Mashable - 5 Superior Social Media Management Tools

Snippet from the article 5 Superior Social Media Management Tools [MASHABLE AWARDS]

 

5. Big Business Made Easy

 

Franchise companies looking to maintain consistent messaging while giving local branches a hand in social media strategy should give Engage121 a shot. Though its competitors are few, Engage121 is best in its class at encompassing monitoring, broadcasting and engagement.

 

The tool is incredibly customizable and can support just about any site with a social presence. Corporate managers can create a company-wide promotion message and use mail merge to broadcast it with a local store’s name and address. Permissions may be set to allow a branch to approve a message from corporate before it is distributed to area followers, maintaining a local voice and brand consistency at the same time.

 

With the amount of buzz around big-name brands, monitoring and engagement are particularly challenging. Engage121 simplifies these with customized filters, giving managers total control over what types of messages they see. Just underneath each message is an engagement button. When clicked, a very user-friendly interface pops up where managers can easily respond to followers’ messages or start conversations with social media influencers.

 

Engage121 CEO Jon Victor said the analytics component measures social media in about 100 ways, depending on the different stats useful to corporate divisions and local branches. Pricing also varies with business needs. Individual stores generally pay $25 per month with a separate charge to corporate. If the company incurs the total cost, the price tag ranges in the thousands, depending on the number of outlets, Victor said.

 

Because virtually every aspect of the tool is customizable, you should have a strategy in place before jumping into Engage121. Its functionality seems endless and could be overwhelming without a set social media objective.

 

Also worth checking out: Valuevine