If you've got a personal Facebook page, then odds are you just log in when you need to make an update and do it from inside Facebook itself. However if you're managing social media accounts for your business, then it's pretty likely that you're using one or more third party tools to interface with your social media platforms.
If you aren't, then perhaps now is a good time to rethink that, because third party apps make it easier, faster, and more efficient to post to all the social media platforms you use. Essentially, these apps are designed to give you a dashboard-style view of your own social media ecosystem. From this dashboard, you're then able to schedule posts, set up various conditions, and exert a fine degree of control over how, when, and how often your social media properties get updated.
Perhaps you want to post the same post at 7am Eastern, and again at 10am Eastern, so it's near the top of your fans' and customers' news feeds depending on what time zone they live in. Maybe you want to schedule several weeks or even months of updates in advance in a kind of “set and forget” paradigm, or maybe you want to make sure that your Facebook page gets updated first, then an hour later Instragram gets an update, with a followup Tweet two hours after that. All those things are possible via third party tools.
Great, I Want One
All of the dashboard-style third party apps basically work the same way, though the particulars of navigation will vary from one to another. Your best bet is to try several, get accustomed to how each one works and how to navigate around, then decide for yourself which one works best for you. There are many to choose from, but in a recent study done by social media analytics provider Quintly (http://allfacebook.com/study-quintly-questions-pages-unanswered_b1317830 ) far and away the most popular dashboard is Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com/ ). You'll find the top ten third party apps listed just below:
1) Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com/ )
2) Instagram (Bolt – available in just a few regions, but coming soon to the US) (http://allfacebook.com/instagram-launches-bolt-new-zealand-singapore-south-africa_b133576 )
3) Buffer (https://bufferapp.com/ )
4) Sprout Social (http://sproutsocial.com/ )
5) RSS Graffiti (http://www.rssgraffiti.com/ )
6) Twitter (https://twitter.com/ )
7) WordPress (http://wordpress.org/ )
8) Sprinklr (http://www.sprinklr.com/ )
9) Adobe Social (part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud) (https://www.adobe.com/solutions/social-marketing.html )
10) Dlrv.it (https://dlvr.it/ )
Over time, you can expect that this list will change and mature. New services are being introduced all the time, each with their own unique spin and take on the idea of making it easier than ever to manage all your social media platforms in one place, so don't consider this to be a list set in stone. Others may come along which do more of what you need, and that's fine.
As with everything on the web, this is an evolutionary process, so you've got to be willing to change with the times and conditions. Still, this will give you a great starting point. Increasingly, search is becoming more strategic and less tactical, and tools like these are leading that drive.
