Bloggers and marketers are always looking for new ways to promote their products, services, and content.
One of the most effective ways to do this is by using social media tools. Social media tools are software programs that allow you to post updates on your business’s social media pages. These updates can include text, images, or videos. You can also use these tools to schedule posts in advance so that you don’t have to post them manually every day.
There are many different types of social media tools available today. In this article, we’ll talk about some of the most popular ones so you can decide which one is right for your business.
Social Media Tools Include Select All That Apply
1. Instagram
Ann Handley, chief content officer, MarketingProfs
“Instagram is my favorite social network because of its social storytelling simplicity. From fun personal accounts – like Small Chalk and Adam Padilla – to corporate brands, it connects more immediately and deeply with people than any other platform. I still haven’t forgiven them for introducing an algorithm. (Chronological was so much more in line with the ethos of the platform.) But I can’t quit you, Insta.”
.@Instagram is my favorite social network because of its social #storytelling simplicity, says @annhandley via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Instagram Marketing: Social Media Experts Share Top Tips
2. Twitter
Joe Pulizzi, founder, Content Marketing Institute
“I use social media as almost a pure response vehicle. And I won’t start any new social media app, platform, or tool until I’m 100% committed to it. My goal with Twitter is to keep in touch and communicate my appreciation to those people that support me. Once I built an audience on those platforms, my goals and execution changed.”
3. Buffer
Joanna Wiebe, creator, Copyhackers
“Buffer. Three reasons. (1) You can install a browser widget that lets you Buffer any page or image you come across to be sent immediately or later. (2) Its Content Inbox: I can enter the URL of a favorite blog and Buffer instantly creates a huge list of tweets from that blog. (3) The company is transparent. I don’t expect every company to publish what they earn vs. what they pay people the way Buffer does, but it’s a warm-and-fuzzy approach to helping disconnected folks like moi see the humans behind a software company.”
4. BuzzSumo
Neil Patel, entrepreneur and influencer, NeilPatel.com
“With BuzzSumo you can see what is hot in your space on social media and what isn’t. From there you can craft ideas on the type of blog posts you should write to generate traffic and leads. The best part about BuzzSumo is it shows who has shared the content so you can reach out to those influencers and ask them to share your content as well.”
Use @BuzzSumo so you can see what’s hot in your space on #SocialMedia & what isn’t, says @neilpatel via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
5. Animoto
Mari Smith, Facebook marketing expert
“Native video is the top-reaching post type on Facebook and gets three times the engagement of link posts and two times that of photo posts. I love using Animoto’s gorgeous templates, themes, and stock music. Its marketing builder tool also makes it super-duper easy to add text overlays – vital for sound-off autoplay videos in the Facebook newsfeed because 80% of video ads on Facebook are watched with sound off.”
80% of video ads on #Facebook are watched with sound off. Use text overlays, says @MariSmith via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Video Marketing Strategy: What Marketers Need to Know
6. Moz’s Fresh Web Explorer
Rand Fishkin, founder, SparkToro
“Next to BuzzSumo – and without sounding biased – my favorite tool is Moz’s Keyword Explorer brand mention feature. It’s great for setting up mention alerts as well as finding content to share socially through keyword notifications. The mention authority feature works directly with Moz’s page and domain authority metrics and helps sort through all the noise you normally get with catch-all monitoring tools.”
7. Tweeps Map
Brian D. Evans, founder, Influencive
“The problem with a lot of marketing these days is that it’s not laser targeted and is far too broad. I use Tweeps Map because it gives me a visual representation of where my followers are geographically. I can then run targeting to followers from specific areas and make sure that the content is relevant and valuable for those followers.”
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Data-Driven Creative: How to Use Twitter Data to Inform Your Marketing
8. Sumo
Jeff Bullas, CEO, JeffBullas.com
“Sumo is a hybrid tool that’s a bit like a Swiss Army knife. It’s helped me thrive and survive in the wilds of the digital world by creating social-sharing buttons – onsite, SMS, Flipboard, and WhatsApp – and tracking my social counts on blog posts. The feature I really love is its Welcome Mat: a pop-up that captures emails. In less than 12 months, it’s collected over 40,000 email subscribers.”
I love @SumoMe’s Welcome Mat pop-up feature that captures emails, says @jeffbullas via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
9. Tailwind
Candice Galek, founder, Karma Honey Project
“TailIwind has been a lifesaver over the years, allowing my team to work more quickly and efficiently when posting to Pinterest. It’s a scheduling app on steroids, helping you to choose not only when to post for maximum engagement but also what might go viral thanks to their pixel-matching technology and image recognition capabilities. You can seamlessly measure pin virality and repost that content to continue to grow your following on the platform.
Don’t sleep on Pinterest. Their introverted user base is keen on consuming online content, and Tailwind helps you to get it in front of more potential customers faster.”Don’t sleep on #Pinterest. Their introverted user base is keen on consuming online #content, and @tailwindapp helps you get it in front of more potentials customers faster, says @bikinigeek via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
10. Elevate
Jason Miller, head of brand, ActiveCampaign
“I like to keep things simple and streamlined: Less is more. The tool I use religiously is Elevate: LinkedIn’s employee advocacy tool. I use it to share, organize, and measure all the content I post across my main three social accounts: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. I share daily from Elevate and track engagements.”
11. Twitter Promote Mode
Brian Clark, founder, Copyblogger
“Now that the days of organic social media distribution for content marketing are long in the rear view, the most valuable social media tools are the advertising features of the platforms themselves. Facebook (and Instagram), of course, but also Twitter given its high-profile resurgence. We’re testing Twitter Promote Mode, which for a recurring monthly fee promises to give constant broader reach – just like the good old days.”
12. Facebook Audience Insights
Larry Kim, founder, MobileMonkey
“I’m big into audiences: figuring out what are the interests, behaviors, and demographics of your target customers. For this, I use Facebook Audience Insights because it tells you just about everything you’d want to know: job titles, education level, lifestyle, location, household information, purchasing behavior, and much more.
“By better understanding who your target audience is, you can more accurately create content that they’re likely to engage with.”
Use #Facebook Audience Insights to better understand who your target audience is, says @larrykim via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
13. Sprout Social
Reilly Roberts, marketing manager, Common Thread Collective
“Every marketer has their own approach and needs from a social media tool. Regardless of the tools’ unique features, the one need we all have in common is tracking the performance of the content we’re sharing. Not only does Sprout Social measure performance indicators like engagement and clicks, most importantly, it offers UTM tracking.
“The ease of Sprout’s UTM Tracker allows my social efforts to be aligned with efforts to optimize and drive traffic, as measured by Google Analytics.”
Note: This article’s author works at Common Thread Collective.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Create 5 Custom Metrics in Google Analytics [Infographic]
14. Kicksta (formerly Kickstagram)
Cammi Pham, partner, ThinkRenegade
“With the new Instagram algorithm change, consistently posting at the right time has become even more important. Kicksta makes it easier to upload, process photos, schedule, and add hashtags to the first comment from desktop. For hashtags, I use 80% fixed and 20% tailored. This gives my team more time to focus on real-time engagement, which is life or death on social.”
Real-time engagement is life or death on #social, says @cammipham via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
15. TikTok
Shanelle Mullin, experimentation & analysis lead, Shopify
“Historically, marketers have been hesitant to jump on short-form video platforms, despite social media as an industry consistently moving in that direction (see Snapchat, Instagram Stories, Fleets, Reels, Shorts, etc.) Before TikTok, there was Vine, Dubsmash, Musical.ly, Triller, etc. Currently, forecasts predict TikTok will top 1.2B monthly active users (MAU) in 2021, putting it among Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, YouTube, and WeChat. After TikTok, there will be another platform focused on short-term video.
“Whether it’s running influencer campaigns with TikTok celebrities, using TikTok for Business to run paid ads, or building an organic branded audience, marketers would be wise to have a presence on this platform in 2021 and beyond. It’s not just for Gen Zers who love to dance; the rest of us are just better at hiding our (over)usage. Besides, the short-form video content you create for TikTok can always be distributed across *checks notes* almost every other major social media platform.”
Whether it’s running influencer campaigns with celebrities, paid ads, or building an organic branded audience, marketers would be wise to have a presence on #TikTok in 2021 and beyond, says @shanelle_mullin via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
16. Venngage
Ross Simmonds, digital strategist, RossSimmonds.com
“My favorite tool is Venngage. As someone who really likes experimenting with the potential of visual content and visual communication, having access to an infographics tool that is so easy to use speeds up my visual output. Whether you are creating graphics for social, SlideShare, or a presentation, Venngage is super versatile and intuitive.”
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 7 Ideas to Spark Great Infographics
17. IFTTT
Pam Moore, CEO and founder, Marketing Nutz
“I love using If This Then That (IFTTT) to enable native posting of images on Twitter that are originally posted to Instagram. You can set specific criteria by using hashtags or set it to post to Twitter automatically by default. IFTTT also offers a nearly limitless supply of social and cross-platform ‘recipes.’”
HANDPICKED RELATE
18. Rival IQ
Jay Baer, founder, Convince & Convert
“Rival IQ is a terrific tool to compare your own social media engagement rate and top-performing content versus your competitors’. Insightful and easy to use, it includes automated, custom reporting. One click and BAM – you have a PDF or PowerPoint deck with all the information you need to make better social media decisions. We use it daily.”
Use @RivalIQ to compare your own #SocialMedia engagement & top #content vs competitors’, says @jaybaer via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET
19. Yotpo
Griffin Thall, co-founder, Pura Vida Bracelets
“Instagram has always been Pura Vida’s dominant channel. We’re the No. 1, most-engaged jewelry brand there and that has everything to do with our influencers, micro-influencers, aesthetics, and — above all — our amazing community.
“But if I had to pick one tool, it’d be Yotpo. We have over 319,000 five-star reviews and that kind of social proof drives conversions like nothing else. Still, it’s Yotpo’s social integrations — things like easily sourcing, finding, publishing, sharing, and presenting user-generated content — and doing all that natively that makes it so irreplaceable.”
Image source
20. Followerwonk
Michael Brenner, CEO, Marketing Insider Group
“Twitter remains my primary social media platform. But alone, Twitter’s unmanageable. That’s why I use Followerwonk to understand who my audience is, when they are most likely to engage, and to find followers who overlap with similar social profiles and influencers. Its analyze feature – which integrates with Buffer – tells you exactly when to post your most important updates for exposure.”
.@Followerwonk tells you exactly when to post your most important updates on #Twitter, says @BrennerMichael via @CMIContent.
categories of social media tools
1. Social Media Analytics Analytics tools as the name specify, helps in analyzing your social media presence including factors and numbers such as the total number of followers, likes and engagement activity of the audience. It gives an insight into the complete online activity in terms of the brand as well as its followers. These tools help the page owners understand their audience better and provide the brands with an opportunity to understand the results offering them a chance to improve their output based on those results. Some common examples of analytical tools include Google analytics and Pagelever. Listening tools such as Radian 6, Brandwatch and Synthesio are online listening tools which extract and filter online conversations to understand the voice of the followers. 2. Content Curation Content plays a major role in any Social Media platform because in the modern day, most people look for smart and simplified content. Based on the quality of content, you popularity levels vary on the online social media platforms. Hence, it is very important to have a well written, structured and organized content source online. Apart from creating, scheduling and publishing content online, content Curation also include finding the right content for your page which can be related to the audience. Engagement tools such as Spredfast and Conversocial help manage workflow and real time execution of plans. But specific content creation tools include Scribblelive and Buddymedia. 3. Social Media Management These tools are more focused on combined working over multiple platforms for a single brand identity. Since every Social media platform needs to be updated simultaneously, it can become tiresome to manage Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus and all other platforms. Hence, social media management tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite simplify the task by scheduling your posts as per your requirement and publishing them online on each platform without the need to do it manually. These are a necessity considering the large number of platforms and the various types of content which needs to be regularly updated as per the brand requirement. 4. Social Influencer marketing Influencer marketing is one of the newest strategies which have been adopted in the recent times. Approaching influential people with a large following to attract more customers helps reach out to a larger and wider audience and not necessarily the target audience. Several tools like Topsy, FollowerWonk and BuzzSumo are all based on a search algorithm to look for people from a specific field with the largest amount of followers. These tools can help you find influential people who might be able to find you the right set of people and spread out the word. 5. Social Advertising While branding online on Social Media seems simplified, there are several things which need to be kept in mind. Getting to the target audience can be tough if it is not wide enough and finding the right set of people for your product can prove to be challenge. Hence, paid advertising on different platform needs to be availed to increase your outreach and get the word out into the right set of people. Sponsored updates on LinkedIn and Paid boosters on Facebook are common examples of this type of social advertising feature which promotes your post to a specified group of people who might be interested in your offerings. 6. Content Marketing Marketing your online content is very important because no matter how good the content is, until and unless it reaches the target audience, you will not generate any results. Based on the online market, several platforms have been designed to help you market your content and get it delivered to the right set of audience. Tools like Curata CMP, Percolate, Newscred and Kapost allows marketers to collaborate, distribute and get an analysis of all the content within a single platform hence resulting in better lead generation and better output. 7. Social Commerce While Social Media is a good platform to engage customers and promote the brand, it is also one of the leading platforms to generate commercial activities on Social Media. Facebook is the leader when it comes to social commerce with more and more number of brands rising through the platform. A lot of customized goods as well as clothing and Décor are being sold. Other examples of social commerce include Polyvore, Pinterest, Twitter and even Reddit. 8. Social Media Monitoring While social media monitoring is similar to management, monitoring your social media platform is more specific and is focused on the current trends online as well as your current performance. These two are then compared to create a better working plan. Social Media Monitoring takes into account region wise analysis as well as several other factors including the age factor of the audience, activity time and content preference. These tools help get an insight and understand better the working of your brand page.
Conclusion
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