.

Sprout Social – I just recently began using this and I can already tell I love it. Sprout Social really offers *everything* (scheduling, monitoring, notifications, analytics) for all the major platforms in one user-friendly package. I have yet to use it for its other amazing features, such as reporting, lead gen or CRM, but that is supposedly part of the plan, too. The only reason I haven’t completely switched over to Sprout Social is because of its cost…but my peers tell me the investment is completely worthwhile.

Jennifer Hanford is a social media and content marketing enthusiast and owner of j+ Media Solutions.

Rebekah Radice

Sprout Social – I could not live without Sprout Social. Sprout is a third-party management tool that lets you schedule, monitor and maintain a presence across a variety of platforms. You can now manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus profiles.

One of my favorite features is their Smart Inbox. This feature makes it easy to view all mentions as well as keywords in to one location. This is incredibly handy for someone like me monitoring a considerable amount of social channels, keywords and mentions. I can see in one quick snapshot what is being said about the brand and who I need to respond to.

It also pulls in any RSS feed and all of my Twitter lists. This makes it very easy to curate and schedule updates, automating a portion of my social media tasks. I believe wholeheartedly in using automation to boost productivity by focusing on the important relationship and brand building tasks as opposed to the minutiae that we can often get bogged down in.

Buffer – Buffer is another tool I could not live without! While Buffer does not have the bells and whistles that a third-party management tool like Sprout Social or Hootsuite has, it is a phenomenal resource for what it does best: identifying your top times to post and then automatically scheduling content to go out at the appropriate time.

Buffer works alongside many of my favorite apps such as Follower Wonk, Feedly and Commun.it to help me stay up-to-date and relevant on all of my social networks. The integration of these apps allows for easy analysis of my Twitter followers and assists in the trouble-free aggregation of content.

Here’s an example of how it works: Once I determine how often I want to send out updates to each of my social channels, content added to Buffer will then automatically be schedule to that optimal time creating maximum exposure. Case in point, I use Feedly (my favorite RSS reader) to curate content. As I click share within the app, the option to send directly to Buffer will be presented. That article will then be added to my account and sent out at the best possible time.

Currently Buffer connects to Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn, making this app a great option for anyone eager to stay active across the web, but doesn’t have the time to sit in front of the computer all day!

Commun.it – Commun.it is a Twitter tool that lets me take a deeper look into my social interactions and build more meaningful relationships with those actively sharing my content. With Commun.it, I can not only see who is sharing my content, but also identify key influencers within my field, track and monitor important keywords, interact and engage with my Twitter followers and send any retweets to Buffer in a click of a button.

Commun.it has become an essential tool in my daily social media management, ensuring that no conversation is missed and no opportunity is wasted.

Rebekah Radice is a social media marketing strategist, speaker and trainer.

Nick Kellet

When it comes to managing campaigns the three tools I think of are before, during & after. I learned this discipline while measuring retail promotions as a consultant at Safeway.

Campaigns only serve a purpose if they bring about long term habitual change. I remember one big promotion by Hagen Daas that sold masses of ice cream at a huge discount during the promotion (that’s the easy bit), but the magic was beyond the promotion people’s long term behaviours had shifted. More people continued to buy Hagen Daas at full price.

So when I think about social, I think in the same way. At Listly we’re building a business with a growing community of content creators, so the three tools I use are:

• Mailchimp to send weekly newsletters to teach our list makers & make content suggestions. Mailchimp also lets us manage our email list complete with unsubs which is a real measure of growth. We’ve tripled our active list in 6 months to 10k
• Listly to measure the activity people perform as a result of the newsletters plus to track the organic search impact & measure how new list content is driving page views, engagement & user growth. Successful lists get found a lot & bring more new users to Listly.
• KISSmetrics to track our active contributors so we can move beyond vanity metrics & track cohorts of people over time. Here we track people who perform meaningful actions each month to measure the growth of active participants.

These three tools highlight our underlying growth metrics. We bundle all this plus data from Google Analytics, Alexa etc into a dashboard in Cyfe, which we share with our investors.

It’s crazy to think how much data you can analyze.

Nick Kellet is the co-founder of Listly, founder of Gifttrap.com and AnswerSets (now BOBJ/SAP).

Eric Siu

I use Buffer and it’s a huge timesaver for me. I can post to my LinkedIn groups, Google+ pages, Twitter, my LinkedIn profile and more all at the same time. Plus I can schedule posts according to the optimal times given by social media tool Followerwonk – Buffer integrates with them. Followerwonk gives me data on the influencers in the Twittersphere and shows me how engaged they are. Plus it give me analytics on Twitter profiles so I can find out my most influential followers, # of people unfollowing/following me every day and more!

The third tool I like to use is Rapportive because it allows me to get more information in Gchat by looking through their social profiles. I get to see what else they might be interested in and can connect with them directly through there or mention a common interest through e-mail.

Eric Siu is the Chief Operating Officer at digital agency Single Grain. He previously led the growth team at online education startup Treehouse.

Debbie Hemley

When Adam asked me to participate in this article and share my top 3 tools for managing social media campaigns, I wasn’t sure I had much to contribute on the topic since its been a few years now since I’ve been actively involved in campaign management. (Today, I’m more focused on writing, and helping businesses to determine the social networking platforms, content types and topics that will best serve their business.)

My most positive experience and “aha moment” with campaign management tools can be traced back to 2009, the time when I fortuitously came across Sendible.

My task at the time was to find a solution for Weber Media Partner’s client, DogWatch. My mission was to find a way to automate the process of providing regular content updates on Facebook and Twitter to DogWatch’s 40+ dealers.

From two different countries and time zones, I communicated with Gavin Hammar at Sendible who not only understood my long-winded explanation of what I was hoping to accomplish, he confirmed that yes, Sendible, was well-suited to help me set-up and manage the needs of our client’s campaign.

Through Sendible, I was able to set-up a way to manage all of the 40+ dealers’ pages from one application and schedule updates and Tweets in advance.

I could publish content to all 40+ of the dealers’ Facebook pages in one simple “send.” However, if I wanted to select dealers based on specific criteria, and only send to their pages, I could do that, too. For example, I could select dealers pages where an update about preparing your yard for the long winter ahead or protecting your dog from the cold made sense in certain geographic regions of the United States, versus posting it on a dealers page where temperatures in their part of the country were in the 80s and 90s and the furthest thing from their audiences’ mind were frigid temperatures and snow.

A successful social media campaign involves many factors and perhaps the most important is selecting the best tool for the job. Otherwise you can feel like you’re swimming in mud. Instead, Sendible made me feel like an olympic swimmer!

Sendible wrote up the case study a few years ago. You can read and learn more about it in their paper.

Debbie Hemley is a writer and social media coach.

Timo Kiander

1. Hootsuite

My #1 tool for managing Twitter activity (and other social media as well). I know that I’m probably using only a fraction of the features that Hootsuite offers, but I still love the tool!

Hootsuite makes it easy for me to schedule tweets and also organize the feeds, so that I’m able to catch all the essential information through one interface.

2. Social Metrics

This free plugin (there is also a paid version too) helps me to see important sharing stats related to my posts (Twitter, Facebook …).

Once I know which types of posts resonate the best with my audience, I can create more of that type of content for them in the future.

3. Click To Tweet

This simple tool helps my readers to promote my content. By including “Click here to tweet this” links inside the posts, I give yet another chance for my readers to do some promotion work for me.

Timo Kiander is an author and blogger that helps people become more productive and manage their time more effectively.

Ron Sela

Tagboard – When managing a social media campaign Tagboard is a must have tool. Tagboard provides a dashboard for monitoring #hashtags in real-time across some of the most prominent platforms available, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Vine and of course Google+. Tagboard provide a unified view for all networks, and alternatively the campaign manager can switch to a specific network.

When running a campaign, it is usually advisable to use a unique hashtag. By monitoring the campaign hashtag in all the relevant social networks the campaign manager can easily follow the conversation as it is happening in the various venues and engage when appropriate.

Users can define hashtags for easier and more intuitive navigation and even create tagboards for future use. Hashtags are slowly becoming an important component of social media discussion, particularly following the implementation by Facebook and the rapid growth of Google+.

Spundge – As a social media campaign manager, you want to be able to sort through all of the relevant RSS feeds, filter Twitter account feeds as well as Twitter lists for specific keywords, and keep an open ear of the discussion over the pertinent keywords on Facebook, Youtube, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram to name a few. Spundge provides you with this capability by using their firehoses system.

When a relevant item, whether an article, post or tweet are identified, they can be easily grouped into virtual notebooks that can be later used for research of a specific campaign related topic, and as a tool to collaborate with others when composing an article about the campaign topic. Notebooks, as well as stories curated with these tools can be embedded into the campaign’s website and blog.

Buffer – Buffer is the most significant tool in my campaigns’ management toolbox. Combined with other great tools such as Feed.ly, Scoop.it and Pocket and powered by a Chrome extension, Buffer provides a super easy tool for posting and updating social media networks. Buffer allows me to share prescheduled articles along the day as well as quotes, images and videos to various networks such as Twitter accounts, Facebook (profiles and pages), LinkedIn (profiles, groups and pages) and Google+ pages with one click.

The analytics provided by Buffer, especially when combined with bitly, are very valuable in determining the efficiency and value of the campaign.

Ron Sela is a strategic business consultant for early stage companies and entrepreneurs, specializing in digital marketing and strategic finance. You can find Ron blogging at OnlineInfluencer.com where he shares his opinions about online influence, social commerce and social media strategy.

Ben Pickering

If I were asked to come up with a new campaign for a potential client there are three tools I would turn to:

Antavo – This is a relative newcomer in the space of social promotions and apps, but their self-service platform can be utilized to create a variety of interactive campaigns for your Facebook Page, website or mobile. Social sweepstakes, user generated contests, voting polls, and coupons are some of the things you can build with Antavo’s DIY tools. The dashboard provides access to all the key data and metrics you’ll need for your campaign.

Hootsuite – No matter what the campaign, Hootsuite enables you to schedule messages to all your social networks to help promote and to monitor what people are saying about it as well. I use Hootsuite as my command center for communications activity around a campaign.

Mailchimp – Some people may be thinking “but that isn’t a social media tool.” The reality is that email is still one of the most powerful forms of social communication. And assuming your business has an email list, it is essential part of a comprehensive social media campaign, one that is sometimes overlooked. I believe the best marketing programs are cross-channel, and email can be used to help build awareness and momentum for a social media campaign.

Ben Pickering is a speaker and marketing consultant that specialises in social media. Ben has worked with both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies.

Jenn Herman

Statigr.am – As a big Instagram user and an advocate for using Instagram for business, Statigram is a must for my social media campaigns. This site provides all the analytics you need to assess your Instagram strategy. You can track your engagement and analyze your community as you gain and lose followers. You can also measure and determine which posts on which days and at which times of the day receive the highest levels of engagement in order to strategically determine your best posting schedule. There are a lot of other good analytics to consider as well and if you use Instagram for business at all, I definitely recommend using Statigr.am to manage your campaigns.

Editorial Calendar – When it comes to blogging, I couldn’t survive without an editorial calendar. I don’t use any fancy app or tool – I simply use my Google Calendar. However, I fill it with key holidays, events, important dates, and unusual holidays. This allows me to see upcoming events in advance in order to determine if blog post themes should be coordinated to match. And, whenever I write a new post, I schedule it and record it on the calendar so that I can see, at a glance, where I need to fill in more posts or where I have flexibility to rearrange posts. Since my primary focus is my blog right now, this calendar is essential to ensure that my posts go out at relevant times and keep my audience engaged.

Tagboard – This site is imperative for anyone using hashtags as part of a social media campaign. Tagboard tracks any hashtag across all major social media platforms. If you’re running a custom hashtag for an event or promotion, this site will allow you to determine how often the hashtag is being used and on which sites, as well as who is using it. You can also create your own board for your own hashtag and give it even more life by adding custom information and an avatar. You can also respond to, share, like, or comment directly to the original posts that used the hashtag – directly from with Tagboard. The best part about this site is that it’s FREE, and you don’t need to register to use it! However, you can register and create your own personalized tagboards to track hashtags consistently and get access to additional features.

Jenn Herman is a blogger and social media strategist that can be found blogging at Jennstrends.com.

John Lee Dumas

PostPlanner is an awesome tool that helps you schedule and track Facebook activity across all of your pages/groups. Unlike your Fan Page insights from Facebook, PostPlanner gives you a single look at all of your posts, the times they were posted, and the like, comment and click through rates on each. Great app for managing and constantly improving your Facebook strategy.

HootSuite is great because it allows me to stay on top of several social media accounts from a single dashboard. I use HootSuite to schedule my Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn campaigns.

GoogleDocs is where we house our Editorial Calendar, and it’s great because everyone on my team can access it no matter where they are. This ensures we’re on the same page in terms of the content we’re creating and what’s being shared where at any given time. It also keeps us all up to speed on what’s coming up next.

John Lee Dumas is the host of the EntrepreneurOnFire podcast which features daily interviews with successful and inspiring entrepreneurs.

David Risley

I use some of the typical social media tools. Things like Hootsuite and Buffer, for instance. But, there’s also a few that aren’t the usual things you might see in a post about social media tools. For instance:

Lastpass – It is a password manager program. I use it with my VA in order to share logins with her in a secure manner. Certainly important when you’re trying to outsource some of your social postings and need to share account logins with your own VA. In fact, I have her set up accounts for me sometimes and share them back with me via LastPass.

Custom CSV Tool – This one isn’t distributable, but I programmed an in-house tool which my VA uses to schedule tweets in advance via Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows you to bulk upload tweets via a CSV file, so I have a tool which auto-generates that CSV file so that she can upload it via Hootsuite. It could be done manually using Excel, but that’d come with the “baggage” of having to train her how to use Excel. My solution is easier. :-)

Apple Pages (or MS Word) – What? A word processor? I bring it up to make a point… and that is that you can easily create a repeatable system out of your social media campaigns. For instance, when you publish a new post, there are a certain set of repeatable actions which take place to distribute on social media. And, I simply document that whole procedure in Pages and send it to my VA as a PDF. When I publish a new post, she knows what to do. :-)

David Risley is a successful blogger, entrepreneur and founder of Blog Marketing Academy.

Martin Shervington

Buffer for scheduling up posts on my business and magazine pages – helps to ensure good content gets shared regularly

FriendsPlus.me for posting from G+ to twitter and LinkedIn -which saves me a load of reposting, and you can use hashtags to manage the content well

Circlecount.com and NOD3x together- used in relation to Google+ to find influencers and manage my ever increasing circles!

Martin Shervington is a business consultant and marketing psychologist.

Ashley Faulkes

There are so many social media tools out there, making this quite a tough question to answer. But I will try my best! Below I have highlighted three tools that I use and the ways in which they have helped me with my social media campaigns.

As many of you already know, TweetDeck is my go to tool for Twitter. I use it to monitor my Twitter streams in a variety or ways (mentions, lists), as well as to monitor hashtags and keyword searches that I am interested in.

TweetDeck shows this information in easy to manipulate columns, but also provides powerful search and filter tools for getting to the exact information/tweets you require. There are a lot of other features that make this tool a must have for people focused on Twitter. For example, there is a great bulk reply feature via the new popout panel – great for thanking people (a must for engagement).

You can also schedule tweets from within the interface (not my main place to do this, but nice to have) and all this while monitoring everything you are focused on. Of course if you have multiple social media channels like a Google+ page, Facebook , LinkedIn etc you might want to consider Hootsuite. I however, love TweetDeck!

Another tool I find a great plus for social media campaigning, is Bit.ly. Most of you are probably aware of Bit.ly as a link shortening tool. And we need such tools in places like Twitter as we only have 140 characters right :) Bit.ly is easy to integrate into most Social Media tools as well. But the power of Bit.ly comes with it’s ability to monitor clicks.

Sure you can do that via Buffer for example, but if you want to monitor the same URL across multiple social media sites, or even outside social media (bookmarking sites etc) then Bit.ly is the tool for you. URL clicks are monitored and shown per hour/day/week in a great report interface, You can also see where exactly it was clicked – both in terms of website and geographically. Awesome huh! But wait, there is more! If you add UTM parameters to your URLs, you can create multiple URLs for the same page and really test what works best (great for headline split testing etc). So go check out Bit.ly……properly!!

Keeping the focus on Twitter (I am a bit obsessed with it), I would normally end this with a spotlight on Commun.it.

I am going to assume someone else on this page has written about how it can show you who with and how you are connecting on Twitter. It goes into a lot of detail like: Who you should connect with more? Who is connecting with you? Who should you get back in contact with? and so on.

It’s a great way to get a handle on your connections, especially if you are developing new ones, or targeting influencers as part of your campaign. On the same topic, I recently discovered a fun new tool called Vizify, which has a cool visualization called “connections”. This tool can visually represent your twitter connections – via a really sexy animation.

You can check out mine here. Vizify can do a hell of a lot of other things, on various social media platforms, however I won’t go into them here. I will leave that up to you to do, in your spare time.

So that’s it for me. As you can see, I am a bit of a Twitter fan, and those are some of the great tools I use. See you over on Twitter or on my blog MadLemmings.com.

Ashley Faulkes is a blogger, entrepreneur and web developer.

Michele Welch

Let me start off by saying that managing your social media should not be a chore, it should be fun! If it’s not, you’re going about it the wrong way. That being said, let me share with you which tools I use on a regular basis that has allowed me to keep abreast my social media marketing campaigns … At the same time allowing me to create a very streamlined and efficient strategy within my overall marketing plan.

I can easily share with you a long list of social media management tools such as SocialMention which tracks your brand and provides real time search, to SproutSocial, a software that provides much more in-depth analytics. However, I’m going to take a different approach. I’m going to keep it super simple.

Why? Because keeping it simple is going to allow you to create and stick to a plan that works for you when managing your campaigns.

I’m going to share with you the three tools I use that I consider to be the foundation to managing my social media marketing campaigns. And let me just say, there are many variations of these tools (which I’ll share), which you can use.

It’s not the specific tools themselves, but the benefits and features they provide and the ability of these tools to provide you with easy to manage, yet efficient systems.

Tool #1 – Hootsuite

If I had to choose my number one tool to use to manage social media campaigns I would have to go with Hootsuite. This web-based application allows you to manage multiple social networks, as well as multiple profiles within a social network, all at once. It’s leverage at its best.

You can engage in real-time with those you’re following, create specific interest lists, track brand mentions, and respond to those that have tagged you within their updates – contributing to the relationship building and marketing aspect of social media.

With an upgrade to the paid version, it also has the added benefit of allowing you to incorporate analytics and allocate team members to specific roles to your social networks.

My two best features by far are the scheduling feature and the Hootlet browser extension.

With the scheduling feature you can schedule all your social media updates for the week using their built-in calendar. Just like any update you add, you can select which social networks will receive that specific update on that date and time.

This is extremely helpful when running a specific campaign such as a new product launch or promoting a new service you’ve added. Allowing you to add your promotional updates in one seating takes a lot of the pressure and stress off of an already stressful process.

The Hootlet extension, recently updated with added features, allows you to share any page you are viewing on the web, select specific content within that page, and schedule the update to your liking.

How does this help with your campaigns? Part of the process of promoting your campaigns is leveraging other people’s content as a form of social proof. For example, when I first launched my Package Your Genius program, I shared other industry leaders’ content as a form of proof that leveraging your knowledge, passions, and gifts in the form of information products, programs, and service packages is an invaluable business model.

Tool #2 – Google Alerts

Aside from monitoring for new content to share, and as a way to “spy” on your competitors, Google Alerts allows you to monitor conversations happening around your campaign. For example, if you just released a new product, using Google Alerts would be useful in hearing what people are saying about this new product.

Do they like it? … Or not? Are there ways you can improve upon it based on what’s being said? Are you on track with your campaign? That is, if there’s no conversation at all, where are the holes in your social media marketing campaign?

Alternative tools to use to get alerts specific to a social network are TweetBeep for Twitter and Hyper Alerts for Facebook pages. Both which send email alerts directly to your email inbox.

Tool #3 – Bit.ly

Out of all three, bitly probably has the potential to provide the most in terms of analytics. Bitly allows you to create bitmarks (a form of a link-specific bookmark) which can further be allocated to specific bundles.

An example for a bundle can be a specific campaign you are running. For example, going back to the initial launch of my Package Your Genius program – adding bitmarks within a bundle called ‘Package Your Genius’ allowed to me easily track and analyze all the links I created related to the launch.

I was then able to analyze how often that link was getting clicked, which days and times, geographic location, and where the link was being shared. All valuable information that allowed me to tailor my campaign accordingly – for the present campaign and future ones.

To sum it all up, Jim Rohn once said:

“Discipline is the foundation on which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.”

Managing your social media campaigns takes discipline … The tools are just the vehicles that are going to support that discipline. So pick a few that work for you and stick with them over the long run.

Michele Welch is a Business & Personal Growth Catalyst and Online Marketing Maven who work with service-based professionals to get the edge by finding what’s unique about them, and how to package their “genius’ so they can serve more people, make more money and live a life & business by their own design. She blogs at TheEdgeCode.com.

Aaron Lee

Whenever I manage a campaign for myself or for a client, it is extremely important to be organized. To do so, one needs to have a social media management platform. Such management platforms help to visualize the results of your campaigns, as well as allowing for better control to avoid embarrassing mistakes online. In a place where your consumers expect timeliness and accuracy, being organized is one important step to avoid mashing the panic button.

For myself, I’ve been an advocate of Social Engage since 2010. Like most social media management systems, it manages and executes campaigns across multiple social media networks from one platform. What makes it stand apart is that Social Engage allows me to only see replies from followers, creating a separation between retweets and replies which helps me to respond quickly and catch whatever buzz is being built from my campaign.

The next important tool to have would be a monitoring tool to track mentions about a brand or a campaign. To do this, I use Talkwalker. Talkwalker is able to scan the web and social media platforms to monitor key terms of a brand name or campaign. In my opinion this tool is way more powerful than Google alerts which doesn’t seem to pick up most mentions unless it adheres to its SEO rules.

Last but not least, Buffer is another favourite tool of mine to manage my campaigns. This simple and straightforward tool helps me to update my social media accounts with a click of a button. Buffer is an extremely flexible tool and when combined with followerwonk, it provides a deadly combination to broadcast messages at the optimal time of your audience.

Aaron Lee is a social media consultant and marketing guy at Binkd. Find him blogging at AskAaronLee.com.

Viveka von Rosen

Tool 1: Hootsuite

Contrary to popular belief, not all social media professionals sit around all day just waiting to post, tweet or update. We actually have real work to do (like try out new social media tools.) So having a good scheduler is paramount. I am a huge fan of Hootsuite because it plays well with LinkedIn (which is important to me) and has a ton of features (check out their nifty reports – my clients are always impressed).

And it’s inexpensive. Even free depending on the number of accounts you have. They also have very thorough training videos and live webinars, so there is no excuse not to use it effectively. Now when something comes across my desk that needs to be shared online, I just email it to my assistant and tell her which sites to put it on and how often and she takes care of the rest for me.

Tool 2: AllProWebTools

APWT is INSANE! I used to use:

• WordPress
• Aweber
• InfusionSoft
• Cydec
• 1shoppingcart
• Google analytics
• SurveyMonkey
• eJunkie
• PayPal
• Clickbank

And about a dozen other services and plugins to run my website, blog and business. So now I am sharing my secret weapon. A super amazing tool called All Pro Web Tools created by this freaking genius name Dave Kramer who apparently has nothing better to do then cater to my every Internet marketing whim. J I tell him what I want my website to do, and he creates a module for it. And these modules have iOS pricing– not $1000 or $100 a month. More like $2 a month or $5 a month. I am saving an immense amount of money using a tool that is easier and more integrated than anything else out there. Check then out and tell Dave I sent you.

Tool 3: Account Researcher

To run a successful campaign, you need the right audience. To find the right audience, and their contact info, you need eGrabber’s Account Researcher. This tool is amazing! How amazing you ask? Well, I bought a PC to run it (and I am a diehard Macophile) because they don’t yet have a cloud or Mac interface.

Nonetheless, this thing can find you who you are looking for. It’s a no brainer for anyone in recruiting and career transition, but if your business in any way deals with finding and engaging with prospects, then this is the tool for you! It’s not free, but at $80 a month, if you are not seeing a return on your investment, then you are doing something wrong! If account researcher can find me one new client a year, it pays for itself. But it’s finding me several new clients a month. Check it out!

Viveka von Rosen is a LinkedIn expert, speaker & trainer. Viveka also hosts #LinkedInChat and is the author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour A Day.

Bonnie Andrews

There are SO many fabulous tools for social media management and there are new tools coming on the market every month.

At Hobby to HOT! we have found the most success in social media campaigns by sticking to the grassroots, minimizing fancy tools and empowering our social reach with good ‘ol fashion team work.

Don’t tune me out…

I may not be about to offer the hottest insight on the most trending social media management tools, but I will offer you a tried and true system for success.

So if you’re ready, let’s dig in.

3 Social Media Management Tools We Live by at Hobby to HOT!

Tool #1 – Delegation

The most powerful tool you will ever have in your social media management belt is delegation. If you really want to establish a reach and impact in social media {which I may argue is more important than SEO right now} then you absolutely should not be doing it on your own.

I get a lot of kick back for this, but I stand my ground.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a noobie, established and bootstrapping or funded and growing, there will always be power in numbers.

To any of you reading who may start to grown or skip over this #1 tool, my response is: leverage, leverage, leverage.

• Forgo the lattes
• Pack a brown-bag lunch
• Don’t go out every Friday night
• Resist the urge to spend on anything in your life/business that doesn’t affect your bottom line

If you’ll do this religiously, you’ll find the resources you need to hire part-time help and sooner than later your business will be producing the profits to pay for them so you can have your lattes again.

Team sourcing your social media if you don’t have an in-house team means that you get it done, it influences your audience and you profit because of it.

Tool #2 – A Publishing System

Once you’re on board with team sourcing your social media management, develop a system that works for you so anyone you hire doesn’t waste their time trying to figure it out themselves.

{NOTE: if you’ll do the research and trial-and-error testing to develop your own simple social media system then you can hire someone who is more cost effective.}

It absolutely shocks me how many small business owners run by the seat of their pants using social media. Their only plan is to ‘do it.’ No wonder it’s so exhausting!

You’ll save oodles of time and increase your impact ten times if you’ll just sit down and make a social media plan. Just do it.

If you need help, here’s a little exercise for you:

1) Focus on three social media platforms your market is active on.

2) Define how often you will update each platform: daily, weekly, every other day? How many times a day? Write it all down.

3) Decide on the content you’re going to share: are you curating 80 percent and sharing your content 20 percent? Are you going to use social media to attract influencers or end users?

4) Decide where your curated content is going to come from: blogs you read, an aggregator, Scoop.it, paper.li, your own social media feeds etc…

5) Decide how you are going to manage replies and then do it

Social media is entirely exhausting and overwhelming without a plan.

Creating a plan might feel like a monumental task, but it’s worth every minute you spend on it. It will catapult your influence and engagement and help you truly manage what you’re doing.

Tool #3 – Automation and Scheduling {3-in-1}

Before all the awesome third-party tools can really explode in their effectiveness, you have to have a plan and you need to be delegating. Until then, it will be a trickle effect and you won’t see the social media power that can have a profound influence on your bottom line.

At Hobby to HOT!, once we have our delegation and system in place we use three tools: Hootsuite, Viraltag and Facebook. Every one of these platforms allows you to automate your sharing and schedule your responding for peak times.

1) Hootsuite is what it is. It’s fantastic.

It gives us an overall snapshot of what’s going on in our social media campaigns. Without it, our campaigns would not be as successful or effective.

2) Viraltag, it’s for Pinterest

A huge part of our market is really active on Pinterest. Viraltag allows us to schedule all of our pins. It’s absolutely fantastic for sharing great content and re-marketing our own.

3) Facebook, raw and onsite

Facebook likes you a whole lot more when you schedule inside the platform. You’ll get more visibility and engagement with their algorithms when you take the time to schedule your posts and updates in your actual account. It’s worth it. Even though it isn’t third-party, it still gives you the option to schedule so you can be reaching your audience whether you’re running errands, in a board meeting or traveling.

These three simple tools will empower your social media campaigns and give you more power to focus on the things you’re best at.

• Don’t be afraid to leverage your resources so you can delegate.
• Don’t put off creating your own social media system and
• Don’t miss out on the power of scheduling

You’ll be amazed at the impact it has.

Toodles!

Bonnie Andrews, Founder at Hobby to HOT!

Sean Clark

1. Hootsuite

For me Hootsuite is the “Swiss Army Knife” of social media management. Suitable for individuals or corporations, simple enough for those just getting started, but enough under the hood for the most experienced social media manager. I have used Hootsuite since 2010 and the initial major attractions were the collaboration features and cross platform/device usability. Even in its earlier development Hootsuite was available on all major mobile devices.

The ability to monitor multiple streams in a single view and seamlessly switch between social media platforms makes it indispensable in a busy marketing environment. In addition the Hootsuite University is a fantastic way to introduce new team members to the application.

2. Kurasie

I am a big advocate of content curation, using it to help clients build authority for themselves in their market sector. One of my core tools for this was Google Reader combined with BufferApp for scheduling. With Google Readers demise in July 2013 I realised I could no longer rely on cobbling together other peoples applications to construct a curation system. Even though Feedly came through as a serious contender I still felt vulnerable to the whim of other companies, so I decided to build my own “Curation Engine”.

Kurasie is currently in closed beta, but very close to opening up for general use. It combines an RSS reader and a social media scheduling system in one. The ability to curate content onto a WordPress blog and analytics are built in, with many more features, specifically with social media management in mind, planned for the very near future.

3. Google Analytics

Not strictly a social media tool, but I couldn’t do social media without it. Using a number of custom reports I am able to track clients social media activity and apply them to agreed business objectives, whether that be sales, leads or traffic.

As an example you can import this Editorial Report https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=Sl9pKoMHSrWeOwtVTj-mFA into your Google Analytics to assess the impact of your blog on sales or traffic. Edit the report to match your particular requirements and site set up.

Sean Clark is a search and social media expert that has over 14 years experience in building multi-million pound companies online.

John Paul Aguiar

I use about 10 different tools to manage my daily and weekly social media efforts. For me, the most important thing I need a tool to do is “save me time”

With all tasks you have to do on a daily basis to manage your social media efforts, having tools that make things easier, and faster are a BIG help.

Below are my Top 3 powerful time saving tools.

Hootsuite

This is the one tool that I would honestly be lost without. Yes, there are others that do similar stuff, but for me, nothing matches Hootsuites ease of use and choices.

My main use for Hoot is to schedule, and monitor my shares across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Being able to schedule and monitor my shares across all 3 networks quickly on one dashboard helps me free up a huge amount of my time. Leaving the time to focus on the important tasks like engaging with people around those shares.

SocialBro

When it comes to maintaining and growing my Twitter community SocialBro is the tool I use the most. You can use SB for a number of things, but for me, I mainly use it for…

• To edit my community and removing dead weight.
• To find quality, targeted people and influencers to connect with.
• To finding the most active people in my community.
• To getting specific stats on all the people in my community.

Just a great tool that again is easy to use and saves me time. Your Twitter community is only as good as you want it to be. SocialBro gives me the tools to first see what is happening in my community on a daily basis, and second, to then make the changes I need to make from the information I was given.

Budurl

Budurl isn’t technically a social media tool, but it is a simple but powerful link shortening tool I use for affiliate links and important links I share across all social platforms.

You get all the stats and customizing you could ask for when it comes to shrinking and monitoring your shared links.

Having one place to shrink and monitor all my important shared links is another big time saver.

John Paul Aguiar is a blogging entrepreneur helping bloggers with blog marketing, twitter marketing and social media.

Lori Ruff

Nimble – social Inbox – I can see all responses and pull into crm instantly.

Salesfusion – marketing automation – they all take effort to set up but sales fusion is small enough to care that I need help with that!

GaggleAMP – because I can amplify the message no matter where I want to send out and my members increase their influence as well.

Lori Ruff is a social media influencer, author and CEO of Integrated Alliances.

Kristi Hines

The following are my favorite tools to manage my social media accounts:

Buffer – Allows you to quickly schedule updates for your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts. You can even create recipes (like this one) on IFTTT to automate some updates from your favorite blogs!

Commun.it – Works like a CRM tool to help you find the most important members of your Twitter community and track your engagements with them.

HootSuite – Helps you monitor streams (mentions, direct messages, etc.) for multiple accounts, track keyword searches, keep up with activity from Twitter lists, and much more.

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer and blogger specializing in online marketing, find her blogging at Kikolani.com.

Brent Carnduff

Triberr – not sure if this should really be considered a tool, but it is responsible for a great deal of the social interaction that my content receives, and is a great source of sharable content for me.

Feedly Reader – I subscribe to an ever growing list of blogs. Feedly allows me to categorize them, and to quickly find sharable content for my social media streams.

Buffer – this may be the only real “tool” that I use! Buffer allows me to schedule my social sharing of posts (ties in very nicely with Feedly) on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Highly recommended!

Brent Carnduff is a marketing and SEO expert, speaker and founder of Echelon SEO.

Michael Nelson

These three tools make me more efficient with the time I spend with social media and help me produce better results. For me, social media is an important component of the three part digital marketing process I follow.

Getting traffic, converting traffic to leads and making sales to those leads. The tools I use help me get better results in less time as I use social media within digital marketing.

HootSuite – I use HootSuite as a listening post, scheduler and handle multiple accounts with it. This is the tool that I use to monitor hashtags and topics. Once I’ve identified a subject to engage with, I’ll set up HootSuites feeds to track several columns of keywords or hashtags to gather ideas and information and to get a general feel for what is being asked and shared. From this feed, I’ll usually also make a number of connections, which flow into the tools below.

I also use HootSuite to schedule posts that I write. I either write several variations of a blog title and manually schedule them to go out for a few days, or I’ll take advantage of the importing capability where I can write tons of posts within a spreadsheet and upload them into HootSuite. This saves me tons of time and HootSuite will provide some optimization for times posted if I don’t select them manually. I can also manage several accounts like this which is another huge timesaver.

I’ve been experimenting with HootSuite’s latest update, which allows for some great cross-posting across social media platforms too.

SproutSocial is my favorite tool for curation and reporting. So many people are creating great content that my audience benefits from that I use curation to share some of it with them. SproutSocial integrates with Feed.ly, which is my RSS reader of choice. I have tons of blogs loaded into Feed.ly in a variety of categories and I can access them through SproutSocial. When I find an article of particular value, I can share it from the same location to any of my accounts and at a time I choose. I can also put the article in a queue and SproutSocial will send it out at one of the five times daily that I’ve selected.

I also use SproutSocial for search and discovery and I’ll often take my search results over to HootSuite to monitor and explore more deeply.

A delightful feature of SproutSocial is their built in reporting, which is great for an individual or for sharing with clients. It tracks the basics of social media and gives you an idea over time of how your engagement is tracking. I was out sick for a bit last week and I can look at my SproutSocial report and tell exactly which days I was off the ‘net!

The SproutSocial mobile app is quite useful to me as well. I’m frequently at soccer games or practices with our three boys and I can bring my iPad and curate articles while they are warming up, which saves me time at the desk.

Nimble – Nimble is a Social CRM tool that helps me start moving conversations away from social media streams and into conversations. All of my contacts from my social media accounts are loaded into Nimble and I’ve added my business email accounts too. Nimble then builds a picture of each person across platforms. For instance, if I find a person that I’d like to connect with on Twitter and enter them into Nimble, it will look across platforms and find their other accounts, which helps me build a more robust picture.

People that I find via my HootSuite tracking streams can be loaded into Nimble and tagged. Some are “influencers” in a category; others are prospects or clients and so on. Nimble also helps me keep track of frequency of engagement. If somebody is tagged as important, Nimble will ask how often I’d like to stay in touch and then set reminders for me.

Where Nimble shines is the journey from stranger to customer. As somebody expresses interest and begins engaging with me, I switch their tag to track the flow. When they become a prospect, Nimble has a built in flow that tracks the sales process and has room for notes, reminders, etc. It puts all of my contact with that person in one place, from email through social media and makes me more effective at using social media to capture customers.

None of these tools is a single solution and there is some overlap in their capabilities, but working together within my process for social media campaigns, they make me more effective at growing my business and they save me time!

Michael Nelson “The Cogent Coach” helps small business owners grow their revenue while reducing the challenges of small business ownership through coaching and digital marketing consulting. He is also a Managing Partner in Centripetal Network Consulting, which delivers increased revenue and business valuation to customers globally via strategic digital marketing. You can reach Michael anytime via email.

Melonie Dodaro

1. Sprout Social

Every business needs a central point where all their social media data converges. For me that is Sprout Social. It’s not perfect and there are things I would change but it really is a wonderful Jack-of-all-trades and in the world of social media, that is actually really important for time management. The feature that I really get value from is the reporting tool. It’s excellent for providing more reader-friendly reports that make sense to both my clients and I.

2. Buffer

As much as I hate to sound like a broken record, content truly is king and having a steady flow of it coming from your social media accounts is paramount to user engagement. Buffer’s browser plugin allows me to quickly and easily schedule content as I come across it through the day that I used to forget to post. Buffer makes scheduling content so practical by reducing the task to the absolute minimum amount of steps possible, which is essentially the definition of efficiency.

3. FollowerWonk

I’ve always felt Twitter could improve its profile search function but thankfully everything I wish it did is taken care of by FollowerWonk. You can easily find people on Twitter that have specific keywords in their bio but also with more advanced parameters such as location. FollowerWonk also does an amazing job helping you learn more about your followers with details most reporting tools leave out.

Melonie Dodaro is the founder of Top Dog Social Media and has been dubbed by the media as Canada’s #1 LinkedIn expert.

Patricia Redsicker

1. Inbound Writer – is a blogging tool/WordPress plug-in that helps you optimize your blog content for search, social or both. I like it because it’s extremely user-friendly allowing the user to focus exclusively on content development. The best part is that it comes with a scoreboard (which includes a dial), to evaluate your content as you write it. The dial moves from left to right based on a 0-100 scale, and this reflects improvement in your content based on different factors that you choose.

It’s free for up to 8 articles per month.

2. Buffer – is a major time saver, especially when you add the tool to your browser. I love that it makes sharing so much easier on social networks, as you can just set it up in the morning, and it will automatically publish/share your articles/images/videos etc. throughout the day. And of course the bonus is that it comes with analytics and you can use it on your mobile phone too! Did I mention it’s free?

3. Google Analytics – Because if I can’t measure it, then I can’t manage it!

Patricia Redsicker is a professional writer and content marketing avangelist, learn more at WordViewEditing.com.

Evy Wilkins

Traackr – Full disclosure, as VP Marketing at Traackr, I get a free account! Traackr is the foundation of every social media campaign I run. I use Traackr to find relevant people for each campaign, learn about these influencers via their content and identify the right moments to reach out. I also rely on Traackr for content tracking, which helps me build and maintain relationships with the people who matter most by involving them in the content with produce. I wrote an ebook on how I do this here.

Google Analytics – Most of our social media efforts are about reaching new people and intriguing them enough to visit our website and learn more. That’s why I keep close tabs on how much traffic we are pulling in from various social networks. Sometimes you can be surprised by where traffic is really coming from!

Twitter Ads – Twitter has been a very useful network for reaching our prospective buyers: digital and social media marketers. This group is obviously quite heavily engaged on the microblogging platform. Recently I’ve been experimenting with Twitter Ads as a way to promote content that is performing well. While it’s too early to tell, I do like how Twitter Ads lets you target based on words people are using in their tweets. It makes for contextual advertising that is more likely to resonate.

Evy Wilkins is the VP of Marketing at Traackr.

Rick Mulready

Hootsuite – I love it’s simplicity and ability to monitor multiple accounts, mentions and keywords all in one easy-to-read dashboard. The free version is great and the pro version offers even more bells and whistles like assigning tasks.

Swayy – Finding content that’s relevant to your business and then sharing it with your customers is challenging enough. Swayy is a content aggregator that works with your social channels to pull a bunch of relevant content into an easy-to-read dashboard from which you can share any of the pieces across your social channels.

Mention.net – Mention is like Google Alerts only better, in my opinion. It allows you to monitor when keywords like your name, business name, competitors and industry keywords are mentioned across the Internet and social media. Customize the mentions you want to monitor and receive email alerts when your keywords are mentioned. And, the basic version is free!

Rick Mulready is a social media strategist and trainer, learn more at RickMulready.com.

Mike Gingerich

I try to keep things simple and straightforward. I experimented with a lot of tools and needed something that gave me the insight I needed, yet was also very cost effective for our startup. I settled on a simple combination of tools. When I launch a standard campaign I use Buffer to coordinate my social sharing. I like the ability to set best times or schedule specific times, while also sharing to multiple social networks. The real bonus for me, however, is having unique Google custom URL tracking parameters for each.

So if I have a landing page that is the destination goal for my campaign, I can launch that page and then use the Chrome Buffer bookmarklet to setup social shares to multiple locations easily. I then have the ability to track comments, likes, and clicks in Buffer while also being able to go to Google Analytics to drill down on the custom URL parameters. Our development team setup a method where I can track conversions on any custom URL parameter, so this means by simply sharing with Buffer or a custom URL parameter in our email marketing system, I can then track a conversion back to the source of the share, such as Twitter.

I complement this by using Hootsuite to setup tracking on key terms, and also setting up email instant notifications in Postling. The email notifications help automate my monitoring and then I can go to Hootsuite to respond and further engage socially.

Like I said, I try to keep it low cost and simple, and this has worked well for me to launch, track, and measure my social campaigns.

Mike Gingerich is a speaker, trainer, the co-founder of Tabsite.com and has over 10+ years in internet marketing.

Christian Karasiewicz

Wow! Picking just three tools for managing social media campaigns is quite challenging because there are a lot of great tools available.

If I had to recommend just three tools that every social media professional should have in their social media toolbox, here are my favorites.

HootSuite/Buffer

This one is a toss-up between Hootsuite and Buffer because I love both of them but for different reasons. Here is a breakdown on why I recommend each of these tools.

Hootsuite:

Hootsuite is a my go-to tool for tracking anything that has to do with Twitter. They offer a robust dashboard that let’s me follow multiple accounts, collaborate with my team, or view updates from the Twitter lists that I have setup. Additionally, if I am tracking keywords for a social media campaign, I can do this as well within the same interface. This way I don’t miss out on who is tweeting about a campaign.

Besides being a great dashboard for Twitter, Hootsuite, also let’s me connect my other social media channels such as Facebook, Google+, and Instagram or even your favorite blogs all within the same dashboard. This helps save time because you don’t have to flip back and forth between your browser tabs.

Buffer:

Buffer offers a similar selection of tools for scheduling out updates across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. They go a little further and let you schedule down to the minute instead of in five minute increments like on Hootsuite and integrate nicely with other tools such as Followerwonk, an SEOMoz tool, which let’s you analyze your Twitter followers and then create a custom schedule based on the recommendations you are given to use in Buffer.

While Buffer doesn’t offer the dashboard that Hootsuite does, it makes up for it with a great mobile experience, browser add-on that lets you “buffer” anything you find on the web whether you’re viewing a website, checking Facebook, or looking at your Twitter stream. This way you can curate and schedule content to share with your network wherever and whenever.

In addition, Buffer provides a great analytics tool so that you can track the content that you curate and share on your social media channels.

Tagboard

Hashtags used to be reserved for just Twitter users; however, you can now find them on Facebook, Instagram, and Google+. What this means is that while one hashtag may work great on one social network, you need to know if it’s good to use on other social networks.

What Tagboard does is it shows you what hashtags are trending and let’s you search hashtag usage across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Vine, and Google+.

This allows you to identify potential hashtags to include in your social media campaigns.

Sprout Social

If you are looking for a more comprehensive social media management tool, Sprout Social is one of my favorites. It offers a dashboard so that you can monitor your social media channels, but also analytics and publishing features so that you can share and analyze the content to know how well it is performing.

Another feature is the ability to monitor competitors. This way you can keep an eye on them while managing your own social media campaigns.

Social Media campaign management

When you are looking for social media campaign management tools, there can be a lot to choose from. Don’t let them overwhelm you. Instead, keep the handy, but know which ones you need to help with your project.

Christian Karasiewicz is a social media strategist and social business manager at IBM.

Summary

Above all else I want to say a big thank you to everyone who took part in this group interview – it really means a lot and the results have been great.

If you want to check out my last group interview on reader engagement, you can find that here.

Now, over to you – what are your top 3 tools for managing social media campaigns?