The world of social media marketing is a wild one. The space moves at the speed of light, and advances in technology mean that new tools are constantly being developed to help you manage your campaigns, measure their success, and better understand your target audience.
But with all of these tools out there, it can be really hard to choose which ones are best for you—so we’ve put together a list of categories and tools within those categories that can help you get more bang for your buck by making use of the right tools.
In this blog, we’ll explore some basic categories of social media tools. This blog is for beginners, so if you’re already a social media expert, keep moving!
Categories Of Social Media Tools
When you’re looking to start building a social media campaign, it can be overwhelming. You know that you need social media analysis tools, but you don’t know where to start.
To help you out, we’ve put together a guide on everything you need to know about social media tools. You’ll learn how social media tools fit into strategy, and what types of tools there are. Let’s get started:
The Modern Social Workflow
To understand what tools are necessary for a successful social media campaign, you have to look at the process. It’s helpful to look at social media management as a loop with four separate steps:
- Content creation. You need to come up with a steady stream and fresh ideas. Afterward, you need to sit down, organize these ideas, and create content. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more.
- Content publishing. Once your content has been created, it needs to be shared with the world. Many tools allow this process to be automated. You need to take the time to decide if you want to use strictly free channels, or if you want to pay for additional exposure.
- Listening & response. Good content will open the door for conversation between your brand and its audience. You need to be prepared to listen to their responses and engage with them. Listening also means staying up-to-date on the latest trends. You should take advantage of them to create timely and relevant content.
- Content analyzing and comparing. The final step is carefully taking a look at your results to see what’s working and what isn’t. If you don’t know whether or not your efforts are working, you could be simply spinning your wheels.
Unmetric works in tandem with vendors that provide publishing and listening services.
Using a Variety of Tools
Successfully managing every step of your social media process takes a variety of tools. You need to make sure they work together, complementing their strengths and shortcomings.
Generally, there are three kinds of social media tools. Listening platforms, publishing platforms, and competitive analysis platforms. Separately, each tool tackles social media from a different angle. Together, they can help your brand achieve all your social media and business goals.
Listening Platforms
Listening platforms include suites like Salesforce Marketing Cloud (which was previously known as Radian6). These platforms are able to monitor many different social media platforms to find out what’s being said about your brand. You will also be able to gather information on the latest industry news and trends.
This information will help you a great deal when it comes time to create content. You’ll know what’s relevant to your audience, and what they care about. You can’t rely completely on listening platforms, however. In order to get a fuller understanding of the industry, you’ll need a complete competitive analysis. These tools will be discussed shortly.
Publishing Platforms
Publishing platforms help you spread your content to the world. After you’ve created your content, the last thing you want to do is spend time posting it. Platforms like HootSuite and Percolate allow you to share content easily, posting across multiple platforms at once. You can easily set a posting schedule, making it easy to share content regularly.
Competitive Analysis Platforms
While other tools are focused on users, social analysis tools focus on brands and industries. You will be able to track metrics that matter to your business. This includes analysis on first-touch, multi-channel, content, and timing.
Most importantly, you’ll be able to analyze your competition’s content. This is what makes competitive analysis platforms like Unmetric so valuable. You’ll be able to get a strong understanding of what’s working throughout your entire industry. You can find trending topics and untapped niches with ease.
Unmetric has gives users the access to the social media performance of over 30,000 brands across 30 industries covering all the major social networks. With one of latest features called Inspire, marketers can search through millions of pieces of content just like you would use Google to search for answers to your questions.
Just key in any word like “Super Bowl” , “Christmas” or “Selfies” and posts and tweets which contain the word show up in matter of seconds which can be sorted in order of date or engagement. The feature is a boon for marketers as they can easily find content that works and draw inspiration for a campaign.
Free Tools
Free tools are also worth discussing. There are lots of social media tools available for free that provide good business value. Here’s some of the best, according to Huffington Post:
- Google Alerts.
- Hootsuite
- TweetDeck
There’s also a great deal of native tools offered by Facebook, Twitter, and more. These tools let you do a variety of things, like scan for mentions, consolidate social media accounts, and schedule posts.
The problem is that none of these tools are all-inclusive. They capture incomplete bits of data, and won’t have as many options as other tools. They’re a good place to start, but not sufficient to give you the whole picture.
It’s also worth noting that these tools are completely free for your competition as well. Using them will help you stay afloat, but it won’t give you a competitive advantage. If you want an edge, you’ll have to use more advanced tools, like Salesforce Marketing Cloud for listening and publishing and Unmetric for intelligence and benchmarking.
Using All These Tools Together
The real value in these tools is how well they work together. Take a look at these powerful examples:
- Listening and analytics. You can use your listening tools to ping you whenever your brand is mentioned on social media. After you respond, you can use your analytics platform to find out if you’re responding quickly enough, and how your responses are received. Used in conjunction, you’ll ensure that you engage with your audience as effectively as possible.
- Publishing and analytics. If you use strong analytics tools like Unmetric, you’ll have access to a wide variety of information. You’ll know what type of content is working, where it’s working, and when the best time to post it is. You’ll be able to maximize your engagement score by using your publishing platform to publish at the best possible time, based on your analytics.
Are Social Media Tools Useful for My Business?
With their power, social media tools are necessary if you want to build a presence on any platform. And building this presence is well worth it. Social media’s reach is staggering. Here’s an average of active users of some of the biggest social media platforms:
- Facebook: 890 million.
- Google+: 359 million.
- Twitter: 288 million.
- Instagram: 300 million.
The good news is you don’t have to be on every single platform. Pick one or two that make the most sense for your business and start there. It’s better to have a strong presence on a single site than minimal presence on a dozen.
Give Unmetric a Try for Free!
It’s clear how important social media tools are for any business. If you’d like to give Unmetric a try, click here to request a completely free 3-day trial! If you’re not the hands-on type, you opt for a 20 minute demo instead!
what are social media tools used for
Social media tools are essential for a smart business to manage important channels in their Digital Marketing routine. Automation is fundamental in this work, making these tools a must.
These channels are a direct connection between brand and audience. It is possible to raise interest in products, generate interaction, and even work on customer service.
In this day-to-day task, a social media manager has a million balls to juggle at once, so using that direct line of communication effectively can be a major achievement.
The good news is that as social media has grown up, so have the tools available to help you master it.
Here are 23 of our favorite social media tools for saving time, getting better results, and making the most of every single social interaction.
Keep reading and find out!
- Hootsuite
- MeetEdgar
- Sprout Social
- Agorapulse
- Buffer
- Audiense
- Tailwind
- BuzzSumo
- Oktopost
- Tweetdeck
- Social Flow
- EveryPost
- IFTTT
- Rebrandly
- Google Trends
- Canva
- Kicksta
- Later
- Nuvi
- Klear
- Keyhole
- Feedly
- KISSmetrics
Get a quote for a social media micro content right now! - Hootsuite
Hootsuite
Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social content streams from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. It is one of the most famous social media tools in the market.
Working across multiple networks with a social team can be difficult, and Hootsuite makes it possible for you and your team.
It will be easier to delegate among replies to fans and followers, eliminating the stress of coordinating answers and potentially neglecting valued fans.
In the past, one of the biggest frustrations with Hootsuite was how it handled social media images. The good news is this issue is now fixed on Twitter so that scheduled posts will show up to four images directly in the feed.
Pricing:
Free: up to 3 social profiles, 30 scheduled messages, and 1 user;
Professional: $19/month. 10 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, and 1 user;
Team: $99/month. 20 social profiles, unlimited scheduling and 3 users;
Enterprise (custom pricing): unlimited.
- MeetEdgar
Posting most updates or sharing a piece of content once just doesn’t cut it these days, which is why MeetEdgar recycles social content for you.
Meet Edgar will schedule and automate re-posts of your content for you, helping get your posts in front of a larger percentage of people. The tool works by enabling you to build a library of social media updates organized into a publishing queue.
Posts can be tagged and separated into different categories to ensure that different content types are evenly spread out in your queue.
Pricing:
Edgar Lite: $19/mo: connect 3 social accounts, unlimited manually scheduled posts, 10 automatically recurring weekly time slots and 4 content categories (first month for free);
Edgar: $49/mo: connect 25 social accounts, unlimited manually scheduled posts, 1000 automatically recurring weekly time slots, and unlimited content categories (first month for free).
- Sprout Social
sproutsocial
Like many of the other social media tools on this list, Sprout Social allows you to schedule updates to your social media accounts.
However, there are a couple of unique features that set Sprout Social apart.
In addition to monitoring and managing multiple social networks, SproutSocial’s clean interface also delivers deeper analytics.
For example, the platform gives you calculated engagement and influence scores, and if you’re using social media for customer support, it also measures your response time.
You can even turn your messages into action items to create workflows or reminders around your social activity. This way, you can connect the points of conversations that happen online to real business.
Another perk is discovering new people to connect with and systematically removing bad connections, using the discovery tools.
Pricing:
Standard: $99 per user/mo: manage up to 5 profiles, all-in-one social boxes, social content calendar, review management, asking and social CRM tools, plus other features;
Professional: $149 per user/mo: 10 social profiles, everything in plus scheduling for optimal send times, custom workflows for multiple approvers and steps, response rate and time analysis reports, plus other features;
Advanced: $249 per user/mo: everything in professional plus Message Spike Alerts for increased message activity, digital asset, and content library, chatbots with automation tools, plus other features.
- Agorapulse
agorapulse, social media tool
Like some other social media tools on this list, AgoraPulse has a robust scheduling tool, which is awesome for a social media professional.
Still, its strength lies in the inbox-like interface it uses to help you manage conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
You can create filters to tag, flag, hide, or make assignments regarding content and followers.
This can be useful to segment (by customers vs. non-customers, for example), and make it easier to find existing conversations so you can build real relationships.
The app also includes a badging system that makes it easier to alert you when an influencer or advocate has posted, as well as clear analytics.
Pricing:
Medium: $79/month: 2 users, 10 social profiles, plus advanced reporting and user profiling;
Large: $159/month: 4 users, 25 social profiles, plus other advanced features;
X-Large: $239/month: 8 users, 40 social profiles, plus other advanced features;
Enterprise: $399/month: 20 users, 60 social profiles, plus other advanced features.
- Buffer
buffer, social media tool
Buffer is a simple and effective tool for sharing content through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
It’s particularly useful for small businesses that don’t have the time or resources to update their social media channels regularly but would still like to maintain a social presence.
With Buffer, you can schedule bulk posts ahead of time in a queue. It also offers many extensions through Chrome, Firefox, and Safari that make sharing what you find on the web much easier.
Buffer also includes an image editor that allows users to create perfect sizes and formats for each social platform.
Pricing:
Pro: $15/mo: 8 social accounts, 100 scheduled posts and 1 user (free 14-day trial);
Premium: $65/mo: 8 social accounts, 2.000 scheduled posts and 2 users (free 14-day trial);
Business: $99/mo: 25 social accounts, 2.000 scheduled posts, and 6 users (free 14-day trial).
- Audiense
audiense, social media tool
Audiense provides insights into your analytics, suggestions for targeting and engagement, and helps keep tabs on your key influencers and competitors.
Listening and insights tools provide intelligence into the quality of a social audience, crossover between different communities, and combine content with relationship analysis.
Its social marketing tools provide the ability to segment audiences for campaigns.
Pricing:
Free: limited version of Twitter Marketing and Audience Insights;
Twitter Marketing: $79/mo: boost your performance on Twitter;
Audience Insights: $696/mo: audience segmentation and profiling reports with social data.
- Tailwind
tailwind, social media tool
Tailwind tracks activity across Pinterest about your company, products, and competitors.
Pinterest is often overlooked when discussing social media management tools, but depending on your business, it might be the driving force in traffic, branding, and revenue.
In addition to the general reporting of growth and engagement, you can connect Google Analytics to track conversions and see which activity is most profitable.
Pricing:
Pinterest Plus: $9,99 per account/mo: 1 Pinterest profile, unlimited scheduling, 250 free SmartLoop Posts, 5 free Tailwind Tribes, plus other features;
Instagram Plus: $9,99 per account/mo: 1 Instagram profile, unlimited scheduling, 1-click hashtag suggestions, smart.bio custom link.
- BuzzSumo
buzzsumo
BuzzSumo is a tool that gives you social data on top-performing content and influencers based on your search queries.
By entering a topic, domain, or specific keyword, your results will be nothing short of relevant.
Filtering your search by time frame will show you the most shared content over time, which can give you an insight into trends or help with generating ideas for your own content creation!
With this tool, you can view who has shared a specific piece of content and create a list of influencers based on your interest.
The pro plans allow you to closely monitor keywords, domains, or authors by setting up alerts when new content is published.
With great data readily available, this tool is one you’ll want to use frequently to stay on top of the latest buzz in your field.
Pricing:
Pro: $99/mo: 100 monthly searches, 1 year of data, 3 users, 2 alerts, 10 exports plus other features;
Plus: $179/mo: 200 monthly searches, 2 years of data, 5 users, 5 alerts, 25 exports plus other features;
Large: $299/mo: 500 monthly searches, 3 years of data, 10 users, 15 alerts, 100 exports plus other features;
Enterprise: $499+mo: custom plans.
- Oktopost
oktopost
Oktopost focuses on building your brand’s online presence by delivering your content to targeted audiences. It helps you establish and manage your most valuable content, making sure your efforts add value to your marketing strategy.
Used by B2B businesses, Oktopost places emphasis on tracking conversions and identifying which channels and messaging drive results.
Underscoring their focus on B2B engagement, Oktopost integrates with Marketo, Salesforce, Act-On, and others, directly linking social media actions to the impact on sales.
One thing that places Oktopost above other tools is its ability to monitor LinkedIn Groups as well as company pages. As a whole package, Oktopost qualifies and quantifies better leads for you and your business.
Pricing: custom pricing based on needs/function.
- Tweetdeck
tweetdeck, social media tool
Source: Twitter Media
An oldie, but a goodie. TweetDeck is a dashboard application that makes managing Twitter a whole lot easier.
The browser-based tool provides a streamlined, simple way to watch and monitor custom segments and lists. It also provides more upfront visibility into mentions, messages, and other Twitter components.
Pricing: Free.
- Social Flow
social flow, social media tool
SocialFlow provides one place to manage all paid, owned, and earned social media campaigns.
It’s a smart tool that makes recommendations on which updates (across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) should be promoted based on engagement stats and other data sets.
It provides advanced targeting for social ads to help drive higher conversions, and it also has its very own ad builder to make creating ads quick and painless.
Pricing: custom pricing based on needs/function.
- EveryPost
everypost
Everypost has a to-the-point interface that makes social workflows so simple. It supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr.
It has features that let you curate visual content, schedule customized posts, collaborate with team members, and analyze performance.
Pricing:
Pro: $9,99/month: includes 10 channels, 1 team member and analytics for two profiles (free 14-day trial);
Plus: $29.99/month: includes 25 connected channels, 5 team members and 6 analytics profiles (free 14-day trial);
Advanced: $49.99/month: includes 50 connected channels, 10 team members and 12 analytics profiles (free 14-day trial);
Teams: $99.99/month: includes 120 connected profiles, 25 team members, and 15 analytics profiles (free 14-day trial).
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- IFTTT
IFTTT
IFTTT stands for “If this then that”, and it allows you to set up automated rules like “If I change my Facebook profile picture, change my Twitter profile to the same picture.”
This tool can also automate sharing new blog posts on social, tweet Instagram posts as native Twitter photos, share Instagram posts to a Facebook page, and much more.
IFTTT can be a huge time saver if set up properly. You can see a list of social applets here.
Pricing: free.
- Rebrandly
rebrandly
Shortening links is a constant need in everyday marketing. Not many social media tools like Rebrandly can provide such simple and exciting features.
The tool is a link shortener focused on customization. With it, it is possible to insert your brand in links, generating friendly URLs and easy association with your company.
Qualified links, where brands can be identified, have a much more significant impact on the public. They are more readable and generate more engagement, which increases traffic.
There is also a natural increase in click-through rates, which can mean higher public interest.
So many interesting advantages linked to one simple detail: more readable and attractive links.
Pricing:
Free: 5.000 clicks tracked per month, 500 total branded links and 5 custom domain names;
Starter: $ 29/month: includes 25.000 clicks tracked per month (then $1/mo. each 1.000), 5.000 total branded links (then $3/mo. each 1.000) and 5 (Then $5/mo each) custom domain names;
Pro: $ 69/month: includes 150.000 clicks tracked per month (then $1/mo. each 1.000), 15.000 total branded links (then $3/mo. each 1.000) and 5 (Then $5/mo each) custom domain names;
Premium: $ 499/month: includes 1.500.000 clicks tracked per month (then $1/mo. each 2.000), 150.000 total branded links (then $2/mo. each 1.000) and 20 (Then $5/mo each) custom domain names.
- Google Trends
google trends, social media tool
Google Trends is a valuable tool to search for topics and trends. Online strategies need to find what the audience has been talking about and taking an interest in.
As one of the indispensable social media tools, Google Trends allows you to track several topics, especially related to the business segment.
The tool can be an important support for some needs such as:
finding topics for Content Marketing;
finding topics to explore in social media channels;
discovering the public’s perception of specific subjects.
Google Trends also works as a keyword tracking tool. It is possible to identify trends and the volume of searches during a specific time.
In general, this tool is essential since it can support different campaigns and actions. Every strategy must rely on it.
Pricing: free.
- Canva
canva, social media tool
Canva is a social media tool focused on layout design and presentations. It is possible to create thousands of templates without being an expert or having technical knowledge.
This ease of use and wide range of graphic possibilities are the main attraction in Canva. It fits perfectly into dynamic routines, without leaving teams too busy.
Canva helps to prepare quick templates that can be used by anyone. This way, designers don’t get overworked and can focus on more complex creations.
Using Canva, you can find images, icons, ready-made templates, or create everything from scratch. Today, Canva is one of the most common options in the marketing segment.
Pricing:
Free: 8.000 templates, 100+ design types and hundreds of free graphics and photos;
Pro: $9,95. Includes everything from free plan plus 1 brand kit for visual identity creation, one-click design resize, 60.000+ free templates, 60+ million stock images, photos, videos, and graphics.
- Kicksta
kicksta, social media tool
Kicksta is a tool for organic growth on Instagram.
Forget automation software that gets robot followers or has nothing to do with your audience. The role of Kicksta is to help build a qualified audience that can engage.
To do this, Kicksta likes about 30,000 Instagram users’ photos per month, always considering their profile. It’s this filtering that ensures work directed at your brand’s strategy.
By always focusing on real people, Kicksta can provide solid and long-term growth. This consistency is converted into engagement because they are followers of your brand’s profile.
With Kicksta, any strategy that would be done manually can be automated. No robots, no phantom accounts, or users that don’t fit your audience.
Pricing:
Standard: $49: includes moderate growth speed, video onboarding, and 10 targets;
Premium: $99: includes maximum growth speed, video onboarding, 40 targets, VIP and live chat e-mail support, advanced retargeting, blacklist.
- Later
later, social media tool
Later is a social media tool for editorial planning. With it, it is possible to build a strategy for channels such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
The idea is to create a calendar to automatize publications and actions for a certain time. It is possible to get everything ready, for example, for next week.
With a simple operation, Later allows you to create plans and monitor all the work done previously. Thus, it is possible to choose the hours with the highest range for posts, for example.
Later is a tool focused on the visual arrangement of qualified elements.
This feature makes the operation much easier, bringing more dynamics and faster understanding for marketers.
Pricing:
Free: 1 profile per social platform and 30 posts each;
Plus: $7,50/mo includes 1 profile per social platform and 100 posts each;
Premium: $16/mo includes 2 profiles per social platform and 250 posts each;
Starter: $24/mo includes 3 profiles per social platform and unlimited posts;
Brand: $41/mo includes 5 profiles per social platform and unlimited posts.
- Nuvi
Nuvi, social media tool
Nuvi is a tool for tracking impressions on social media. It provides a detailed and easy visualization of the interactions and data generated in these channels.
Chosen among the main social media tools of giants such as Uber and Nissan, Nuvi enables a clearer insight of metrics.
It allows users to translate feelings, intentions, and levels of interactions from the public regarding the content published on social media platforms.
From the perceptions Nuvi brings, marketers can create more accurate campaigns that reach their audience more quickly.
It is also possible to propose more attractive interactions capable of engaging in highly strategic work.
Pricing: custom pricing based on needs/function.
- Klear
klear, social media tool
Influencer Marketing is a powerful strategy that enables great ROIs for brands.
Therefore, the Klear platform is one of the most interesting social media tools that you can have.
With this software, you can find influencers for your brand, considering those who communicate with your niche market and can act as true ambassadors.
With advanced search filters, Klear allows you to do a refined, strategic, and accurate search. Thus, the tool finds only relevant profiles for your brand.
Klear also brings data analysis on each of these influencers. These metrics help you get a perspective of what results can be achieved in a potential strategy that includes them.
Pricing: free plans, with premium options starting at $249/mo.
- Keyhole
keyhole, social media tool
Knowing what the public is saying about your brand and its campaigns on the web is a must. Measuring this opinion is the main possibility that Keyhole achieves.
The platform has advanced options to measure a broad view on specific topics such as campaigns, postings, and other content. It is an accurate thermometer about everything that is delivered to the public on social media channels.
Keyhole also works very well to measure Influencer Marketing campaigns. In general, it is an engagement monitoring tool, allowing you to structure more accurate actions continuously.
Pricing:
suite with social listening and account analytics: $59/mo;
social listening and campaign tracking: $49/mo;
social media account analytics: $49/mo.
- Feedly
Feedly tool
Feedly is a social media tool designed to organize your feed. It is designed to bring organization and, mainly, prioritization. Highlight just what interests your strategy.
Using Feedly, it is possible to create feeds of influencers, blogs of interest, news on relevant topics, among other options. This tool helps you to track, filtering what is strategically relevant only.
Feedly is one of the most important social media tools for content creation. This is because the platform helps to follow topics of interest and the volume in which they appear on the web.
Thus, it is easier to identify trends that can be explored by your brand.
Pricing:
Pro: $6/mo: includes 100 content sources, notes, and highlights, filtering and research, integration with several tools, hide sponsored ads;
Pro+: $8.25/mo: includes everything in Pro plus 2.500 content sources, Google News feed, follow Twitter, Reddit and newsletter feeds;
Business: $18/mo: includes everything in Pro+ plus 5.000 content sources, team feeds and boards, notes and highlights, and Slack and Microsoft Teams.
- KISSmetrics
kissmetrics, social media tool
KISSmetrics is a tool for website analysis. The purpose of this monitoring is simple: to identify what is most engaging.
The platform analyses websites and, in 10 minutes, delivers complete reports. The data available points to links, menus, banners, and other items that receive the most clicks.
To do this, KISSmetrics creates heat maps on website pages, pointing to areas that generate the most interest. Based on these metrics, it is possible to carry out A/B tests, generate reports, and optimize pages based on accurate and valuable information.
Pricing: custom pricing based on needs/function.
Social media tools are essential for a routine Digital Marketing strategy. The development of automation and monitoring technologies has allowed new advanced solutions to emerge every day.
They can be highly valuable for marketers!
Need some more help with your social media content? Check out how Content Marketing can help your strategy!
Conclusion
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