There were over 4.74 billion social media users worldwide in 2022, and this indicated growth of 4% year-on-year. With such high growth rates, this number is only going to increase. It already represents 59.3% of the world’s population and comprises 93.4% of global internet users. To reach out to this massive audience, you need to up your social media marketing game. If you want to make the most out of your social media marketing campaigns and manage them with finesse, you should consider using social media marketing tools. These tools can help simplify your work and improve your efficiency too. Here are the best ones you can use.
Best for: Growing brands and established companies that want to manage multiple social media campaigns and platforms It also gives you a single inbox to manage all your conversations across platforms, allowing you to easily manage and automate cross-channel conversations. It also has social media listening and analytics capabilities. Furthermore, Brandwatch lets you customize your workflows so you can manage all your activities and processes at scale. You can use their advisory services to formulate a winning social media strategy. Best for: Brand managers, digital agencies, marketing teams, and SMBs that want to grow their audience Sendible is a multi-functional social media marketing and management tool. It helps you optimize optimise your posts for each platform and then post them at the best times to get the highest engagement rates. You can also use it to create your social media content calendar to review and schedule your social campaigns. It also has built-in analytics tools to provide you with detailed reports on your campaign’s performance. The best part is that they add a human touch by collaborating with you like a team, instead of just selling you a product. Best for: Leveraging extensive data sources for brand insights Brand24 is an AI-powered social media listening tool that helps you find out what people are saying about your brand. You can monitor brands to gather insights, analyze competitors, analyze audience sentiment, and track brand mentions across the web through this tool. It also helps you identify influencers in your niche, as well as access key metrics like reach and awareness. Brandwatch covers an extensive selection of sources, including: Best for: SMBs and large enterprises Hootsuite is one of the most powerful and prominent social media marketing tools. It can help you schedule posts, give you access to detailed analytics, and monitor keywords and hashtags. Best for: Businesses of all sizes that want to bolster their cybersecurity measures According to a Cybersecurity Ventures report, it’s projected that by 2025, cybercrimes can cost damages amounting to USD 10,5 trillion. Moreover, cybercrime damage can grow by 15% year-over-year. ZeroFOX can help you secure your information on social media platforms. Additionally, this tool can help you improve your customer engagement by stopping reputation damage and social account hacking. ZeroFOX helps businesses overcome cybersecurity challenges such as phishing, fraud, and account takeovers. It has several solutions that offer unified external cybersecurity, such as intelligence services, on-demand investigations, and social media protection. You can also identify fraudulent activity that can impact your business through this tool. Best for: Small businesses, marketers, agencies, and large brands BuzzSumo is one of the finest social media marketing tools that can help you come up with new topics for your social media posts. Its Content Ideas Generator uncovers SEO insights and trending content ideas, while its Content Research feature gives you access to social engagement data collected from billions of articles. Through its Monitoring feature, you can track brand mentions, monitor your competitors, and uncover audience sentiment. It helps you discover trending content and also allows you to find relevant influencers in your niche. This way, you can make the most of content marketing and influencer marketing. Best for: All Twitter users, including individuals and businesses If you use Twitter for your social media marketing, you should use Twitter Analytics. This tool can help you measure your marketing campaign performance with ease by tracking your dashboard page, Tweets page, and conversion tracking page. The data it provides can help you make informed decisions, uncover valuable audience insights, and monitor your growth on the platform. Twitter Analytics is completely free to use. Best for: Brands that want to improve their hashtag marketing If you need to find relevant hashtags for your business, you should use Hashtagify. This tool lets you research hashtags for Instagram and Twitter and helps you find the top influencers who use those hashtags as well. Hashtagify also lets users customize their selected plan through add-ons, which range from $11 per month to $261 per month for Basic plans. Best for: Brands and marketers that want to create more engaging content Tagboard helps you with social listening. All you need to do is link your company’s social accounts to view billions of posts online and enter a topic or hashtag into the search bar, and the tool will show you how the topic is being discussed online. This can help you figure out what content can be created to engage your audience. As a social media aggregator, Tagboard lets you build live social walls that display content from major social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Tagboard also lets you send your live feed to an array of channels to increase engagement across your preferred distribution channels. Best for: Brands that want to streamline their brand management efforts Awario is a great social media monitoring tool that enables you to find brand mentions. You can also track the growth of your mentions and their reach to ascertain your brand growth. Additionally, you can generate leads through the tool too. Aside from these capabilities, Awario also lets you engage with influencers, analyze competitor mentions, and improve brand reputation and awareness. It crawls over 13 billion web pages daily, giving you comprehensive data for brand monitoring. Best for: SMBs and large enterprises looking to bolster their marketing efforts Tailwind allows you to create and schedule posts on two of the most powerful visual marketing platforms – Pinterest and Instagram. You can bulk upload posts, Pin to multiple boards at once, and schedule through a simple calendar that’s drag-and-drop. Tailwind helps you create personalized marketing plans, craft high-quality copy, streamline scheduling, and optimize your brand’s social media performance. Best for: B2B social media management for enterprises, mid-market companies, and marketing agencies Oktopost lets you manage, measure, and monitor all of your social media activities. It’s unique because it’s specially designed for B2B businesses. You can also curate better content through its content curation feature. A free demo is available. For pricing, contact Oktopost. Best for: Optimizing Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn management DrumUp can help you share engaging content on your social media accounts to stir up conversations. You can schedule posts easily and also measure your engagement right from the tool. Best for: Brands and small businesses that want to boost their social media activity Quuu gives you curated content suggestions related to your brand so that you can start conversations on social media. Their free library gives you access to over 500 topics, so you’ll never run out of things to post. With Quuu, you can share an array of engaging content, such as informative articles, news, quotes and sayings, and even industry-specific questions and tips. It also lets you create custom CTAs and access link management tools. Aside from these social media channels, Quuu also supports content sharing across multiple platforms through its Integrations. Best for: Optimizing customer engagement Emplifi (formerly Socialbakers) provides you with a whole range of social media marketing tools. You can get audience analysis, content intelligence, analytics, schedule posts, and also manage influencer marketing campaigns. As Emplifi, it offers three CX Cloud solutions: Best for: Individuals and teams looking to improve their social media and blog post scheduling SocialOomph makes your job of posting on social media extremely simple. You can upload multiple posts on it at once and schedule them as well. It also offers follower analysis features that can help you improve your engagement rates. Best for: SMBs, large enterprises, agencies, and media outlets Cool Tabs helps you monitor social networks to figure out what people are saying about your brand. It also helps you curate content related to your brand and generate engagement. It also gives you access to analytics. With Cool Tabs, you can also design optimized marketing campaigns like contests, sweepstakes, and coupon distributions to generate leads, build brand awareness, and increase engagement, even without programming know-how. Plus, it lets you create engaging Social Walls (Twitter and Instagram) for events or corporate use. Best for: Individuals, brands, agencies, large enterprises, and SMBs that want to create professional social media and marketing materials Canva is an amazing social media marketing tool that can help you design stunning visuals for your accounts. Without any knowledge of graphic designing, you can use their ready-made templates and come up with your own photos in minutes. Canva lets you create posts for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Best for: WordPress users This is a social media marketing tool for those who use WordPress. It can help you track your likes, Pins, and more right from your WordPress Dashboard. You can also see how many times your content has been shared on social media. Best for: Individual users, agencies, SMBs, and large enterprises looking to simplify how they create and edit videos If you don’t know how to make professional-looking videos, Animoto can do the job for you. It features storyboard templates and a drag-and-drop video builder. All you need to do is use their canvas and build your professional video with ease. Best for: All business sizes and solopreneurs Meet Edgar helps you schedule posts on social media. Additionally, you scan recycle your old content using this tool. It also lets you organize organise your content by category. Once it’s done with your scheduling queue, it starts recycling the content automatically. Best for: Large enterprises that want access to a unified CX management platform Customer experience is vital for business growth. In fact, 86% of consumers are likely to pay more to get superior customer service experiences, while 64% are likely to recommend a brand if it provides them with exceptional experiences. Of all the tools listed here, Sprinklr is probably the most complex and yet makes things extremely simple for you. It has a powerful AI-based core platform that supports multiple social media functions. With Sprinklr, you can use customer data to gather valuable insights and take steps to provide your audience with better customer experiences. Best for: Solopreneurs, SMBs, nonprofits, and mid-stage startups When it comes to scheduling your posts on all major social media platforms, Buffer is the place to go. You can seamlessly post content to your social media accounts with a few clicks through it. Additionally, it gives you access to in-depth analytics on the performance of your account, as well. Best for: Agencies, marketing and sales teams, and large enterprises This is one of the best content curation tools that can be very useful for your social media marketing. It is not always feasible to create social media content from scratch frequently and consistently. That is where Feedly can help you. You can use it to find and share relevant content for your brand or niche. It has advanced filters to help you organize your feed and see only relevant content. It is also a great tool to keep up with the influencers in your niche. See what they’re talking about and join the conversation. Best for: Creators and agencies or content-focused teams This is a unique tool that takes care of your social media posts for you. You simply need to focus on creating good content for your blog, and this tool will handle the social media promotion for it. It scours your blog and automatically creates several social media posts to promote each blog post. This can save you a lot of time and effort that you would have to invest in social media promotions. Best for: SMBs and large enterprises This is one of the best social media advertising tools that can help you boost the performance of your social media marketing campaigns. Advertising provides more options to grow your audience base and reach more people. And, AdEspresso makes advertising easy for you. Best for: Creators, small businesses, and entrepreneurs that want to schedule posts for multiple platforms and access curated content from popular sources This is one of the most effective content planning and scheduling tools and claims to get you much more engagement on your content than any other tool. You can use it to schedule and auto-publish your content at the best times to get the maximum engagement. You can also use their Discovery Engine to find, curate, and share content on your social media profiles. Best for: Small businesses, nonprofits, and agencies that want to grow and manage their social media presence This is an all-in-one social media tool that lets you manage all your social media accounts from one central dashboard. It supports Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and Google Business Profile. Use it to schedule and post content, reply to all messages (from all platforms) from a single inbox, understand industry trends using social listening, and more. Needless to say, you can also view performance reports for all your social media accounts using this tool. Additionally, the tool also has team-management functionalities. So, you can assign roles, manage tasks, and give approvals in an organized manner. Best for: Individuals, SMBs, and multinational brands Followerwonk is one of the best social media marketing tools for Twitter. It can help you analyze your audience and connect you with relevant influencers as well. You can also compare your social graph with that of others to understand how you fare compared to your competitors. After being acquired by Fedica, Followerwonk now gives users access to AI-powered tools. Under Fedica, Followerwonk offers several new plans, as well as a free plan: Best for: Agencies and businesses that want to improve audience engagement across all their preferred channels Khoros is a solution that helps brands connect with their customers. Their vast set of features and solutions also includes social media management. It helps you build and scale up optimized social media campaigns, measure performance, and manage your brand’s reputation. Additionally, it also helps with managing your paid social media campaigns, apart from accelerating your organic growth. Best for: SMBs, agencies, enterprises, marketing teams, and franchises Statusbrew provides multiple social media management solutions to improve your social performance. You can use it to schedule and auto-post social media content and manage all your social media conversations from a single inbox. It also provides you with detailed data and insights into your social media performance. You can get PDF reports or download the data as CSV files. It can even help you manage your team and collaborate with them better. You can create workflows and manage tasks better using this tool. Best for: Individual users, brands, and SMBs that want to grow their Twitter account This is another Twitter-specific tool that you can use to improve your account’s performance on Twitter and grow your followers. It uses powerful AI technology to give you recommendations on how to grow your followers and overcome social media marketing challenges. It can help you find and engage with the most relevant accounts on Twitter. You can also use it to clean your account and remove inactive followers. As of writing, Tweepi has issued refunds to customers. This is due to Twitter’s new policy, which has made Tweepi’s “business model unfeasible”. Best for: Brands, large enterprises, and agencies looking to leverage AI-powered social media analytics This is, at its core, a social media analytics tool that you can use to improve the performance of your social media marketing campaigns. It also has competitive benchmarking capabilities to help you assess your performance and compare it with that of your competitors. Another useful feature is that it provides you with content ideas for your social media accounts. You can go through the content posted by the top-performing brands to get an idea about the type of content that works best. Best for: Individual users and SMBs that want to promote their content, generate high-quality traffic, and keep their accounts active This is a social promotion tool that can help you make your content go viral on multiple platforms, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr. The platform is free to use, but they only accept high-quality content. They put your content in front of influencers who may share it further if they like it. So, you just have to create good content, and this tool will get more shares and views on it. The tool is free to use. Best for: Agencies and brands Mention is a comprehensive social media marketing solution and one of the top social media monitoring platforms. Brands and agencies can use it to monitor the web for what’s being said about their product or brand, get comprehensive analytics, and schedule social media posts in advance. Best for: Agencies and brands Social Status is a social media analytics platform aimed at marketers. Included in its platform are four powerful tools: Profile Analytics, Ads Analytics, Competitor Analytics, and Influencer Analytics. So, if you’re searching for a new influencer to partner with, you can also use their tool to evaluate the performance of potential influencers before you assign them to a campaign. Best for: Individual users and small brands that want to create short and memorable URLs Bitly is a URL shortener that can help you to amplify your brand on social media by sharing branded links. It also helps you to get a much better insight into engagement as it lets you track every digital initiative. Best for: Popular websites, entrepreneurs, and SMBs Not to be confused with BuzzSumo, Sumo is an email capture tool. You can use it to create various list builders. You can, for example, choose to embed it within an article that you share on social media or set it up so that it pops up one second after a web page has loaded. Sumo has plugins for:1. Brandwatch Social Media Management
2. Sendible
3. Brand24
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4. Hootsuite
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5. ZeroFOX
6. BuzzSumo
7. Twitter Analytics
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8. Hashtagify
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9. Tagboard
10. Awario
11. Tailwind
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12. Oktopost
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13. DrumUp
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14. Quuu
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15. Emplifi (formerly Socialbakers)
16. Socialoomph
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17. Cool Tabs
18. Canva
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19. Social Metrics Pro
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20. Animoto
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21. Meet Edgar
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22. Sprinklr
23. Buffer
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24. Feedly
25. Missinglettr
26. AdEspresso
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27. Post Planner
28. MavSocial
29. Followerwonk
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30. Khoros
31. Statusbrew
32. Tweepi
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33. Unmetric
34. Viral Content Bee
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35. Private: Mention
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36. Social Status
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37. Bitly
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38. Sumo
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Types of Social Media Marketing Tools
The social media marketing software industry is growing. It’s estimated that by 2027, it will grow to nearly USD 145 billion. Businesses of all sizes are adopting social media marketing tools to engage customers, meet evolving customer expectations, and gain a competitive edge.
Nowadays, you’ll come across a variety of social media marketing tools, with each having distinct features and capabilities. Let’s look at all the different types of social media marketing tools to help you narrow down your search:
Analytics Tools
Analytics tools give you a clearer picture of all your data. You can use analytics tools to track your social network’s performance, assess the effectiveness of your campaigns, and monitor what the competition is doing.
Engagement Tools
These tools let you engage with your audience, such as replying to their comments or requests. Engagement tools also help you monitor conversations and interactions through a unified inbox.
Scheduling Tools
Simply put, scheduling tools allow you to schedule your social media posts across your preferred platforms at the most optimal time. These can save you a lot of time on planning and help you focus on planning your future content or completing other more complex tasks. There are scheduling tools that leverage audience data to give you insights into the best publishing times for your audience, which can help maximize engagement.
Monitoring or Listening Tools
These tools allow you to track conversations, in the form of hashtags, keywords, or mentions, around your brand. They can give you data on your social share of voice, as well as audience sentiment. Some tools can even uncover emerging trends, helping you stay up-to-date and giving you the opportunity to create posts that are relevant, engaging, and valuable to your target audience.
Automation Tools
Automation tools let you create rules to streamline your workflow and eliminate or minimize repetitive tasks to save time. Some common automation features include bulk scheduling and automated replies.
Tips for Choosing the Best Social Media Marketing Tool for Your Brand
Social media marketing (SMM) has now become a crucial component of business growth. SMM enables businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and engage customers. Furthermore, through social media marketing, audiences can learn more about and interact with brands on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
In addition to these benefits, SMM can help drive traffic to your website, generate and nurture qualified leads, build brand awareness, and build customer trust and loyalty. Moreover, implementing an effective SMM strategy helps humanize your brand, which can play a role in establishing brand authenticity.
With the sheer number of social media marketing tools available, finding the one that best fits your need can be tricky. Below are some actionable tips to help you select the right social media marketing tool for your brand:
- Identify the features you might need. You can narrow down your list by separating these into must-have features and nice-to-have or optional features. To determine what your must-have features are, start by looking into why you’re looking for a social media marketing tool. Do you want to just schedule your posts, or are you looking for a more robust solution that includes analytics and automation capabilities?
- When doing your research, don’t just look at a tool’s features. Make sure that the tool you choose supports your preferred channels and has available integrations so that you can expand its capabilities. It also helps if you choose a tool that’s compatible with your current tech stack.
- Also, look at the level of customer service the tool offers. Does it offer onboarding? Can you easily get in touch with a human representative? Does it have self-service knowledge portals or video guides?
- Consider your budget. There are social media marketing tools on this list that offer free plans. However, it’s worth noting that free plans usually have a limited scope. Thankfully, most of the tools listed above offer free trials, giving you the opportunity to take them for a spin and see which one works best for your needs.
- Try to see if your preferred SMM tool is scalable. Consider how much it will cost if you add more users or social profiles.
Final Thoughts
Your marketing on social media can become extremely simple when you use social media marketing tools. They can help you schedule posts, look for brand mentions, and also give you access to detailed analytics. Using these features, you can grow your brand online. So, check out these tools and incorporate them into your marketing strategy today.
