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There are hundreds of programs available to companies and individuals that offer tools for making social media management…manageable, and now even Facebook has slowly but surely jumped on the bandwagon. The release of Facebook’s content scheduler has stirred up the debate between experts in favor of Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) and those that don’t think it’s necessary to use third party tools outside of Facebook. In fact, online marketers are even questioning the sustainability of these systems in light of this new Facebook functionality, claiming that there is no need to use anyone or anything else to monitor and schedule posts.

I suppose if all you have is a Facebook page for your business then you may not need the ability to compare your marketing efforts quickly and easily, but if you have a website and use Twitter, Linked In or any other social media network that offers an open API to integrate with third party systems, then it is absolutely beneficial to consider what these additional tools provide.

All Inclusive Analytics

Comparing your Google Analytics with your Facebook Insights and Tweet Stats can be confusing and difficult. The relationship between all of the different types of posts and the activity on each network is not clear when you are reviewing these reports separately. Many third parties combine that information and display it in a way that makes much more sense numerically and visually to even the most mathematically challenged.

Even for companies that do not use networks other than Facebook but have a website, the detailed information provided by an advanced SMMS that shows the data collectively can be very helpful in making important marketing decisions. Take the following report for example that shows on June 6, 3 people visited this company’s website, 2 of which were new visits and 3 social media media messages were posted. Clearly, those posts did not result in a significant amount of traffic to the website. If that were this companies intended goal, this information would serve as a red flag to re evaluate their marketing efforts. Of course the same conclusion could be drawn by comparing the data from each avenue separately, but consolidating your analytics into a single management system allows you to make decisions based on the trends of your overall strategy.

Managing the Incoming

The other thing that ney sayers seem to forget about Social Media Management Systems is that scheduling posts is one of many capabilities. Sure posting to Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and more all at the same time at a specific time is great but for most companies, the ability to review all of the incoming messages from each network on one dashboard is HUGE when it comes to saving time and making sure no one slips through the cracks when responding.

What will happen to Social Media Marketers?

The claim that Facebook’s scheduler is replacing the need to have anyone or anything manage and monitor your social media is as false today as it was when all of these third party management systems starting popping up and marketers wondered if they would be replaced. The fact is that regardless of whether or not people CAN do it themselves it doesn’t mean that they WILL or that they SHOULD! Having a new capability that you do not know how to maximize is no more beneficial to you than simply not doing anything at all. You can post all day long, but if you aren’t seeing engagement and you don’t understand how Facebook insights should be used to guide your strategy, then you will most likely want to use a third party system that system that simplifies it or hire someone who knows what they are doing. It is also very likely that the people who choose to take on the task of creating and distributing daily content themselves will realize how much work goes into it, even with an automatic scheduler, and wish they hired someone.

So before you go trading in your third party system or even worse your professional marketing team for Facebook’s new scheduler, remember that there is a TON of value in utilizing other systems and experts, and that just because you take advantage of this new tool, it doesn’t mean there is not plenty of reasons to keep your old ones as well.