Would you recommend your social media management platform to a colleague at another company? If your answer starts with “Yes, but…” what’s holding you back?

Maybe you’d mention that your team still has to manage approvals over email or that only one person knows how everything works. Caveats like these don’t necessarily mean you need a new tool. But when you know a platform’s quirks well, it’s easy to mistake familiarity for fit.

The seven red flags below can help you see your platform with fresh eyes. Some are clear signs you need a new social media management tool, while others may point to a setup issue you can fix. You’ll learn how to tell the difference and what to do next.

A workaround usually starts off as a sensible response to a real problem. Maybe a colleague creates a spreadsheet because your social media tool’s calendar can’t accommodate planning notes. Or perhaps a team member starts a group chat to flag which social inbox messages they’re handling.

Each fix helps the team keep moving forward. But over time, the workarounds become the process. New colleagues learn them during training, and experienced users stop thinking of them as workarounds. In other words, they become invisible.

One way to identify the extra work they create is to imagine you (or your social media manager) will be away next week. Which tasks would have to wait until you return? If the list is long, your workflow may depend more on people covering for the platform than on the platform itself.

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