I got asked this question at a recent talk I gave about the importance of community to help you leap, launch and grow and of course, social media came up! I figured that there are may be others with this burning question so thought I would share:

My answer, a resounding-HELL YEAH!

Seriously, I could not survive* without my social media management system (SMS) of choice, Hootsuite (*yes, total #socialmediafirstworldproblems) and am a big advocate of using these types of tools to manage your social media presence.

Why?

Let me count the ways:

1. Method to the Madness

Twitter.com can be full on chaotic when you first start out. Especially if you’ve gone and followed hundreds of people. The stream moves fast, there are a bajillion conversations happening and you. have . no . idea.

How a management system helps?

With a tool like Hootsuite (which I might add has a free-plan), you can import/create Twitter lists and stalk follow conversations much more closely than you can on Twitter.com. You don’t have to follow your home feed but rather zoom in on the conversations that are more relevant/interesting to you.

2. Manage your multiple personalities from one place

Got multiple identities? You know where you have a profile for your personal use and one for where you want to be a little more business-y? SMS’s have you covered. From your dashboard you can manage your multiple Twitter identities from one place and decide what to post and where. Bonus: you can also add other social networks

 3. Actually Join The Conversation

Because of course you want to be able to chime in when people talk about you or share your content. Yep. Instead of scratching your head and wondering what’s going on, management tools have got you covered- you can create different streams that allow you to easily follow keywords related to your brand. For instance, I have a stream with “sidekickpm” that pulls in any blog posts that may have been shared even when my twitter handle @SandySidhu has not been included.

 4. Scheduling!

Yep. I said it. And it’s not a bad thing. You can’t be on social media all the time. You just can’t. But your business can be with the help of scheduling. This topic could be a post in itself, but essentially, social media management systems allow you to plan out your social media content ahead of time, something you can’t do directly on Twitter.

• Promoting a new service? Schedule out content throughout the week.
• Launching a new product? Schedule out teasers before, during and after your launch.
• Blogging? Schedule your post to go out at different times of the week to reach different audiences.

5. Keywords, Hashtags and all that

Last but not least, one of my favorite uses of Hootsuite, is to follow keywords/keyword phrases and hashtags. These might be related to questions that I could/want to answer or chats that I want to participate in.

So, are you convinced yet? Let me know in the comments how you plan on using one!

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