The web has always been well suited to sharing, and the easiest place to do that is on social media. Everybody from bedroom guitarists to oil conglomerates can promote themselves via the array of networks on offer, but jumping between tabs and accounts can be tiresome and time-consuming. So if you’re serious about social media, it may be time to upgrade your toolbox.
1) Tweetdeck
For those familiar with Twitter, Tweetdeck offers an ideal foray into advanced social media management. The web application used to cover a number of networks, but since being purchased by Twitter has scaled back to focus purely on its parent’s product.
From the dashboard you can manage feeds and tweets from different accounts, as well as schedule posts for future events. You can also bring up other people’s feeds and view conversations between multiple users, which beats handling numerous tabs.
Its weakness is the search function, which is expansive but cumbersome. In all other respects this is the superior Twitter experience.
2) Hootsuite
This social media manager comes weighed down with features, adding even more functionality than Tweetdeck for the digital socialite.
Its main advantage is that it covers Facebook, Google+ and WordPress, allowing you to post the same content to several platforms at once. Those covering a wide range of subjects or interests can organise them by tabs.
Advanced users can also access the analytics system to monitor their social media presence. If that is not enough, the paid service yields further features.
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3) Buffer
More lightweight than the two previous offerings, Buffer lets users painlessly post links to Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. The extension is available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox, and appears as a box embedded in your browser.
As well as being easy to use, Buffer adds a link shortener that is particularly useful on Twitter, and has an innovative scheduling feature from which it takes its name. For those wishing to maintain a social media presence with minimal effort, this is for you.
4) Flint
Flint offers a similar service to Buffer, albeit in a less attractive interface. Users can post content, schedule tweets and shorten links without navigating a hefty dashboard. The premium version offers templates which ease up the process of posting, though whether it is worth the money is debatable.
5) Yoono
This last app incorporates features from the dashboard and button extensions, offering you a comprehensive overview of your social media accounts and an easy method for sharing posts.
The dashboard interface is more compact than Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, but if anything more expansive in its scope. All the interactions from various accounts are rolled into a single column, with the option of viewing different content in separate feeds.
Though the interface is less intuitive than Hootsuite, the option to more completely manage your Facebook may be attractive to some, making this a viable alternative.
