Social media marketing tools are a great way to get started with growing your business. There are a number of tools out there that can help you manage all aspects of your social media presence, from content creation to posting schedules, analytics and more. In this article we’ll cover some of the most popular social media marketing tools on the market today and explain what each can do for you.
Table of Contents
Social Media Marketing Tools Companies
1. Biteable
Creating content for social media is an essential part of the game. Visual content gets three times more engagement on Twitter than plain ol’ text, so good visual content can help you take it to the next level.
With Biteable, you can easily create engaging, entertaining, and informative short videos to share on social media.
With a host of free video templates, footage, music, and animated scenes, Biteable is a godsend for anyone who wants to create studio-quality quickly without needing expensive resources like film or sound recording equipment.
Biteable was created to be super easy to use and one of the cheapest tools of its type on the market. Most features are available even with free accounts (it’s pretty cheap to upgrade to Premium anyway) so why not add a bit more excitement and spark to your social media content by creating some short, super-shareable videos?
2. Buffer
Buffer started off as a scheduling tool for Twitter. Today, it supports all the major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google + (for the one person who still uses it.) Let’s take a look.
You can do some pretty neat things with Buffer:
- Use the chrome extension to add articles and content from the web to your Buffer queue or share content on the go.
- Automatically shortens links you share. If you’re Bitly user, you can connect your accounts.
- Upload custom photos and videos (or use ones pulled from the article you shared).
- Access complex analytics to track your content’s performance.
- Create a posting schedule so your content gets spread out throughout the day.
- Reply to posts from inside Buffer.
- Add team members.
A social media dashboard like Buffer helps you fill your social media feed with relevant and exciting content without spending half your life logged in to Facebook and Twitter.
3. Buzzsumo
Research is a crucial part of marketing. If you want to do well and leave your competitors in the dust, you need to understand what they’re doing and if what you’re doing is working or not.
Buzzsumo is a research tool which tells you how your content is doing and who’s spreading the word.
Sometimes when you sit down to create content, you’re on fire. Other times it’s like pulling teeth and you’re just grateful to have met a deadline. It’s impossible to guarantee success, but a tool like Buzzsumo can help you increase the odds.
One of the most powerful research tools on the market, the functionality includes:
- Find content that’s most shared on social media channels – you can enter your own or someone else’s domain and see what’s been shared socially.
- Find influencers related to particular topics.
- Get alerts based on keywords, brand name, links, author name, or domain.
- Track competitors and do an analysis based on their content.
- Use it to research keywords and trending topics your audience is interested in. You can use it to find interesting new posts to share or to search for content ideas based on what’s performing well.
- And, if you’ve got some cash to splash, Buzzsumo Pro is a powerhouse for competitor research.
4. Missinglttr
Social media promotion is vital to success in the online world, but the act of scheduling posts may not be the reason you bounce of bed every morning. Even if you use a tool to help you speed up the process of blasting all your channels at once, you still need to manually input the text and images for each post. Rinse and repeat to re-promote the posts.
Missinglettr helps you automate the process of creating social content by scraping your blog post content and creating a year’s worth of social content for you: nine individual posts dripped out to your social channels over a year.
This means you can focus on writing long-form blog posts while someone else takes care of the creative side of social promotion and the scheduling of posts, so there’ll be one less thing on your to-do list.
With templates for content creation, scheduling, and facilitating client approvals, plus a custom URL shortener to export campaign assets so they can be used in other marketing initiatives, Missinglettr has some great features that’ll lighten your load. You even get a weekly report so you’re on top of your marketing performance.
5. MeetEdgar
So you need a content manager but you’re already a one-person-band responsible for evergreen content creation, tech support, and design? Meet MeetEdgar.
A social media management tool that handles both re-sharing your content and optimising your social traffic, MeetEdgar is your handy automated content manager.
Working with your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles through a web plugin, you can keep your social channels populated with posts and check in from wherever you are using your mobile.
MeetEdgar allows you to schedule content re-sharing and monitor traffic while boosting engagement and optimizing the ROI of your digital assets.
By putting your evergreen content out there on the regular, you can increase your traffic and boost engagement. With an automated auto-refill queue, you won’t run out of regular posts. It also features a category-based scheduling tool allowing you to mix different content types so your audience never gets bored.
MeetEdgar also features a URL shortener with in-app click tracking which means you can follow your clicks.
6. Hootsuite
In the chaotic world of social media, Hootsuite handles multiple social media accounts, bringing them under one login into a single dashboard, and you can sign up free of charge.
One of the most popular social media management tools around, Hootsuite allows for collaboration across team members and an approval process. Alongside the major benefit of seeing all your comments and mentions in one place, you can also assign tasks, plot a social media calendar, and schedule updates.
Through Hootsuite Podium you can check out free online social media courses to develop better social media management skills and learn the fundamentals of social media marketing.
Beyond that, for the more experienced digital marketer, its tools integrate with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube, giving you an in-depth breakdown of your analytics and allowing you to interact with prospective customers.
You can even integrate other community-based platforms including Reddit, Tumblr, and Storify, which helps gather even more feedback and customer data.
7. Mention
Mention is an extremely comprehensive social listening tool. Monitor mentions of your brand, your products, or your competitors in real time.
Staying on top of the conversation is easy: you can respond to social media comments and mentions from inside the platform, and you can use Mention to find relevant influencers for influencer marketing campaigns and analyze your competitors.
8. Sumo
Sumo has a whole suite of useful traffic and social media tools that can help improve your marketing strategy. The most relevant for social media is the social shares feature, which makes it easy for visitors to your site to share your content to social media, and it keeps track of the number of shares.
9. IFTTT
IFTTT: If this, then that. This tool lets you set up rules that make running your social media marketing empire much easier.
Create rules that trigger specific actions when something happens. For example, you can create a rule that means every time you get a Google notification for a specific alert, it gets added into a Google doc so you can check it all at the end of the day.
These rules can eliminate some of the manual back-and-forth, and help you streamline your process in a way that emphasises and enhances individual productivity.
10. Zapier
Zapier is another tool that encourages automation and does share some similarities with IFTTT. One writer summarized the key differences rather well. IFTTT is easier to learn and great for light automation, while Zapier is a great tool for businesses that want to take their automation to new heights. A lot of marketers use both for different tasks. As an extra bonus, Zapier plays nicely with most of the tools on this list.
If you’re looking for some neat automation ideas, to get you started the Zapier team have a list of suggestions about how you can use Zapier to better manage your social media accounts.
social media management business
1 Learn Social Media Management
First things first.
Having personal social media accounts does not make someone a social media manager.
Social Media Management requires additional skills beyond an understanding of each platform.
Skills needed for social media management success include:
Resourcefulness
Organization
Productivity
Customer service
Promptness
Consistency
Creativity
Flexibility
Leadership
While anyone can learn the business of social media management, not everyone grasps the importance of friendliness, a serving attitude, business ethics and so on.
You will need to a be well-rounded, service-minded individual if you are going to succeed in this field!
You might consider not just learning social media management, but also getting certified in social media management. This might help you get your first client!
become a social media manager
2 Understand the Business of Being a Freelancer or Agency
Starting out a freelancer is a great way to test the waters for those who are already employed and might be looking for a career change. Starting a social media management business as an agency is perfect for those who have previous management and leadership experience. It takes a special type of leader to run an agency.
Learning about setting up an LLC, invoicing, strategic planning, proposals, selling, project management, contracts and setting rates are all important details to keep in mind. Not all social media courses and training program teach you the business of social media management!
3 Research Social Media Niches
There are many industries and nearly as many social media skills; when it comes time to niche choose carefully.
We always recommend combining your current knowledge with your passion and applying that to your social media marketing business!
For example:
Photoshop Expert + Love for Animals = Graphic Design for Veterinarians
Facebook Expert + Love for People = Community Manager
Video Editing + Love for the Outdoors = Drone Services for Realtors
Facebook Ad expert + Love for Travel = Run ads for Digital Nomads
Copywriter + Love for Food = Content Marketer for a Food Blog
You get the picture.
Note: Not everyone starts out with a planned niche. Sometimes social media managers fall into an opportunity and then develop that into a niche. At other times, niches come and go and focus shifts from B2B to B2C or from Content Management to Community Management. That’s perfectly fine. Starting out with a plan will help you focus better when finding your first clients, but is not a requirement to get you started!
4 Define The Target Audience You Want To Serve
This goes along with what was talked about in the previous paragraph; make sure you define who you want to serve. Build that avatar for your business as you will help your future clients build theirs.
Doing this exercise will help you get clarity on your future marketing messages
5 Figure Out Your Product or Service Offering
Now it’s time to find out what to offer. Once you know who you serve, you’ll quickly find out what they want, but more importantly, what they need.
Offer services and products that will help a future client solve their pain points.
Bundling services and products is a great way to offer choices to a client.
Think of service and products that will help a client
Save time
Amplify social media efforts
Enhance overall marketing efforts
Manage social media platforms
Grow an audience
and more!
6 Create A Social Media Strategic Plan
Now before you are up as running as a marketing company, you are in need of a business plan, a marketing plan and part of that marketing plan – even for your own social media management business – should include… wait for it… a social media strategic plan.
You can’t grow what you don’t measure.
In order to grow a business you need goals, measurable KPIs and a plan of action.
7 Name and Register Your Social Media Management Company
Next up you will need to take a bit of time to first name your new business and then register your business.
Take care to research the name you want! You will need to make sure it’s not trademarked and that your preferred domain name for your future website is available
TIP: Once you settle on what you want and it’s available, purchase that domain name!
With registering a business comes setting up a business bank account and making sure you are able to invoice a client and receive funds.
8 Set Up Social Media Accounts Plus a Website
Once you have a name and you are in business, set up your social media profiles and pages, social platforms and of course, your website.
Once you have experience, or if you have previous experience working in-house in the social media industry, you can also link a portfolio to your website.
On your website, list the social media services you are offering, create links to your social media pages, and start posting content on your blog!
9 Start To Network with Fellow Social Media Managers
Now is the time to let everyone know what you are doing!
Start with social media posts letting your current connections know that you’ve started a new career as a social media manager. Ask for referrals, but make sure to offer value as you post to Facebook Instagram and elsewhere.
Next, reach out to other social media managers, professionals and experts. Learn how to do this the right way by reading this.
Last but not least, consider putting your digital marketing skills to good use by running Facebook ads to attract new clients!
10 Take Daily Action To Find New Clients and Grow
The last step to starting your social media management business is to never stop prospecting.
Every day take action to learn, improve, provide, reach out and grow.
Make new connections and gain experience.
After all: commenting, liking and sharing on social media is… free!
Use this to create new relationships.
Reach out and be genuine, interested and real!
Conclusion
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