Social Media Management Tools (Thing #8)

Let's be honest, I spend a good amount of time on social media, both personally and professionally.  Although I generally am of the opinion that the official app for said social media site is the best best, the more accounts I add to my list of managing or contributing to (another one this week), the better and better a social media management tool sounds...

HootSuite

HootSuite is fine for viewing your Twitter and Facebook feeds, though it doesn't allow you to view the news feed for any Pages you manage, just the Page's feed itself.  I also don't like that you can only search for Twitter contacts, not Facebook or LinkedIn contacts.

While you can at least like or comment on other's Facebook statuses, having LinkedIn connected to HootSuite seems even more useless, as the only thing you can do is view your news feed, see the most basic info about a connection, and post your own updates.

The only draw that would make me keep HootSuite is the ability to schedule posts.  As the only person managing our library's Twitter account, currently, if I am away for the library or on vacation, the account goes unmonitored for long periods of time.  And even days when I am at work, Tweets tend to come in fits and starts, when I have time on the desk amidst all my multi-tasking to browse through library news and post our announcements and events.  I especially like the auto-schedule feature, which allows HootSuite to determine optimal impact. 

The HootSuite app has a definite advantage over the web version.  That thing is so cluttered it freaks me out!

Cloze

“With Cloze people come first, everything else is secondary.”  Well, that's certainly true, though in my case most of the people were not people I know personally but were sports media personalities.  What's not true is Cloze's ability to predict the most important things.  Cloze is extremely Twitter heavy, and also appears to give emphasis to users with a high volume of Tweets.  I do not quite understand that algorithm!

The biggest pet peeve for me with this app was that if I wanted to go to an individual's full profile, at any one of the social sites we were linked, the buttons below would take me to the mobile website, not the app for the appropriate site!

Cloze was by far my least favorite of these apps.  Delete!

Buffer

Well, Buffer WOULD be the clear app of choice, IF it let you add more than one Twitter account or more than one Facebook profile/page without upgrading to the "Awesome Plan."  It is super intuitive, streamlined, and effective for scheduling posts.  Definitely the most user friendly.  But really, if you just have one Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. do you need a social media manager?  Buffer's Awesome Plan costs a whopping $8.50/month, for unlimited posts and to add 12 accounts.  Yikes.  

Lessons learned: I would use any social media management app to post but for the most part not to browse or search the sites, sticking to the official app for that purpose.  And for posting, HootSuite wins out.