Managing your social media successfully is crucial to any business. No matter what field you’re in, we all need to harness these channels to engage customers, build brands and increase sales – but this is no mean feat.
That’s why using simple social tools just makes sense. If you can get your hands on even a few of these programmes, you’re going to find life so much easier when it comes to managing your social media. These tools won’t work miracles, but they’ll streamline things, optimise content and measure results – which is pretty much the same thing, right?
Why do I need social tools?
Before we get into our pick of the best tools on the market, let’s first get into why you need these tools in your life. Well, if you’re new to marketing or looking for ways to refresh your strategy these will be sure to make a difference.
1. To listen to your audience
Customers are now in a position to interact with brands more than ever before. Whether they’re sending an email, commenting on a post or tagging you in a tweet, there are so many ways customers can get in touch with you. This also gives companies the unique opportunity to listen to their audience and respond to feedback. If you use social media tools to track your customers’ interactions, you can tweak your content and services to better meet their needs.
2. To increase engagement
Getting started in social media isn’t easy, and spreading your name and message can be a long and arduous process. Luckily, there are a number of tools out there that can make this journey a lot simpler. Tools to help you attract new followers, get more likes and grow your social media channels organically.
3. To keep track of campaigns
There’s so much that goes into a marketing campaign, and keeping track of it all gets complex pretty fast. With social media management tools, you can store everything in one place to easily keep tabs on your progress – you can also follow every stage of a task, see who’s working on what, organise your projects and so much more. This makes it more transparent for the whole team to know what’s happening and when.
4. To stay in touch
Some social tools allow you to aggregate your inboxes, meaning you’ll never have to miss a message again. Not only does this make things easier for you, it provides greater customer service to your consumers – you’ll be able to promptly respond to any enquiries and reduce the risk of messages getting lost. You can also keep track of who’s dealing with the query, so you can forward any subsequent communication to the relevant team member.
5. To monitor trends
All marketing professionals know how important it is to keep up with trends. Monitoring keywords and Google searches is part and parcel of a marketer’s everyday life, but what if a programme could do all of that for you? Before we can even begin thinking of marketing campaigns and creating content, we need to do this kind of research to inform our strategy – but if you use a tool that does all of this for you, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of time and hassle.
6. To manage accounts
With so many pages, accounts and profiles, keeping track of everything is a tough job – you may need different social pages depending on locations, teams, products etc – logging in and out of all these accounts can be a nightmare. To stay on top of things, there are many tools that allow you to consolidate your profiles and keep them all in one place. This means that your team only needs to keep track of this one tool rather than dozens of different pages.
7. To build a calendar
Planning posts and building a marketing calendar is fairly standard stuff in this business. But imagine if there was a tool that could help guide you through this, planning, analysing and publishing your content at the click of a button? Enter scheduling software – one of the most time-saving, efficient social media tools on the market.
8. To track performance
To get an idea of what will work in the future, you have to look at what worked in the past. Social tools allow you to keep track of the most important metrics by measuring which keywords get the most clicks, how many viewers interact with your content, which demographics are engaging with your brand etc. Having this information means you can plan your marketing strategy appropriately and maximise success.
9. To create content
Whether you’re stuck for ideas or looking for ways to save time, content creator tools are the answer. These applications can source, schedule and publish hand-curated posts that are on trend and relevant to your business.
20 tools you need to elevate your social media content
So now you know why you need social tools, you’re probably wondering which tools to invest in. We’ve put together a guide of 20 of the best social media tools – all tried and tested by writefully – that we think will blow your minds and enhance your content. If you’re looking for something in particular, we’ve broken down our list into sections:
- design
- scheduling
- research
- management
- engagement
- advertising
- content creation.
Read on to find out more.
Design
1. Canva
Kicking off our list is one of the best graphic design platforms in the business. Canva allows you to create virtually anything you can think of – Instagram stories, YouTube thumbnails, LinkedIn ads, Pinterest pins and so much more. With an extensive range of features, you can really get your creative juices flowing and produce eye-catching content for your brand.
You can choose from a range of ready-made templates or start from a blank canvas to achieve the design of your dreams. You can even work collaboratively with your team, editing and reviewing in real time to shape your content and get approvals. If you’re responsible for creating visual content for your brand – be it graphics, presentations, videos or anything else – this is an absolute must for your social media.
2. Unsplash
Unsplash grants you unlimited access to millions of free photographs. The website is dedicated to providing stock photography through their Unsplash licence, meaning you can use any of their images – without paying a penny. Powered by creators, the service is home to more than 211,000 photographers all keen to share their work with the world – from hobbyists to professionals, every photo is hand-selected to ensure the best quality across the board. This opens up a whole treasure trove of visuals for your content, giving you high-resolution images to use for social media graphics, posters and more.
3. Animoto
Our go-to tool for marketing videos. This is a great way to create content your audience will love, without having to spend a lot of money or time doing it. Their video maker allows you to turn pictures and video clips into professional content with ease and speed. Forget spending hours and hours editing a boring, lifeless video – with Animoto, you can use storyboard templates or the simple drag-and-drop design to produce engaging content that’ll really pack a punch. Whether you’re promoting a recent blog post or launching a new product, there are plenty of opportunities to use Animoto to your advantage.
Scheduling
4. Later
Posting on social media can be a bit of a hassle. Focusing on your marketing strategy is hard to do when you have to constantly maintain your presence on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc. Instead of wasting resources on this, you could actually use a tool like Later to do all the hard work for you. This software allows you to organise, plan and schedule all your posts in advance and will take care of publishing and analysing your content so you don’t have to. Later even offers a free plan for anyone who wants to try out the basic package – with various subscription tiers available after that.
5. Buffer
Highly regarded as one of the best social media management tools around, Buffer boasts an impressive suite of features designed to make life easier for marketing teams. Whether you want to schedule content, track performance or manage all your pages in one place, the software offers you all of these options and more.
The publishing tool allows you to add all your posts to a queue for Buffer to publish at the designated times. It’s particularly useful for Instagram marketing because you can post directly to your page and be the first to leave a comment. Plus you can add on extra hashtags and external links (without being penalised for redirecting).
Research
6. BuzzSumo
The best way to find popular content? BuzzSumo. All you have to do is input your topic and this tool will search the web for all the top trending posts in that category. This is useful to find out what’s popular with your competitors, and you can also search by keywords. You can even filter content by type (guest posts, videos, infographics etc) and timeframe to see what’s been trending in the past week, the last 24 hours and so on.
7. Feedly
Keeping up with all the content on the internet is virtually impossible. Luckily, Feedly makes this process so much simpler by filtering content and aggregating your sources in one place. For example, if there are a few publishers or blogs you regularly check in on, you can add their RSS feeds to Feedly and keep all your reading material in one place. Not only does this save you having to trawl through website after website, it also means you have a wealth of content at your fingertips if you need inspiration for your own content.
8. Google Trends
An oldie but a goldie. If anyone’s searching for anything, you can be sure they’re using Google. That’s why Google Trends is such an important tool to use – this free website allows you to keep tabs on everything happening in the world and see what people are searching for. For brands, this means keeping up with your customers and discovering behavioural insights.
Plus, you can monitor keywords to see how popular they are with searchers, then how these numbers compare with other days, weeks, months etc. All of this information can be used to inform your marketing strategy and make sure your content is on trend.
Management
9. Monday
Monday.com is one of the latest and greatest marketing platforms to date. Promising a new way of working, Monday takes project management to a whole new level. Not only can you keep track of all your tasks and teams, but you can also review bugs, track performance, manage ads and much, much more.
Monday is a really intuitive and visual application, making it super user-friendly and easy to navigate. You can even integrate tools like Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox and many others. Perhaps the best part of Monday is that, considering all of the features and tools it offers, it’s very reasonably priced and affordable for most companies.
10. IFTTT
If integration is what you need, look no further than IFTTT. If This Then That (IFTTT) allows you to seamlessly combine tools to create ‘recipes’. These recipes or instructions essentially tell the application to send a tweet every time you post on Instagram, for example. By connecting and automating your favourite apps, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort with IFTTT – and the best part is you don’t have to pay a penny for it.
11. Hootsuite
One of the most widely used social media management tools available, Hootsuite offers a variety of useful features like publishing, monitoring and advertising tools. Whether you want to schedule content or measure engagement, Hootsuite provides a web-based solution that can fully integrate with platforms like Canva, Salesforce, Spotify etc. You can even take this on the go by using one of their mobile apps – all at a very reasonable cost.
12. Sprout Social
Social media software doesn’t get more powerful than this. Sprout Social makes it easy to reach more customers, engage your audience and analyse performance. You can review all your mentions across different platforms and keep track of your messages in one place, making it particularly useful if your customers often take to social media to get in touch. For those looking for an all-in-one social media marketing tool, be sure to check out Sprout Social.
13. Bitly
Bitly doesn’t do a huge amount, but it’s one tool you can’t go without. This tool essentially allows you to shorten any links to fit across all your channels. Gone are the days of typing out hundreds of characters and paragraph-long URLs – with Bitly you can make posts more practical and aesthetically pleasing with shorter links. This is handy if you have a character limit (e.g. Twitter) or you don’t have the space on a graphic to display the full URL. You can also track how many times that link has been clicked on, allowing you to see which content performs better with your audience.
Engagement
14. Kicksta
It’s no secret we all want more followers and likes. For marketing managers, these are two of the key metrics to measure how your content and social pages are performing. Using an advanced strategy and Artificial Intelligence technology, Kicksta promises to grow your following and increase engagement with your accounts and posts. This service is trusted by more than 100,000 agencies and influencers to deliver organic and steady growth. These are legitimate, authentic connections – no bots or fake followers – which don’t lead to removals or bans from Instagram like other platforms.
15. Brand24
A great solution to monitor what people are saying about your brand. This tool keeps track of your mentions across the internet to give you instant access to posts. Considering the number of customers that’ll check opinions before purchasing, this tool allows you to keep your reputation in check and protect your brand.
Brand24 also offers powerful hashtag search and analytics, so you can track your reach and the influencers using your name.
Advertising
16. AdRoll
They may not be your customers’ favourite part of a marketing campaign, but ads are essential for every company. This is why you need to include AdRoll in your toolkit – managing all your social media ads in one place and running campaigns from one singular platform. The application uses AI to make powerful predictions and attract targeted customers, powered by more than 15 years’ worth of data. This is truly a one-stop shop for anyone running ads on multiple social media channels and wanting to increase their sales and revenue.
17. Klear
Influencer marketing has expanded in recent years, and anyone who wants to take advantage should consider using Klear. This tool connects you with influencers across the globe in any category you can think of. Simply input your filters – audience demographics, location, number of followers and so on – and you’ll immediately discover a list of influencers meeting your needs.
Klear allows you to view a full breakdown of each influencer’s metrics so you can see if they’re the right fit for you. From there, you can use their integrated CRM to manage the campaign and collaborate with your team.
18. Social Flow
If you’re looking for a tool that can manage all your social media campaigns in one place AND support you with content creation and performance analytics, look no further. Social Flow boasts a whole host of features to help you with all your advertising needs. The smart tool can make suggestions on how to promote your ads depending on engagement stats – as well as use advanced targeting to help increase conversions and engagement.
You can even make the most of its very own ad builder to create ads quickly and easily.
Content creation
19. Tailwind
Devoted to handling visual content, and tailored specifically for platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. This tool uses an advanced system to manage content, automate publishing, schedule and clone posts, measure performance – and crucially, create top-quality content. It offers extensive insight into locating and creating marketing materials, as well as how and when to publish – allowing you to manage bulk uploads and multiple Pinterest boards.
What makes Tailwind super impressive is how intuitive the application is – it really takes away the thinking and does the hard work for you.
20. Quuu
A really exciting tool for all content creators. If you struggle for ideas or just don’t have the time to keep up with the latest trends, this service does it all for you.
Using advanced artificial intelligence, Quuu will update your social media channels with hand-curated content – entirely on autopilot. You can choose whether to publish automatically or manually, and pick how many content suggestions you want per day. After this, the tool will get to work finding the relevant blogs, pictures, videos and more for your platforms.
The bottom line
With so many tools available, there’s no excuse not to step up your social media game. These services offer easy, intuitive and affordable ways to save time and hassle – freeing you up to focus on the important stuff.
Hundreds of thousands of users trust these platforms to help them manage their accounts. Why not join them and see what all the fuss is about? Level up your social media with these handy tools and watch your content soar.
