How to Manage Multiple Social Media Accounts: An Introductory Guide

Managing multiple social media accounts can be a bit of a challenge. To stay on top of your daily tasks, you'll need a bulletproof strategy and some helpful tools on your side.

Juggling your social media duties between various accounts takes a lot of hard work. To maintain a robust social media presence, you need to keep up with posting as well as engagement and planning. It’s often more than one person’s full-time job.

The thing is, there are lots of ways to streamline your account management duties and make everything more efficient. Using spreadsheets to manage social media accounts can help with scheduling posts and delegating tasks, making it easier to organize and plan content. However, dedicated management software is a far better option for most brands.

In this article we'll share some helpful tips for managing multiple social media accounts, including how to keep on top of your strategy and how to choose the right social media management software to streamline your efforts across various platforms. 

The importance of managing multiple social media accounts

For many business owners and marketing officers, being active on multiple social media accounts isn't optional – it’s essential for reaching your target audience. 

When managing multiple social media accounts, you shouldn't be doing it for the sake of it; you should be aiming to carry out a cohesive social media marketing plan that spans different social media networks.

There are lots of benefits to having a social media presence on different platforms. These include:

• Targeting various social media users: Different social media platforms attract different demographics. Managing social media accounts for each platform allows you to tailor your content to the preferences of each group.
• Enhancing your social media presence: A familiar presence across multiple social media platforms helps build brand awareness and authority.
• Streamlining social media management: Utilizing a social media management tool or social media management software helps you schedule posts, monitor engagement, and analyze performance across all your social media channels. To find out more, see our post on social media management tips.

These days, handling multiple social accounts is as much about efficiency as it is about creativity. This means you don't have to come up with original content for every platform – you can publish content in multiple places with a few tweaks. This makes the process a lot easier!

To get there, it all comes back to your social media strategy. Ultimately, this strategy should allow you to seamlessly manage multiple social media profiles while ensuring that every post hits the spot with your target audience.

Building a strong social media strategy

A solid social media strategy is the backbone of managing multiple social media accounts. Before you jump into content creation and posting, consider the following:

• Define your goals: Identify what you want to achieve – typical goals include boosting brand awareness, driving traffic, or increasing conversions. The reason for starting here is that a good social media strategy should help you stay focused on your objectives across all your accounts.
• Know your target audience: Next, you need to understand the social media channels your audience frequents. They likely have a preference for certain social media platforms, so getting the tone of your message right on each platform is crucial.
• Plan your content: Decide what type of content to create. You've got a couple of options here: creating content from scratch or posting some curated content to fill in gaps (or a bit of both). In general, social media is so much easier if you have a strategy that will inform your content across multiple social media networks. If you need help outlining your approach, consider reading our social media plan guide.
• Anticipate challenges: Managing social media accounts comes with challenges – from keeping up with that fast-moving publishing schedule to handling negative feedback across multiple accounts in the face of a brand crisis. If you've addressed these issues in your social media marketing plan, everyone on your team will be prepared.

Content creation and content curation

Now that your strategy is sorted, it's time to tackle content creation. So, how can you create really good social media content, and how do you share content from others when there are gaps in your calendar?

Well, the key is to produce original content as well as curating content from others. Here's what that might look like:

• Original content: The goal of original content is to craft posts that align with your brand’s tone and values. To get started, you could brainstorm ideas with your team, or use your social media management tool to create some content suggestions. Whether it’s a quick video clip, an attention-grabbing still, or an eye-catching infographic, the trick is to make sure that every post ties into your overall social media strategy.
• Curated content: Here's a little industry secret: not every post needs to be original. In fact, curated content helps you stay active on various social media networks without the constant pressure of creating all that content from scratch. It also gives the impression that you know what's going on outside your bubble. For balance, you can blend curated content with your original posts to maintain a diverse feed across multiple social media accounts. A nice way to do this is to feature user-generated content alongside your own original content (and UGC often has added benefits).

Templates and repurposing

Keeping on top of everything is the number one priority when managing multiple social media accounts. To help with this, you could create templates for repeatable post formats to simplify your workflow. 

For instance, a template for a weekly update can be adapted for an Instagram account, repurposed for LinkedIn posts, and shared across multiple social media profiles with minor tweaks. Crossposting and repurposing content means you can maximize your content library, helping you manage multiple campaigns with less effort.

Choosing social media management tools and software

One thing that can really help with balancing multiple social media accounts is having the right social media management tool at your fingertips.

These tools allow you to handle multiple social media accounts from one centralized dashboard, streamlining your workflow and making it easier to stay consistent across all your accounts.

Features to look for

• Content calendars and editorial calendars: A robust content calendar is your best friend. With a detailed social media calendar, you can plan posts in advance, helping you create content consistently and manage multiple social networks without forgetting something important.
• Analytics tools and reporting tools: Detailed analytics will help you monitor the performance of your organic social media activity and your ad campaigns. Then, you can use these insights to refine your social media strategy and make sure that every post drives engagement. For a deeper dive on this, check out our post on essential social media metrics.
• A centralized dashboard: This will let you manage everything in one place, meaning you can monitor different social media accounts, schedule posts for all your accounts, and engage with your audience without switching between platforms.
• Collaboration features: Tools that offer collaboration and multi-level approvals are invaluable for multi-person teams managing multiple social accounts. These features help social media teams work together far more cohesively. You can streamline duties and check off completed tasks for everyone to see.

It's also worth mentioning that by using a social media management platform like Brandwatch's, you can automate routine tasks – such as scheduling posts and monitoring brand mentions – so you can focus more on creating brilliant content and strategizing for growth.

Scheduling posts and maintaining a consistent publishing schedule

One of the biggest challenges for social media marketers is to schedule posts for multiple social media accounts without missing a beat. Social media often demands a lot of attention and you only have so many hours in the day to prepare all your content.

This is where a dedicated content calendar comes in, as it will help you manage multiple social media platforms without losing your thread.

Brandwatch, for example, houses all scheduling duties in Publish. You can oversee each of your social media accounts, prepare posts on the platform, and edit scheduled content before it goes out.

Tips for effective scheduling

• Plan ahead: The main purpose of a content calendar is to help you schedule posts well in advance. Get this sorted and you'll have a consistent flow of social media posts across all your social media channels without constantly having to play catch up. If you need inspiration for posting across various networks, take a look at our guide to posting on multiple social media platforms.
• Automate where possible: Make the most of those automation tools provided by social media apps and third-party tools to schedule posts for all your accounts at optimal times. This not only saves time but also helps in managing multiple accounts without manual intervention.
• Tailor content: Although you might be using the same content across different social media platforms, remember to tweak your posts to fit the unique style and audience of each platform. Unfortunately, a TikTok post rarely works on LinkedIn without a few edits!

Monitoring, analytics, and reporting

Successful social media management isn’t just about creating and posting content – it’s also about monitoring performance and adapting your strategy based on your findings.

To do this, you’ll need to crunch a lot of data. Luckily, you don’t have to be a stats guru to accurately monitor and analyze your content. All you need is the right tool!

Key actions

• Monitor social media activity: Keep a close eye on engagement across all your accounts. Use a tool like Brandwatch's Social Media Management solution to monitor social media activity and track brand mentions.
• Use detailed analytics: Regularly review the data from your social media management platform. Detailed analytics help you understand which posts are resonating with your audience and which social media networks are driving the most engagement.
• Adjust your social media strategy: Be ready to refine your social media strategy based on your reporting tools and analytics. This process ensures your social media marketing plan remains effective across different social media platforms and accounts.

Done well, robust reporting can transform your social media performance. It gives you the ability to provide your social media teams with actionable insights and help them make data-driven decisions to improve your overall social media presence. You might also need to send reports to your boss, or someone higher up the chain at your company. Don't skip on it!

Collaboration and working with social media teams

Managing multiple social media accounts is often a team effort. Whether you’re a lone social media manager or part of a larger social media team, good collaboration is essential.

Best practices for team collaboration

• Regular meetings: Though we all love to hate them, meetings are important. Hold regular check-ins to discuss social media performance, review content calendars, and adjust strategies.
• Shared editorial calendars: A centralized content calendar accessible to all social media marketers on your team can do wonders for collaboration. Updated often, it means everyone is on the same page when it comes to posting schedules and content themes.
• Feedback loops: You should always encourage constructive feedback during the content creation process. To help with this, tools that allow multi-level approvals can ensure that managing multiple social media accounts is a smooth process and that content is appropriately signed off.

By fostering a collaborative environment, you can take the stress out of juggling multiple social accounts. This makes a big difference because it's more likely that your social media presence will appear consistent across various social networks.

Advanced tips: AI, automation, social listening, and repurposing content

As you grow more comfortable with managing multiple social media accounts, you could move up to the next level with these advanced strategies:

• AI & automation: Using artificial intelligence to further automate your social media practices is a great way to elevate your management. For example, automated customer responses could save you hours of management time on each social media platform. Or, you might use AI to unearth fresh audiences or to get advice on improving the content you publish.
• Social listening: Social listening lets you track mentions across different social media networks. This real-time monitoring can help you quickly address issues and capitalize on trends. It’s also really important for spotting new target audiences you might not be aware of.
• Repurpose content: Crossposting and repurposing content can save you significant time. For example, an effective video on an Instagram account might be repurposed as a LinkedIn update or an X thread – just make sure that the context suits the platform!

Overcoming challenges when managing multiple social media accounts

No matter how robust your plan is, managing multiple social media accounts comes with its own set of challenges. The best thing to do is be proactive and address these challenges before they become insurmountable. Common issues include:

• Handling multiple accounts evenly: Juggling multiple accounts is no easy task and sometimes just the sheer volume of social media accounts you're in charge of can be overwhelming. You might find it easier to manage certain accounts, which could lead you to neglect more difficult ones. To stay on top of it all, you'll probably need a social media management tool to streamline your workflow and ensure each platform is catered for.
• Maintaining a consistent social media presence: Any inconsistency in your posting schedule can lead to punishment by the algorithm, with your posts not being shown to followers. To avoid this, aim for a consistent publishing schedule across various social media networks to build trust with social media users and please the platform. A content calendar and a bit of automation can be really helpful here.
• Balancing original and curated content: It’s important to strike the right balance between creating content from scratch and pushing curated content. Too much original content can be an exhausting task, while too much curated content can feel spammy. Make sure you've got a split of both.
• Measuring success: Unpicking data can be a daunting task but social media management tools and clear reporting can help you cut through the numbers. Make sure you use this data to inform your social media strategy.

And finally, give yourself a pat on the back. If you're addressing these challenges, you’re likely staying on top of your social media marketing plan – even when managing multiple social accounts across various social media platforms.