Social media management is a fast and easy road to feeling overwhelmed and overworked. If social media management has you throwing your hands up in surrender, you will be happy to know that there are tools out there to help you better manage the social media marketing and networking efforts for your business. In fact, these three tools are award-winning tools.

Hootsuite
If your business has up to five social media accounts, then Hootsuite might be just what you’ve been seeking for social media management. The free version of Hootsuite allows you to add up to five of your social media accounts to the Hootsuite account. This management tool works off a dashboard, so you view each of your social media accounts through the different tabs on the Hootsuite dashboard.

Additionally, you can schedule updates into the future, send an immediate update, shorten links to include in your updates and much more. The paid version adds additional features, such as linking Google Analytics and vanity URLs for your links.

TweetDeck
TweetDeck is also a one-stop-shop for managing social media networks. It turns it up a notch from Hootsuite because TweetDeck permits you to manage all of your different social media accounts in one place. Similar to Hootsuite, TweetDeck uses a dashboard platform that uses a column setup rather than tabs, which means you can see all of your networks on one screen. Although you can use TweetDeck for more than five social media accounts, a maximum of five accounts puts TweetDeck at its easiest point to use without getting inundated with too many social media streams.

CoTweet
CoTweet is a valuable social media management tool when the business has more than one employee, owner or staff member managing social media. CoTweet allows you to separate, or give each social media manager an identity in the system. This allows each social media manager to personalize and manage their own updates, while simultaneously seeing the updates of other social media managers within the same company. As of right now, CoTweet supports Twitter and Facebook management. Additionally, there is an app for that, so you can manage it from an iPhone as well.

One of the unique features of CoTweet is that you can assign social media management tasks to different people at different times. If it is your turn to respond to social media questions and comments, then CoTweet allows the person in charge to assign the task to you and it will automatically route the social media stream to you. When you respond, it is noted within CoTweet so actions are trackable back to the original source.

While managing social media can be an overwhelming task, it does not have to be. There are a multitude of tools you can use to bring together all of your social media profiles and work into one place. One or more of these tools can be valuable resources in consolidating your social media accounts and streamlining your social media management. Even with streamlining tools such as these, many business owners or marketing managers seek outside assistance. By delegating social media management to a third party, it really eases the chaos that can ensue when trying to manage the social media marketing aspect of a business while juggling all of the other responsibilities at the same time.

If social media management sends you into an overwhelmed state, contact a social media agency to help you head back to underwhelm. Visit www.maximizesocialmedia.com now to find out how to get started.

Deciphering the term “social media consulting” might seem like an easy and logical process. When you start the task, however, you might soon realize that social media consulting is an all-encompassing term. Consulting specialists or professional consultants can handle so many different aspects of social media that when it is time for you to seek some help in the social media arena, you might not really know where to start or what to look for in a social media consulting firm. With so many professionals touting themselves as consultants, gurus and experts, it is worth the time it takes you to learn what you should seek in a social media consultant.

You want to do your research, ask the social media consultant questions and verify the information they provide to you before you hire them. Some of the areas you want to verify are their experience with communications, business operations and specifically with social media. While these three areas are must-haves for any social media guru you choose to work with, you should also consider companies or experts that are certified in social media and are award-winning professionals.

Communications Background
The foundation of social media rests on communication. While social media acts as the tool for disseminating the information, the information, the story, the tip or piece of advice is what really counts. While some social media consultants have mastered social media tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, what they really need to know is how to create a good story and a buzz around it for you and your company.

This all goes back to their communication knowledge and skills.

Business Operations Knowledge
It is also highly beneficial that the professionals you will be working with at the social media consulting firm have general business operations knowledge. Marketing is but part of the overall business strategy. And, social media is but one aspect of the marketing strategy for a business. It is imperative that the social media expert you will be working with understands your overall business goals and operations and how social media fits into this plan.

Specialize in Social Media
Finally, you do want to work with someone offering a social media consulting package that specializes in social media. You will find some experts that have specialties in this and that, but it is difficult to truly be the master of a lot of different things. You want to work with someone that solely focuses on the area of social media.

When they specialize in social media, it means that they basically eat, breathe and sleep social media. They can read all of the latest publications, play and master all of the hottest social media tools, and come up with a strategy that is customized and personalized to fit your business needs because social media is all they deal with all day long on a daily basis.
Certification and Awards

While the above three characteristics are definite characteristics and traits, you should also inquire about the certifications or awards the expert has. Special training programs and classes allow social media experts to obtain certifications. Usually, these certifications are through an association or organization, but might also be from an educational institution. Since the professional has to meet specific criteria to obtain the certification, it helps to add a credibility factor to the work they can do with you and for your business.

Awards hanging on their walls and lining their shelves are another indication of their level of professionalism. Check out the titles for the awards and the institution or organization the award is from, as well as what the award is for.

The best way to hunt down, choose and hire a social media consulting professional is to do your homework. Now that you know what you are looking for, you can start the hunt. For more information on the services of social media consulting, and the benefits it can bring your business, visit www.maximizesocialmedia.com.

With a dizzying amount of information to keep straight on social media networks and how to use each of the different social media platforms for marketing your business, a social media agency can sure come in handy. Think of the social media agency as the conductor to your orchestra. They have a team of professionals to help you optimize your social media presence, create interaction between you and your followers, and use the social media network to the fullest extent. Once the director coordinates all of the different efforts that social media requires, your business will be creating sweet music.

Social Media Optimization
Throwing up a personal profile or even building a profile page for your business just isn’t enough to optimize your social media efforts. Social media optimization has everything to do with creating a profile that paints you and your business in the right light. When the profile contains the keywords, for example, that your ideal clients are searching for online, it increases your chance of connecting with them.

This means that once these ideal clients find you, you have to pony up the information they’re searching for and what you’ve promised to provide. A social media agency has experts that manage all of these dynamic parts for you. They help you to build fully optimized social media profiles.

Something else to consider is that social media is changing every day. It’s not going away, but it is evolving and morphing to better fit the needs of the users. Again, a social media agency comes to the rescue because they also take it one step further, and manage your social media profile to make the changes that are necessary for you and your business to keep up with the changing times.

Create a Platform for Interaction
People are social by nature. They want to talk to people, see people, eat meals with people. People also want to have the opportunity to communicate and interact with the folks behind the companies with which they are doing business. A social media agency gets you up and running on social networks, but more importantly, the professionals at the agency ensure that you are connecting with the right people, responding to their questions and addressing the comments that are making about you, your products or services and your company.

Maximizing Social Media Use
Each social media network has its own set of tools, applications and features. Again, this is a dizzying amount of items to try to keep on your radar screen when you are busy running your business and making money. This too is where a social media agency comes to the rescue. They have their fingers on the pulse of the hottest tools, apps and features of each social media network. They are managing, applying and using the tools, apps, and features on these networks that allow your business to maximize the use of the social media network—to harness its power, if you will—to turn your interaction into relationships and your relationships into sales.

If you are like most professionals and business owners, you get dizzy when you sit down and try to get your social media profiles together, let alone try to implement a social media marketing campaign. With the help of a social media agency, you can stop the dizziness and start leveraging the expertise of social media experts instead. Ready to delegate the social media portion of your business to the experts so you can focus on the parts of your business that make you money? Visit www.maximizesocialmedia.com now to find out how to get started.