Social media is one of the most widely used methods of communication by communications professionals. People with a master’s in communication learn how to craft strategic messages using various social media platforms, as well as evaluate the efficacy of messages. If companies want to reach particular audiences through social media marketing campaigns, they may need tools to increase productivity and ease analysis. These five social media management tools can improve research, content curation, posting schedule, and analysis of marketing efforts.

Improving the Reach of Social Media Marketing Campaigns

1. Buffer
   Features: Professionals who manage several social media accounts need to have one place where they can manage and measure all of them at once. Buffer offers such functionality, with one app for iOS or Android that allows users to upload and schedule posts to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. The Individual Plan permits one account from each platform, while the Awesome Plan will accommodate up to 10 accounts total. Links can be added to your Buffer queue anytime you can click to share on social media. Under the Awesome Plan, users can queue up to 100 posts at a time, scheduling publishing times and dates and altering the schedule to resubmit posts more than once. Buffer provides weekly reports with information about the reach and engagement of posts on any given platform.
   Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest
   Cost: Individual Plan is free, Awesome Plan is $10/month
2. Feedly
   Features: Communication professionals working on social media marketing jobs are always on the lookout for great content. Feedly gives them the ability to receive and organize their content from RSS feeds, to make it easy to share. The system has a simple, uncluttered design that allows users to follow anyone on the web, from blogs and newspapers to YouTube and Google Alerts. Users can receive content from their company’s own content management system. Depending on the version, users can share quickly to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Hootsuite. Feedly can connect with Buffer to link social media management accounts. With the paid subscription models, Feedly offers the ability to save content to a variety of apps like Evernote, Pocket, and OneNote, plus curate content based on tags.
   Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Hootsuite
   Cost: Basic is free, Pro is $5.41/month, Team is $12.08/month
3. Tagboard
   Features: When a social media marketing campaign includes the creation of a hashtag, a good research tool helps users find popular hashtags. It helps strategic social media campaigns target and manage conversations that are relevant to their products, services, and audiences. Tagboard helps users keep everything organized across platforms. With Tagboard, users register a hashtag and create a tagboard for it. The tool collects data from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, App.net, and Vine and presents it all together for review. People who search for a hashtag on Tagboard’s website will find the page users have designed. When users log into their Tagboard accounts, they see what people are saying in posts that include their hashtags. They can moderate these posts and control how they show up on your Tagboard.
   Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, App.net, Vine
   Cost: Tagboard’s free plan costs nothing, Pro and Enterprise plans are charged based on selected services
4. Edgar
   Features: Anyone who has studied strategic social media marketing knows that no matter how well you schedule your social media posts, only a small amount of readers will actually see it. Edgar seeks to rectify this problem by allowing users to share and reshare content effortlessly. Start by creating categories and adding content to those categories. Set a schedule for each category. As users build their libraries of content, Edgar continues to share it based on a preferred schedule. Once fresh updates have all been sent, Edgar will send them again on a set interval, making sure that readers are more likely to see the content, no matter the time of day. The website does not require software, apps, or plug-ins and works on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
   Platforms: Facebook profiles, pages and groups, Twitter, LinkedIn profiles and company pages
   Cost: $49/month
5. BuzzSumo
   Features: BuzzSumo provides social media managers with the ability to research many different platforms from one website. Use BuzzSumo to check up on the competition’s most popular pages and social media posts, or search keywords to find out the most popular content in a specific industry. Searches can be refined by the content type as well. Each search yields analytical data for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+, as well as information about backlinks in the content. BuzzSumo allows users to export the content to CSV or Excel, and users can set the website to send alerts when someone posts content using their keywords.
   Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+
   Cost: BuzzSumo's Pro is $99/month, Agency is $299/month, Enterprise is variable

Social Media and Communications Degrees
Social media allows companies and organizations to reach thousands more readers than they might have decades ago using print and broadcast media. Graduates of American University’s School of Communication online Master of Arts in Strategic Communication degree who work in social media crafting messaging strategies consider various social media management tools such as these when they develop strategic communication plans.

Learn more about the online MA in Strategic Communication. Call 855-725-7614 to speak to one of our admissions representatives or request more information.