Week 14 Part A: Social Media Management Tools

 The article by Investopedia on Best Social Media Management Software first struck me as odd that they would refer to Meta and Instagram as a social media platforms, when Meta is the umbrella company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, and messenger services, photo, and video sharing augmented reality, and many other apps and service. As Investopedia clearly lists in this article by Nathan Reiff. I understand that is a little off the discussion topic (I will get back to Social Media Management Tools in a moment), but I felt compelled to point out this glaring disparity in the first sentence of the article by Holly Johnson and “fact-checked” by Fernando Flores. For example, Google is owned by Alphabet Inc. after a similar restructuring in 2015. However, no one refers to Google as Alphabet Inc. Why do you think that is? It could be because the new name announcement by Mark Zuckerberg was convoluted or could be because of something else? Investopedia clearly understands that Meta owns Facebook, so why list Meta instead of Facebook, when they listed Instagram?

Investopedia compiled a list of the best social media management platforms and provides them in a useful format that allows small businesses to compare each of the tool’s “pros” and “cons”. I especially appreciate having the material reviewed and listed in this way.

As a small business that hasn’t yet begun to market online. Sprouts Social is the most attractive to me at this point in my small business process. It is considered the ‘Best overall” by Investopedia. They offer a 30-day free trial so that I can test the product and see if it works for my business. The dashboard is easy to use and lists all my social media networks and I can schedule my post, so I am not working on them all week long.  The cons for Sprouts Social are that it is expensive. They also limit how many profiles you can use, but I do not have an expansive profile list at this time.