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It’s amazing how many organizations and businesses still don’t use a Social Media Dashboard. When I say that it’s amazing, I really mean that. Any organization that does not already understand that social media is the key to their future success has essentially hung out the “closed for business” sign and is waiting for someone to tell them. With the myriad of networks that need to be worked and monitored, there are only two viable options: have a large staff devoted to social media or get software to take care of your social media tracking. Here are ten ways social media management tools can save you time.

1. Track your Competition
You need to know what’s going on with your own business and where you stand with your competition in the space. With the right searches set up, you can just as easily track them as you do yourself.

2. Time Management
This is key. Productivity is important to be efficient, and having a staff handle your social exploits is too expensive for most. As one business owner pointed out recently, he used to spend 10 minutes per client per day just responding to and checking on their engagement in the social space. That’s all day long. With the help of a social media dashboard, he now spends 20 minutes per month instead.

3. Brand Management
Using the dashboard allows you to set up keyword searches to track what people say about you and your product or service. Finding these quickly and engaging the commenters can prevent trying to put out forest fires of bad sentiment later or encourage good sentiment now.

4. Schedule and Auto-Respond
This is also time management. If you want to post several times daily to different networks, they must be spread out. The scheduler feature of a dashboard lets you spend some time once a week or a month setting up what you want to send and when, and then let it do its thing. The auto-responder also lets you engage with your audience without staring at the screen all day. Setting up simple Thank You messages for comments or similar things can ensure that they don’t feel like they are wasting their time posting, and then later, you can get back to them in a more detailed fashion if warranted.

5. Find New Customers
When you can track what people are talking about, you can narrow in on those who seem interested in what you have to offer so that you can engage them and win them over.

6. See How Effective Each Post Is
Each message or post you throw up on the screen can be tracked to see if anyone is responding. Knowing this is important because it allows you to determine what is effective and what is a flop.

7. Collaboration
Most dashboards give you collaborative power, so coworkers across the building or across the world can collaborate on your social media campaign, increasing both productivity and effectiveness.

8. Track More Than Just Social Sites
With a good social media dashboard, you can also track what’s being said about you on blogs, RSS feeds, and other sources. Not everything is said on Facebook and Twitter, and this can often give you even more insight since when someone bothers to comment on a blog post, they usually have something to say that you should be listening to.

9. Find Out if Your Traffic is Coming From Social Sources
Where are the visits to your website coming from? Knowing whether they came from a Google search or a social click-through lets you know where to focus your energy.

10. It Makes You Look Smart
They may tell you that you’re a geek to your face, but secretly, they know that you are a genius for having the business savvy to use one.