Every business has its unique social media archiving needs; therefore, one-size-fits-all solutions are simply not possible. As such, to find the perfect social media archiving tool, you must evaluate your business’s precise requirements and features. In this article, we will look at several popular social media archiving tools and evaluate their abilities to satisfy your business’s specific needs. In the end, we will suggest what we believe to be the best social media archiving tool available today.
Why use a tool?
Businesses use tools to remove repetitive tasks from their schedule, allowing them to focus on more meaningful business work. With many social media archiving tools available, choosing one can be overwhelming. To make your decision a little easier, check out these common features in social media archiving tools and choose one that works best for you. Some of our favourite social media archiving tools: BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo allows users to monitor popular content across all major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) as well as search engines like Google and Bing. After adding keywords or phrases relevant to your industry or niche into BuzzSumo’s search bar, you’ll receive daily email alerts with results based on interactions with content like likes, shares, comments, and other user engagement metrics.
Modelled after Reddit’s upvote system, BuzzSumo users have access to both free and paid versions of its platform.
When to archive your content
Some social media sites allow you to archive your content. It’s a good idea to do so in case that service goes under, is bought out by another company, or changes its policies in a way that prevents you from easily accessing it. You should also consider archiving if you’re not sure whether your posts are reaching as many people as they could be. That way, if you decide to delete a post (or multiple posts), those views can still be counted toward your overall reach. If there isn’t an option to archive within each platform, try using an external tool like Archive Social (free) or Hootsuite (paid). These services will let you download all of your tweets and Facebook posts at once so that they can be accessed later on. When choosing one of these tools, make sure that they support whichever platforms you want to include in your report—otherwise, all of those archived posts will just be sitting around on someone else’s server!
Choose the right tool
If you’re considering an archiving tool, it’s important to keep in mind that not all tools are made equal. For example, some are made specifically for Twitter, while others support a variety of social networks. When choosing a tool, check to see what types of accounts and services it supports. You don’t want to waste time setting up an archiving system that doesn’t meet your needs. Similarly, make sure you understand how long archived data is stored. Some tools store data indefinitely (which can get expensive), while others delete posts after a set period (which could mean missing out on valuable information). Finally, ask yourself if you need advanced features like sentiment analysis or deep link-level access. These features might be useful if you plan to do sophisticated analysis or post-processing with your archived data—but they will also cost more money. If you just need basic access to your social media history, simpler tools may be sufficient.
Step by step instructions
Before you choose a social media archiving tool, there are two things to consider: how important is it that your old content still be accessible on your company’s social accounts and what type of content are you most interested in preserving? Then, look at how each of these tools makes it easy to archive and download posts or other types of content. For example, if you want to preserve all of your tweets from 2013 but only want to save photos posted after June 1st of last year, make sure both capabilities are available. And remember that while some platforms offer native exporting options, others require additional software like Zapier (for Twitter) or Hootsuite (for Facebook). Finally, if you plan on saving more than just text-based content like tweets and status updates—like videos from YouTube or Instagram—you’ll need an archiving tool with built-in support for those platforms. For example, Buffer offers built-in support for Facebook and Twitter as well as native integrations with WordPress and Google Analytics.
Final thoughts and when you should start archiving
The best time to start is immediate. What was once a simple, manageable number of online interactions has turned into an unmanageable mountain. You may feel overwhelmed, but now some tools can help you make sense of it all and save everything to review later. It’s important to take advantage of these archiving tools so you don’t lose track of what happened on social media and have no idea how your business got where it is today. Many users already find it overwhelming just trying to keep up with their accounts; imagine trying to maintain a separate archive for your business! Use these tips and tricks as you set up or refine your system for archiving all of those digital interactions from social media. If you do things right, 5 years from now, instead of asking yourself what did we do back then? you will be able to look back at what made your company great.
