WITH so many social media channels, it can be difficult to stay on top of each of your accounts without a little bit of help. Luckily, there are tons of social media tools that can help you out.

Unfortunately, with so many options how do you know which ones to use?

No worries, as we will go over several social media tools that will help you be more efficient with your social activities.

At the core of every social media profile are the updates that get posted to it. Now, if you are posting all your updates manually, you could be missing out on one of the most popular social media automation methods.

Look, you shouldn’t use tools to completely automate your social profile.

Instead, you can utilize a few tools that let you schedule your updates in advance.

Similar to a content calendar, you can create a social media content calendar. With this, you will know ahead of time of what to post and on what channel.

Armed with this information, you can easily schedule these updates to post when and where you want.

To do this, I’d recommend looking at Buffer.

If you are not familiar with Buffer, it is a social media tool that easily allows you to schedule social media updates to your Facebook (profiles, pages, groups), Google+ Pages, LinkedIn (profiles, pages), Pinterest (boards), or Twitter accounts.

Buffer offers both free and paid accounts.

To get the most out of your social media scheduling, I recommend forking over the $10 a month in order to schedule up to 200 social media updates per social profile. You will also be able to connect up to 10 social profiles.

Once you have created your account, you will need to connect the social profiles you would like to post to. After that, it’s easy to start adding content.

If you have a social media calendar, you will be able to schedule all your posts in advance. In your Buffer account, simply add all of the content you would like to schedule, choose the account to post to and set the time to post (or use your default posting schedule). By queuing up your content in advance, you will save time in that you won’t have to login to each social media account to post multiple times each day.

Instead, you can use a single interface to schedule content for all your social media accounts.

Another benefit of using Buffer to schedule content is that it is ideal for companies who have multiple people posting to various social media accounts.

For example, Fortune Magazine found Buffer to be the ideal solution for scheduling social media updates. Fortune had an issue with multiple people posting social updates right after each other. Then not posting again for an hour or two.

Using Buffer allowed them to have multiple users add social media content to their queue that would not be posted until the next scheduled time. This allowed them to be more efficient with their posting of social media.

As you are aware, using images in your social media updates can significantly increase your engagement rates.

But what if you are not some sort of graphic design ninja?

Not to worry, with this next tool you can create some pretty spectacular graphics in just a few minutes.

To do this, you will need to use Canva which is a free web based software for creating social images.

Canva makes it drop-dead simple to create the right size image for any social media channel.

By using Canva, you can skip the need to find and hire an expensive graphic designer. This can save you not only a ton of time going through the process of hiring, but also saves you some money.

And who doesn’t want to save some money?

Canva has a huge library of premade templates. The benefit of using a premade template is that most of the leg work is done. This means that the fonts, layout, and image effects are already in place. You will simply need to edit some text and swap out the image.

It doesn’t get much easier than this and it’s a huge time saver.

When you are happy with your work of art, you can share it directly from Canva to Facebook, Twitter, or via email. Additionally, you can download your masterpiece and manually attach it to your next social media update.

Still not sold on how Canva can help you be more efficient on social media?

Canva is used by thousands. In fact, Upworthy relies on Canva to help them create, edit, and share images on their social media accounts.

Upworthy creates quite a bit of content that needs to be posted in near real-time. They don’t have the luxury of going back and forth with a designer and intricate approval processes. Instead, they need to get their content posted ASAP.

By using Canva, it streamlines the design process and allows them be fluid in the creation process and ultimately get their content posted quickly.

Still need more convincing about using Canva?

They have a huge library of various case studies worth reading.

Now that we’ve covered what post on social media, let’s take a look and see how we can monitor what is happening with your efforts. Social media monitoring is important because it allows you to stay on top of what’s happening with your various social media accounts.

By monitoring your social media accounts you’ll be able to interact with your audience and never miss a conversation. This will help increase your engagement and further build relationships with your followers.

While there are many tools that allow you to monitor social media, we’re going to focus on one of the more common social media monitoring platforms, Hootsuite.

Hootsuite is one of the more well-known social monitoring services. With Hootsuite, you can connect to social accounts from over 35 networks including these core channels:

When logged in and connected your social accounts, you can create various streams to help manage your conversations. For example, you can have a stream to monitor @mentions, another to watch for specific keywords being used in social updates, or even a stream to monitor your competitor’s conversation.

Aside from social media monitoring, Hootsuite can help you with other aspects of your social media campaigns. Some of the additional features that might interest you are:

A major benefit of using Hootsuite is that you can use one website to manage all your social media accounts. No need to login to different social media sites and profiles to manage your social media.

In fact, there have been countless companies that have used Hootsuite to be more efficient on social media.

One such company is Five Guys Burger & Fries. They have used Hootsuite to help be more efficient with hashtag monitoring, analyzing engagement, social scheduling, and more.

Check out what the Online Marketing Specialist of Five Guys Kenneth Westling said:

Whether you are a single person entrepreneur or a nationwide company, Hootsuite is worth looking into for social media efficiency. For some, you might find that Hootsuite gives you everything you need to run your social media efficiently.

Social media can easily cost your hours of inefficiency. Luckily, by staying focused and using the right tools you can save yourself several hours each week.

Are these 3 tools right for your social media needs?

Or do you already have a “go-to” set of tools that help you handle a large chunk of your social media activities more efficiently?

Either way, sound off in the comments below and let me know what is working for you.