The first interaction with your users might happen on your website. But to start a conversation the user needs to be able to reply and engage. They need to know if you exist on the social platforms they already use. Our app helps you share your social profiles on your website in a familiar and simple layout. Hook up apps to the Outlook Social Connector. If you use Outlook and SharePoint at work, you can see contacts in your organization. Note: Several social apps, including Facebook and LinkedIn have been removed from the Outlook Social Connector. For more information, see Facebook Connect is no longer available. Click View People Pane Account.
Let’s face it. Social media marketing is hard work. Sometimes you feel like a one legged man in a kickboxing competition.
Over the last few years it has become an integral part of your business and marketing.
You use social media to source leads, keep in touch with your old clients and even serve your current customers.
The only problem?
The Internet never sleeps.
But you can’t be online 24/7.
On top of it, there are multiple social media platforms fighting for your attention at any give time. (I can think of at least ten from the top off my head!)
If you’re a blogger or a small business, you cannot imagine hiring dedicated staff for social media management. Even if you can afford it, you may still not want to.
Where 40% of small business owners are most likely to outsource TV/radio ads and 35% are likely to do the same with SEO only a measly 5% want to outsource social media marketing and email newsletters.
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So how on earth are you supposed to manage all social media in one place; interact and engage with your followers while scheduling all those posts on each of these accounts?
Before you decide to go on a digital sabbatical, here’s some good news.
Enter social media dashboards.
If you’re an avid social media marketer, you’ve probably heard of a social media dashboard before. These online tools help you combat the time-sucking vortex that social media can sometimes be.
Looking for an automated social media dashboard tool? Try DashThis for free!
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The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing for Business
What is a social media dashboard?
Simply put, a social media dashboard makes social media management super-easy. It syncs all your social media accounts in one convenient place.
In its truest sense, a dashboard also allows you to see all your social media analytics at one place, thus eliminating the need to manually go into each account and check what happened in the past week.
A robust dashboard will let you connect with all major social media platforms out there. At the bareminimum, most good tools will sync Facebook, Twitter, Google + and LinkedIn.
Tip: Jeff uses Agorapulse to switch between multiple social media accounts with the click of a button.
5 benefits of using a social media dashboard
1. Productivity
Let’s be honest. How many times have you logged in on Facebook to schedule posts on your business page only to find yourself lost in the sea of posts after 30 minutes? And suddenly, you realise you haven’t retweeted something you were meaning to. You rush to Twitter and the same story repeats. A dashboard will save you ton of time. Because on its own, each social media platform can be a time-suck. With a dashboard, you are keeping things in perspective.
2. Tracking
You want to keep a tab on what your competitors are upto. Who’s talking about them? Who’s following them? How’s their engagement? All tracking-related questions that you can answer with simple search inside the tool.
3. Scheduling
Only a few social networks allow you to schedule your content. It’s a headache to go inside each account and schedule every post manually. Granted, networks like Twitter operate in “real-time” but you can’t be online all day long. Plus, no one likes being bombarded with string of posts within a given span of time, so scheduling is a smarter way to be present without really being there. A dashboard comes to rescue!
4. Analytics
You’ve probably wondered: What type of posts are a “hit” with my audience? Which ones get the most shares and engagement? How do I get more leads through social channels? Thankfully, with a dashboard, you can stop the guesswork. By seeing what your audience clicked on, you can fine-tune into what your followers enjoy. Dashboards make it easy to analyze everything at once.
5. Collaboration
Most dashboard tools will allow you and your team members to collaborate. You can also divide roles and duties and allocate social media tasks to each member so you know who’s accountable. Works like a charm especially when you’re remotely-based.
With that, let’s look at the pros and cons of six popular social media dashboard tools.
6 social media dashboard tools
Here are the 5 best social media dashboards that can help you manage your social media marketing.
1. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is number one on the list because it comfortably hits all the benefits of a social media dashboard that I just mentioned – Productivity, Tracking, Scheduling, Analytics, and Collaboration – compared to the other tools below which tend to lack in one or two areas. Agorapulse is also the dashboard tool of choice for JeffBullas.com.
The key differentiator of Agorapulse is their social inbox. It enables you to engage across all of your social profiles from one place so you never miss a message or customer service request that could be easily lost among a disparate set of social media inboxes.
The Agorapulse one-click reporting is also some of the most powerful social analytics software on the market. It goes beyond likes and followers to give you actionable insights about your audience so that you can make educated decisions for engagement.
If all of that wasn’t enough, the real kicker with Agorapulse is that it’s more affordable than other popular dashboards Hootsuite and Sprout Social:
2. DashThis
DashThis is one of the best rated automated marketing dashboard tools. It enables marketers to track all of their social media efforts, analytics, PPC, SEO, and more, all in one easy-to-use dashboard.
It’s the perfect tool for agencies and social media managers to create social media dashboards; it has an easy drag-and-drop interface and tons of time-saving features like social media report templates, cloning options, preset widgets, comment boxes, and much more.
DashThis has more than 34 native integrations including all of the most popular social media and marketing platforms:
Facebook Pages and Ads
Instagram Pages and Ads
Twitter
LinkedIn Pages and Ads
YouTube
Google Analytics
Google Ads
Data is automatically fetched and updated so you never have to manually copy and paste it from all your platforms ever again.
You can include all your marketing platforms, data sources, accounts, and pages in the same dashboard, and even aggregate data from different sources, which is particularly useful when you’re creating a complete social media dashboard. You can also create an Instagram dashboard or a Facebook report with data from multiple pages and accounts very easily.
Share your online dashboard with a URL, export it as a PDF, or set an automatic email dispatch so that you don’t ever have to manually send it again.
You can try the tool for free here.
Pricing starts at $33/mo for 3 dashboards, up to an unlimited number of dashboards with a custom plan. All plans include every feature, unlimited data sources, unlimited users, and unlimited access to your very own account manager.
3. SEMrush
Most marketers will be familiar with SEMrush as an SEO tool. And yes, it is one of the most powerful SEO tools on the market. But they also have some astonishing features when it comes to social media management and analysis.
With SEMrush’s social media toolkit, you can:
Schedule and find the best time for posts.
Analyze your content to see what is resonating most with your audience.
Get to know your audience based on a range of demographic factors.
Compare yourself with competitors and learn from their social media efforts.
And much more…
Pricing starts at $83 per month (billed annually) for the full marketing suite.
4. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the more popular tools out there that has grown to over 6 million users. The dashboard is available in 13 languages.
You can create a new account for free or sign in using your Facebook, Twitter or Google account.
Once you sync your networks within Hootsuite, you can add “streams” in the form of columns.
Streams can be Sent tweets, Retweets, Mentions, Home, Wall Posts etc. A stream is nothing but your activity on a social network.
You can also add tabs to group streams under relevant columns so you can keep streams from different social media separate.
So your tabs can be for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, with each containing streams from the respective platform.
Hootsuite also makes scheduling super simple.
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There is also an app directory, a library of third-party free and premium apps that you can use.
At this time, Hootsuite allows the following social networks to be added (for more, you’ll have to try their third-party apps):
Twitter
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
Pricing: Free for up to three social profiles with no collaboration.
From $9.99/mo for 50 profiles and +1 team members. Larger plans also available.
5. Cyfe
Cyfe is a full-blown business analytics tool that connects all your online activities, not just social media.
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Signing up with their Forever Free plan is easy. Just enter your name, email and password and you’re all set.
The tool has a myriad of widgets for different purposes, such as:
Advertising
Email
Monitoring
Sales and Finance
Web analytics
Each widget supports many different services that you can sync. For example, the Sales and Finance widget lets you add Freshbooks, Paypal, Xero, Salesforce etc.
The SocialMedia widget allows you to add different profiles as shown below:
You can also add a Competitor Dashboard in Cyfe where you can monitor their SEO and social media growth using widgets.
Cyfe is not just limited to social media – think of it as an integrated dashboard.
For example, if you use multiple Gmail inboxes – one for personal emails, another for client work and still another for guest blogging – keeping a tab on each one could be a pain. In Cyfe, you can easily create a Gmail dashboard for ease of management and boost your productivity.
Of course, not everyone needs all these features, so you can only use what applies to you. When compared to other tools out there, you’ll notice Cyfe comes in free and premium plans that aren’t all that expensive.
Pricing: Forever free plan.
$19/mo for unlimited everything (includes unlimited team members, dashboards and widgets) or $14/mo if paid annually.
6. Sprout Social
I’ve never used Social Sprout before, but I’ve been hearing about it recently. So I decided to give it a try.
Signing up with Social Sprout is a breeze. And they don’t ask you for any credit card details either. On the flip side, the free trial is limited to 30 days.
Personally, I don’t like the fact that once you sign up, you’re asked to attach with your Twitter account. Without authorizing, you can’t proceed.
Social Sprout asks for my business name and timezone upfront. Timezones can be tricky especially when dealing with social media, so I like how it is taken care of in the beginning.
Then, I am asked to do one of three things: Add social profiles, invite my team or jump into my inbox.
Sprout Social allows you to sync your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Feedly accounts.
Unlike Hootsuite, Sprout Social doesn’t use columns.
Another neat feature is easy setup for brand keywords (for social media monitoring). When you set up these keywords for your brand name, you’ll receive inbox messages from Twitter and Facebook even when someone mentions you without the @ tag.
Once you link your Twitter, you can search for people who follow you but you’re not following them under their Discover tab or “Cleanup” any silent, irregular or “do not follow back” accounts. Cool!
The down side is it’s on the expensive end and allows for limited number of profiles that you can connect even with a paid plan.
Pricing: Starts at$59/mo for an individual plan for up to 10 profiles. Larger plans also available.
Wrapping up
When it comes to social media tools, there is no right or wrong pick, only what is right for you.
Are you going to use the dashboard only for social media or something more than that?
Do you have a team that will be posting?
Is the number of profiles connected important to you?
Perhaps you have a budget of less than $25/mo?
Such criteria will help you make a choice and eliminate anything that’s not a fit. J
Each of the above tools has a different look and feel, features and pricing. Choosing the right type depends on your business needs.
Your turn! Is social media slowly becoming a time-suck for you? Are you staying on top of things? If not, give one of the above tools a try and let us know how you go!
Guest Author: Pooja Lohana is an Online Business Coach + Writer & Editor. She helps entrepreneurs shine their blog and copy, and simplifies online marketing so they can make more sales and live the Un-9-5 life. Check out her step-by-step course on breaking into freelance writing.
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It’s easier than you think!
Implement Social Login in a heartbeat with Auth0 and increase your registrations.
What is Social Login?
Social Login is single sign-on for end users. Using existing login information from a social network provider like Facebook, Twitter, or Google, the user can sign into a third party website instead of creating a new account specifically for that website. This simplifies registrations and logins for end users.
Learn when you should build versus buy your identity platform.
Why should you add Social Login to your applications?
Adding Social Login to your applications has several perks.
Increase registrations: according to a Web Hosting Buzz survey: 86 percent of users report being bothered by having to create new accounts on websites. Some of these users would rather leave your site than register, which means that providing Social Login to your apps will increase the number of registrations to your site. The survey also states that 77 percent of respondents say that “Social Login is a good solution that should be in any site.”
Email is verified: The social network provider is in charge of verifying the user’s email. If the provider shares this information (Twitter does not share the user email address, for example) you will get a real email address rather than the fake addresses that some users typically use to register in web applications. Additionally, the providers will handle the password recovery process.
Access richer user profiles: Social network providers can give you additional information about users, such as location, interests, birthday, and more. Using this data, you can target personalized content to the user.
Up-to-date profiles: Users do not tend to keep their profiles updated in most applications they use, but they do it in social networks. Therefore, having Social Login ensure that you have accurate information about your users.
One-click return experience: After users register in your application using Social Login, their return experience will be very simple, as they will probably be logged into the social network, and just one click will be enough to login to your application.
How does Social Login work?
Social Login is a simple process, with the following steps.
The user enters your application and selects the desired social network provider.
A login request is send to the social network provider.
Once the social network provider confirms the user’s identity, a current user will get access to your application. A new user will be registered as a new user and then logged into the application.
Social Providers with Auth0
Auth0 supports 30+ social providers: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, LinkedIn, GitHub, PayPal, Amazon, vKontakte, Yandex, 37signals, Box, Salesforce, Salesforce (sandbox), Salesforce Community, Fitbit, Baidu, RenRen, Weibo, AOL, Shopify, WordPress, Dwolla, miiCard, Yammer, SoundCloud, Instagram, The City, The City (sandbox), Planning Center, Evernote, Evernote (sandbox), and Exact. Additionally, you can add any OAuth2 Authorization Server you need.
Every provider has its own profile properties, required headers, and response format, and some use OAuth1 (Twitter) while others use OAuth2. Auth0 simplifies this for you, encapsulating the differences, and unifying the way to call providers and the information retrieved from all of them.
How about including Social Login in your application for free? Try our new free production-ready plan, which includes support for two social network providers of your choice. For more information, check our pricing page.
Social Login with Auth0 in a few steps
In Auth0’s Management Dashboard, click Connections and then Social.
Flip the switch of the selected social network provider to enable it.
Select the applications in which you would like to use this provider.
The configuration popup will display. There you can select the desired attributes and permissions that you want to get from the provider. You can also enter your own App/Consumer Keys in this screen.
Tip: In the settings of each provider, there is a link explaining how to obtain your key for that provider. If you do that, the consent page will show your logo instead of Auth0’s and you’ll be able to use Auth0 to do SSO for these connections.
Click Save.
Add your custom social connection using OAuth
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The most common identity providers are readily available on Auth0’s dashboard. However, you can use Auth0’s Connections API to add any OAuth2 Authorization Server as an identity provider.
Adding your custom connection is easy! Just create a custom connection, fill the configuration file by setting the required properties for your provider, such as Authorization URL, Token URL, Client ID, Client Secret, and so on. Add logic to the fetchUserProfile method to get the user profile from the provider and customize the returned JSON object that contains the user information. Finally, use your connection with any of the Auth0 standard mechanisms (e.g. direct links, Auth0 Lock, auth0.js, etc.) to login.
More information about creating your custom OAuth2 connections can be found here.
Remember, you can always use Rules for more sophisticated manipulation of user information. If you are creating your own OAuth2 connection, we recommend that you use Google OAuth 2.0 Playground, where you can experiment with the OAuth 2.0 protocol and APIs that use the protocol. You can walk through each step of the OAuth 2.0 flow for server-side web applications. At each step, you will see the full HTTP requests and responses.
Wanna try it out? Get Auth0’s free production-ready plan with support for up to 7,000 active users.