Social media has grown far beyond its early days.
So much so that we wrote a little book white paper about it.
Today, it’s a business asset that touches every department. With active social media users worldwide expected to hit 5.47 billion in 2025, brands have unprecedented opportunities to connect, engage, and drive results, and many of the world's top brands are already doing this quite well!
However, this growth also brings complexity - something these same brands have dealt with plenty.
Traditional social media management tools focus on the basics: scheduling posts, replying to comments, and pulling surface-level data. While helpful, and certainly sufficient for some organizations, they often fail to align with larger organizational goals, making it difficult to choose the best social media tool for your needs.
That’s where social media orchestration comes in.
Orchestration is about strategic coordination that guarantees every campaign, post, and interaction serves a tangible business purpose, reinforces your brand voice, and supports business-wide objectives.
But how do you choose a tool that won’t let you down? Start with these three steps:
- Assess your social media orchestration needs
- Identify the critical capabilities for orchestration
- Evaluate vendors with strategy and scale in mind
Step 1: assess your social media orchestration needs
Before looking at features, map out what success means for your organization. Here’s where to start:
- What challenges need solving? Are your teams working in silos? Are approvals and workflows a mess?
- What platforms and accounts are you managing? Do you oversee five accounts—or 500? Local teams or franchises? Are you already using social media management tools? Which ones?
- Who needs to use the tool? Marketing? Customer support? Leadership? Everyone? If your team is still very small and you're operating with one social media manager, full orchestration may not be necessary.
- What outcomes are you targeting? Streamlined workflows, faster response times, better performance insights—be clear on the “why.”
You can’t choose the best social media tools without understanding what matters most to you.
Step 2: identify critical capabilities for orchestration
Social media orchestration requires tools that bring order to the chaos. But features alone won’t fix your problems—you need tools that adapt to your workflows, empower collaboration, and scale with your strategy.
Here’s how to evaluate the key capabilities through the lens of your real-world challenges:
1. A centralized content hub: the backbone of orchestration
Imagine your team working from one shared content calendar—a single source of truth where everyone can see what’s being planned, approved, created, and published.
Why it matters:
Without a central hub, campaigns get fragmented, messaging becomes inconsistent, and deadlines are missed. A good social media orchestration tool lets you:
- Plan and schedule posts across multiple platforms in advance.
- Provide visibility into campaigns for all teams, agencies, or individuals.
- Add workflows for content approvals, so nothing goes live before it’s ready.
What to look for:
- Content calendar visibility: Can everyone see what’s happening at a glance?
- Approval workflows: Does the tool simplify reviews across multiple teams? Does it have comprehensive user controls?
- Flexibility: Can regional teams tweak content for local audiences while staying aligned to the global plan?
2. Unified engagement: no more missed messages
Every time a new campaign launches, social media comments start to pour in (in a perfect world, anyway). Meanwhile, customer complaints pile up in DMs, and there's always one team member who accidentally misses a critical brand mention.
Often, this happens simply because the team members aren't fully aware of who is responsible for which platforms or tasks, or they have other priorities than just social.
This is where a unified inbox simplifies and changes everything.
What is so important about this?
When your engagement is scattered, opportunities are missed. A single workspace for community management aggregates comments and mentions into one place, allowing teams to:
- Assign messages to the right team members automatically.
- Use templated responses to maintain consistency and speed up replies.
- Track response times to improve customer service metrics.
Real-world impact:
Imagine running a crisis campaign because someone at your company said something stupid a little bit too publicly. When you're being flooded by spammy troll comments, top social media management tools with unified inboxes ensure that you can identify and respond to critical conversations first, whether they come from X, Facebook, or Instagram.
3. Data-driven insights: from guesswork to strategy
No more “we think it’s working.” The best social media orchestration tools turn social media data into clear, actionable insights.
Why it matters:
If you’re not analyzing performance, you’re flying blind. Orchestration tools should help you:
- Track KPIs like engagement, reach, and conversions.
- Compare performance across platforms and campaigns.
- Generate reports that leadership can understand and trust.
What to look for:
- Customizable reporting: Can you focus on the metrics that matter most?
- Ease of use: Are insights accessible to everyone—not just the data geeks?
- Scalability: Will reporting scale as your strategy grows?
Example:
You've begun a new branding campaign that will span five different international regions. Advanced reporting lets you compare performance across each market, helping you identify where content is performing the best and then optimize future campaigns.
4. Employee advocacy: amplifying your message
Your employees are already active on social media. Why not turn them into your most effective advocates?
Why it matters:
Employee advocacy tools allow teams to share pre-approved content, expanding your reach organically without losing control of your brand voice.
How it works:
- Employees access a library of ready-to-share content.
- Marketing maintains control over messaging and quality.
- Teams amplify campaigns without additional paid spend.
The result:
A unified, authentic voice across the company—and a much wider reach.
The impact of employee advocacy is so massive that we wrote a guide to how to do it right. You can find that guide right here.
5. Scalable governance: clear roles, clear workflows
When multiple teams and departments use the same tool, governance becomes critical.
Why it matters:
Without role-based permissions, workflows can get messy, and mistakes happen. Tools built for orchestration allow you to:
- Assign roles like “Admin,” “Editor,” or “Viewer” based on responsibilities.
- Manage approvals across teams, ensuring content meets brand standards.
- Monitor activity to keep campaigns running smoothly.
Step 3: compare vendors with strategy in mind
Once you’ve identified your needs and the features that matter most, you can evaluate vendors. Keep these points in mind:
- Scalability: Will the tool grow with your business?
- Collaboration: Does it support cross-team workflows without friction?
- Data and insights: Will it provide the reporting you need to optimize your strategy?
- Support and training: Are there resources to help your team adopt the tool effectively?
Why the right tool makes all the difference
Social media orchestration is a smarter, more strategic approach to managing social media at scale. Choosing the right tool for social media orchestration empowers your all of your teams to align, collaborate, and perform at their best in a single workspace.
The end directive is a cohesive, efficient social media strategy that drives real business impact.
Facelift is the final word in social media orchestration. It's the only tool on the market that manages all of the key aspects of social media orchestration in one place, essentially replacing the entire MarTech stack you use for social media.
Orchestration is possible—and the right tool is your key to unlocking it.
