Team collaboration tools can make a massive difference to how you spend your time at work and how much of that time you can actually save – especially as marketing teams get more distributed by the minute.
And they also hugely impact the quality of work and how you connect to other people. I’ve picked a handful of social media collaboration tools I find really helpful for a number of reasons. Wanna have a look?
Social media management for teams
Moderation, automation, analytics, reporting, scheduling, and more. Try NapoleonCat and save tons of your time spent on marketing tasks. Designed specifically for teams.
- NapoleonCat to moderate, automate, plan and schedule content, and more
- Slack for conversations around (not just) projects
- Asana for project, campaign, and task management
- Canva to work on and share visual assets
- Dropbox to share assets
- Google Drive to share and collaborate on documents
- Google Meet to meet online
- Notion to share information, keep schedules and notes, and more
- Miro to brainstorm ideas
- Loom to work asynchronously
- Microsoft Teams to… no, just kidding!
- What’s your social media collaboration tool of choice?
NapoleonCat to moderate, automate, plan and schedule content, and more
First off, as a social media marketer, you need a social media management tool. Period. And especially when you work in a team (and/or have multiple social media accounts to deal with).
Because planning content, approving it, social media scheduling, then managing the conversations under your posts gets much more straightforward if everyone works from the same dashboard with a transparent view of what others are handling at the moment.
That’s without logging into different social media platforms, opening multiple tabs in your browser and apps on your phone, and consulting others all the time about who handles what.
Which is what you can do with social media collaboration tools like NapoleonCat.
Things it will help your social media team with:
- Assign tasks to other team members – both when it comes to content creation (e.g., assigning a post to write for a specific day) or responding to a comment thread
- Distribute user permissions, so that e.g., some users can only publish posts, but not answer to comments and messages
- Exchange feedback on new social media posts or customer service interactions
- See who is moderating a customer service ticket (a.k.a. replies to a comment) in real time
- Consult your social media customer service tickets with people outside of your team – e.g., your client or someone from IT
- Automate some of your comment or DM moderation when possible to leave even more room for teamwork and individual customer interactions
- Plan and schedule social media content from one calendar, with everyone getting the whole picture of what’s in the pipeline
- Analyze social media performance and your team’s response times on social media. Then easily report it to your stakeholders, clients, and supervisors.
My personal favorite:
- Leave internal notes for whoever else handles interaction with a specific customer now and in the future, on top of the conversation history they have access to.
Slack for conversations around (not just) projects
A staple for many teams worldwide, Slack adds that level of immediate interaction between team members across entire companies. Especially priceless for distributed teams and in times when many of us work from home and no longer sit next to each other (or even in the same building). Slack can easily integrate with your existing tools like your phone system or video conferencing tool to facilitate group calls and meetings.
For many, it becomes a much-needed communication hub for everything from project work to sending silly memes and letting off steam when needed.
Things it will help your social media team with:
- Create channels around specific projects or conversation topics, helping categorize conversations
- Talk to individual team members in DMs (helpful if you need to confirm something really quickly)
- Call someone directly on Slack (if you need to discuss something even quicker)
- Integrate it with other tools like Google Drive or Trello and get notified about new comments right on Slack (without having to check the tools or your email for notifications)
My personal favorites:
- Snooze your messages to send in the morning. Super helpful if you like working at night or are in a different timezone and don’t want to disturb anyone or pressure them into replying outside of their working hours (because, you know, hustle culture is actually not healthy.)
- As an external freelance contractor, I can join my clients’ teams and only have access to selected channels they want me to be on.
Asana for project, campaign, and task management
Asana is one of many project management tools and probably one of the most popular ones. And really, if you’re a team of more than one (but also if you’re a solo creator working on projects), you can’t really do without a solid project management tool (at least not in the long run).
Things it will help your social media team with:
- Plan and track projects, e.g., your social media campaigns
- Create specific tasks for different team members
- Set priorities and work accordingly
- Define and track company, team, and individual goals
- Get insights and report on team performance
- Track progress and workload (for yourself and others if you manage a team)
- Share your progress with stakeholders (create shareable reports with Asana data export)
My personal favorites:
- Choosing the view you like most – calendar, list, board, or timeline (or switch between them as you want)
- Store all files attached to tasks in one tab, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for
Canva to work on and share visual assets
Many people I know use the free version of Canva, but the Pro version also has the option to add users. Plus, Canva also has a Teams plan specifically designed for, well, teams.
Things it will help your social media team with:
- Collaborate on designs with other team members – for example, images for your social media posts
- Manage all your team’s visual assets in one place
- Get approvals and publish your visual assets to social media platforms straight from Canva
- Run brainstorms and workshops within the platform
My personal favorite:
- Store, manage, and share brand assets like logos, social media templates, and more, letting anyone easily create social media images with the right fonts, colors, and logos.
Dropbox to share assets
Another way to store and share videos, images, presentations, etc., is the good old Dropbox, convenient when you have bigger files you can’t send via email. And it also has team collaboration features worth taking a look at.
Things it will help your team with:
- Store assets for social media, like high-res visuals or TikTok and Stories videos, in a shared folder any team member can access
- Share links to assets with anyone you want
- Automatically back up documents to the cloud
- Manage access rights to individual folders and files
- Create team docs and assign to-dos and due dates
Google Drive to share and collaborate on documents
Now, I can’t imagine working without Google Drive – and it’s probably the main tool I use working with different teams. And that’s without having to send and receive documents over email, track changes, and worry about version control (you probably know the endlessly expanding file names.)
Things it will help your team with:
- Share documents, presentations, and spreadsheets with other team members
- Exchange comments and assign tasks to others
- Create navigation menus in your docs to help others quickly find what they need (e.g., if it’s a more complex document such as a social media strategy)
- Edit, suggest changes, and work on docs in one place without having to worry about all the versions stored in all the different places
- Organize and share folders
My personal favorite:
- Launch a Google Meet straight from a shared Google doc to discuss changes or feedback (plus, probably, all of the above)
Social media management for teams
Moderation, automation, analytics, reporting, scheduling, and more. Try NapoleonCat and save tons of your time spent on marketing tasks. Designed specifically for teams.
Google Meet to meet online
Speaking of Google Meet, if your team works within the Google Workspace, this will most likely be the tool you’ll be using for your online meetings – whenever there’s a need to talk face to face.
Things it will help your team with:
- Meet online to brainstorm ideas or share feedback (including on your Google doc content)
- Record meetings and share the recordings in your Google Drive (if you’re on the right team plan)
- Use collaborative features like Jamboard right within your Meet (the tools are integrated) to work on your content strategy or other ideas
My personal favorite:
- Creating a Miro board right from your Google Meet to run strategic workshops or brainstorming sessions
Notion to share information, keep schedules and notes, and more
Notion is one of the most versatile tools I’ve seen – and kind of difficult to describe in one sentence. But in general, it can become the center for all documentation your team needs – whether that’s your project schedule, communication plan, team structure, content ideas, links to resources, etc.
Things it will help your social media team with:
- Create all kinds of shared documents from ready-made blocks and add team members who can work on them, including external guests
- Create private team spaces
- Upload and store files
- Create project timelines with team to-dos
- Integrate Notion with other collaborative tools like Slack
- It can even serve as your team’s main Wiki and project space, with single sign-on
My personal favorite:
- This has to be the library of ready-made templates you can use for things like project schedules and timelines or communication plans, whatever it is you need.
Miro to brainstorm ideas
Miro is one of my favorite brainstorming tools. Use it for internal workshops, ideating and brainstorming with clients, planning your social media and marketing projects, building timelines, flowcharts, and more.
Things it will help your social media team with:
- Create shared boards and invite team members to collaborate
- Brainstorm ideas for social media content for the next quarter
- Integrate with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365
- Control access, with easy one-click access for external collaborators like content creators
- Add interactive features to team meetings like timers, voting, video chat, and more
My personal favorite:
- Again, templates are a huge time-saver, plus the ability to create custom templates for your team.
Loom to work asynchronously
Loom is an excellent alternative to tools like Zoom or Google Meet if you want to save time on meetings – especially the ones that happen in different time zones that rarely overlap. And particularly the ones that don’t have to be meetings at all, if you know what I mean.
Things it will help your social media team with:
- Send videos to walk people through documents and presentations or share ideas
- Comment on videos and add emojis for quick feedback
- Prep in advance for actual meetings to make them more productive
- Add calls to action with links to relevant resources or draw on your screen as you record
- Align with other teams in your organization on your social media strategy without having to assemble everyone for a long meeting (and find a time that works for everyone)
My personal favorites
- You can embed a video in a document or presentation you share with others to serve as an intro (and that way later have a meeting AFTER everyone’s actually read the document and knows what you’re talking about. That way, it’s so much more productive.)
- See who watched your video and how long they watched it, and monitor CTA performance.
Microsoft Teams to… no, just kidding!
To be fair, I hate Microsoft teams because of the constant log-in issues I have when joining different teams, but it does have some nice features like:
- Keeping what everyone typed in the chat in one place (as opposed to Google Meet, which loses the chat after you close the meeting.)
- Being able to present using presenter mode in Microsoft Powerpoint (and the integration with Microsoft Office tools in general.)
But that’s kind of it, though. Sorry, Microsoft.
What’s your social media collaboration tool of choice?
(Did I just hear you say, “a negroni, sbagliato, with prosecco in it” under your breath?)
The above selection is, of course, just a handful of team collaboration tools and features – in many cases, useful not just for social media collaboration. You can use them in all your social media plans and activities, for your marketing team as a whole, and in other areas of your business. That is, if you’re after an easier workday, more connection with your teammates, and happier customers. 🙂
Social media management for teams
Moderation, automation, analytics, reporting, scheduling, and more. Try NapoleonCat and save tons of your time spent on marketing tasks. Designed specifically for teams.
