In Argyle Social Social Media Marketing Hacks, we’ve given you some interesting (and hopefully useful) tips and tricks for improving your social media efforts here, here and here. We like to think we’ve saved the most practical advice for last. Call it the proverbial cherry on top.

Let’s start with a list:

Things That Should Be Full:

The Glass (at least halfway)
The Monty
Sentences
The Steam Ahead
Cornucopias

One Thing That Really Doesn’t Need To Be Full:

Your Social Media Toolbox

       
The Hack: Shrink Your Toolbox

Why? There are so many fun tools out there, and you want to use them! We don’t think it’s the best idea to jump every time someone says, “Look this new social media tool. It’s so cooool.”

Let’s say you have a few social media accounts and several team members posting to them. Bob likes Hootsuite, Jill prefers CoTweet, Fred’s self-esteem depends on his Klout score and Nancy is addicted to Argyle Social (but can you blame her?). There are tools that scrutinize, optimize and analyze every aspect of the social channel. That’s great, but if everyone is working with different tools, how can you possibly keep it organized?

The Solution:

Whittle down your social media toolbox to just a few valuable tools that everyone can access and manage. Sharing accounts will simplify your efforts and provide consistent, understandable data for the whole team. Organization and efficiency are tools that never go out of style. We might suggest starting out with a content calendar in Excel, a shared bit.ly account and TweetDeck.

What are your favorite social media tools? How many do you use? Do you share them across your team? We’d like to hear your opinions in the comments.