Social media platforms have provided the leverage to build brand popularity while also increasing conversion. With some social media networks registering over one billion active members and still counting, the power and essence of social media for business growth can only continue to increase. As of 2021, there were around 3.78 billion social media users worldwide and the number is ever growing.

With some of the best social media management tools, you can reach your target audience quickly and cost-effectively. Additionally, it will also help you build trust, brand authority, and authenticity.

In this article, we will discuss some of the best social media marketing tools that can provide the needed advantage.

What is a Social Media Marketing Tool?

Social media marketing tools help businesses to get the most out of the social media platforms (currently trending) like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.

For instance, if a business is concerned about what people are saying about its brand image, it can use social media tools to monitor social media conversations. There are specific tools for each type of task like advertising, analytics, engagement, etc.
 

Functions of Social Media Marketing Tools

When social media marketing tools were first used, they started with publishing. Businesses started sharing their content on social media to attract people and increase traffic and sales.

However, gradually, social media tools started being used in multiple ways. Some major functions social media tools for marketing can perform are:

• Engagement Tools

Social media engagement tools allow you to improve your brand’s visibility. They also allow you to streamline your social media management process through a variety of features like unifying messages from all networks, showing the history of users, notifying when a profile is tagged, etc.

• Publishing Tools

Any business’s most important goal is to create brand awareness and gain recognition. With correct publishing tools, you can publish relevant content online and generate conversation around your brand.

• Listening Tools

Listening to what consumers are saying about your brand can help you modify your engagement strategy. There are various spaces on social media platforms where people voice their opinions, for example, Twitter’s “What’s Happening” section.

With the right listening tools, you can identify the main points and cater to your customers in tandem with their needs.

• Reporting and Analytics Tools

If your data is not accurate, your strategy will also never be accurate. With the right reporting and analytics tools, you can track the performance of all your social networks, gather relevant data, along much more. 

Why are Social Media Marketing Tools Good for Your Business?

Statistics reveal that around 90% of consumers visit the brand’s website or app when they come across it on social media. This proves that social media marketing is good for your business. Some of its major advantages are:

–        Creating brand awareness

–        Driving traffic to your website

–        Generating leads

–        Building brand trust and loyalty

–        Improve search engine rankings

–        Enhance customer satisfaction

–        Gain marketplace insights
 

Best Social Media Marketing Tools

Now that you have a basic understanding of what social media marketing tools are, let’s take a look at some of the social media tools you will find very useful!

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media marketing tool that enables you to find, form, and deepen real connections with people. It is a collaborative platform that ensures faster, smarter, and efficient social communications.

Key Features

• It builds your community by helping you easily start, join, and maintain your social conversations.
• You can manage multiple social media profiles across multiple platforms.
• Want to give it a try? Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial period.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media marketing tool that can help you post your content easily on social networking platforms.

It has got amazing automation features as well.

It can publish all your posts automatically, according to your posting schedule. You can even post content while browsing the web using the Buffer browser extension.

Key Features

• It can save you a lot of time by allowing you to schedule your posts on social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
• You can review your posts on social media platforms and you can learn what changes can help your posts perform better.
• You can add up to 25 members from your team and work together.
• You can get a free trial for Buffer.

Hootsuite

Most companies have accounts on multiple social media platforms. Managing content publishing on multiple accounts can be very time-consuming.

Hootsuite is one of the best social media marketing tools that can help you manage all of your social media accounts from a single dashboard.

It has some automation features that can help you be more productive. Using this social media tool, you can easily find, schedule, and manage your social media content easily.

Key Features

• You can maintain a strong social media presence by scheduling hundreds of posts at once.
• Hootsuite secures all of your passwords, profiles, and login information.
• It can help you organize all of your content with ease. And it saves your content in the cloud, and it ensures that the approved content goes live at the scheduled dates and times. Which is great for improving your social media management.
• This social media tool comes with a 30-day free trial period.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a social media marketing tool that helps businesses and marketers manage their social accounts in the most efficient manner.

It’s a software solution that helps you build a meaningful and healthy relationship with your followers.

Top Features:

• Want to personalize your content for each social media platform? This tool can help you do that.
• It helps you schedule your posts in advance.
• You can reschedule your posts over and over.
• And you can monitor and respond to all of your social conversations in one place.
• This tool comes with a free trial.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a different kind of search engine, which helps you find the hottest content and search terms in your niche.

It enables you to see what the best performing content is and take inspiration from it. Even better, you can search for a topic or even keywords, and see what the best performing posts look like across categories, so your search can be super specific. You can even see who the influencers are that share successful content so you can target them and build relationships.

SocialOomph

A simpler, freemium social media manager that allows you to bulk upload updates and have them randomly distributed across different platforms.

Good for those just starting out who want to ‘dip a toe in the water’ before committing to paying for a professional tool. It has all the features of something like HootSuite, while also identifying influencers to contact and following accounts that have promise, as well as time-limited recurring updates, drip feed posting and more.

Meet Edgar

Meet Edgar is basically a scheduling social media marketing tool with the help of which you can recycle your old posts.

Key Features

• You can organize and schedule all of your posts by category
• Edgar will automatically go through your scheduled posts and content from each category and start recycling the older updates.
• You can save your time by adding the content to Edgar’s handy browser extension.
• And you can create a library of edits and updates. Edgar will update it in bulk.
• Can you use it for free? Yes, it offers a one-month free trial.

Tagboard

Tagboard is a social media marketing tool that allows users to aggregate data from major social media websites into impactful displays. They can then be embedded and re-displayed on various channels.

Their Tagboard Live tool allows you to see your posts live on a screen and provides layouts and tools to customize the display. It’s one of the best social media management tools out there.

Key Features

• Tagboard uses hashtags to search and collect public social media within seconds of being posted.
• Social advertising.
• Real-time notifications.
• Social media integrations and metrics.

Bitly

Bitly is used to shorten any URL so that it will fit nicely across every social media channel without eating up space and character counts. You can also have customized shortened URLs using the API.

Using a Bitly link allows you to track analytics for one post using one source, instead of having to collate your click-throughs from different portals.

Tailwind

Tailwind is a social media marketing tool for visual marketers and businesses who use Instagram and Pinterest. You can discover content, schedule posts, monitor conversations, amplify your reach, and analyze results using Tailwind.

Key Features:

• How can this tool save your time? It offers hashtag lists and many more shortcuts that are helpful.
• You can measure what’s working and what’s not.
• It helps you reach more of the right people by using best Instagram hashtags.
• And it is suitable for enterprises and affordable for small businesses.

SmarterQueue

SmarterQueue is a smart social media marketing tool that saves time and money in social media management while increasing engagement, traffic, and ultimately revenue.

Their intelligent automation uses queues and queue posting plans along with content categories, content variations, and evergreen recycling. Other than scheduling features, SmarterQueue also provides powerful analytics and content discovery and curation.

Key Features

• Intelligent social media scheduling and automation for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter
• Evergreen recycling to automatically repost content and boost engagement
• Content variations to tailor messaging based on social network and audience
• Powerful but easy-to-use analytics to make it easier to replicate success
•  

Pros

• Category-leading scheduling tool with intelligent scheduling and automation features
• Enables scheduling for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter
• Powerful and easy to use
• Low, flexible pricing to scale based on business needs

Cons

• No large enterprise-level collaboration features like workflows and assignments
• Does not enable scheduling for YouTube
• No unlimited posts – but high posting limits

DrumUp

This social media marketing tool helps businesses share great content with their social media followers so they can start a conversation with their target audience.

It is the best tool for those looking to reduce the time and effort that they invest in social media management.

Top Features:

• This software solution can cut down your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn management time by 90%.
• You can schedule your posts conveniently using web browser extensions.
• And you can measure social media engagement with DrumUp analytics.
• You can get started with DrumpUp for free. You can log in via your Twitter or Facebook profile.

Brand24

Brand24 is one of the best social media marketing tools to keep a tab on your brand’s reputation. It gives you insights into what people are saying online about your brand. This tool helps you track your competitors too.

Top Features:

• This software solution helps you identify sudden changes in the discussion volume chart to protect your business’ image.
• You can customize your alerts the way you want.
• What else can this tool do? It can export your data into PDF files, .xls files, and infographics.
• You can also filter your data by source, number of visits, and many other parameters.
• This social media tool comes with a 14-day free trial period.

Falcon.io

Falcon.io is a social media marketing tool with rich functionality. It offers you a SaaS-based platform for social media listening, engaging, publishing, measuring, and community management.

Key Features

• This software solution helps you create paid and organic posts for all your social networks in one content calendar.
• Falcon.io helps you build strong connections with your audience.
• You can merge your social data with CRM for a unique 360-degree view using it.
• And you can manage all your channels and moments.

SocialFlow

SocialFlow is an effective social media marketing tool that allows you to schedule your posts when your target audience is active. This way you can boost your engagement.

Key Features

• You just need to upload your content in the queue and this software solution will post the content automatically at the right times. This automation feature can save you a lot of time.
• It provides you with new advertising opportunities that extend your reach beyond existing audiences.
• But how does it help you drive traffic and engagement? It helps you understand the constant changes in consumers’ interests so that you can optimize your social content to drive maximum traffic and engagement.

Oktopost

Oktopost is a social media marketing tool that enables B2B enterprises to manage, monitor, and measure their social media activities. It’s the best software solution for enterprises that are looking for something that is easy to use.

Key Features

• What makes this platform unique? It is the only social media marketing tool that is uniquely designed for B2B enterprises.
• Oktopost provides you with detailed analytics and reports and helps you track conversations about you on social media.
• This software solution helps you post better content and boost your engagement with the content curation feature.

Cool Tabs

Cool Tabs is a social media marketing tool that manages your marketing campaigns on social networks and on your website. It can help you get the best out of your marketing efforts.

Key Features

• You can easily generate new leads for your business through website quizzes, promotions, and competitions.
• Users can monitor their social networks and curate content in real-time.
• What’s more, you ask? You can get segmented data from your audience and integrate it with your CRM.
• The best part is that this software solution comes with a 7-day free trial period.

Sendible

Are you an agency handling social media marketing for multiple clients?

Sendible is one of the best social media marketing tools for agencies who want to manage social media for multiple clients.

Key Features

• It allows businesses to manage social media marketing more effectively and to better understand their ROI.
• Their social media management and marketing tool can easily measure the productivity of your social media accounts and email campaigns.
• And you can create social media reports in minutes for your clients with pre-designed templates.
• Their social media listening tool helps you to prioritize your replies to your audience.
• This software solution comes with a free trial period.

Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a four-in-one social media marketing tool that can help you with social engagement, social advocacy, customer care, and social advertising.

Key Features

• You can use Sprinklr Insights to monitor your competition, track audience engagement, market trends, and measure sentiments.
• This software solution gathers reporting metrics from multiple channels to help you find out the effectiveness of your content and the ROI.
• You can also respond to the conversations happening around your brand across multiple social media platforms. It’s a great feature that can help you boost your engagement rate.

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is a useful social media marketing tool of the list that businesses can exclusively use with Twitter.

If you have a strong presence on Twitter and run campaigns on it, then this tool is a must-have for you to boost your engagement and visibility.

Key Features

• You can search and connect with the right people to grow your brand.
• Then you can compare Twitter accounts to find similarities and identify new influencers.
• Don’t know whom to follow? This social media management tool also helps you analyze your Twitter audience and based on such analysis, it suggests people you should follow. This helps you grow your followers.

Inflact

Inflact is a tried-and-tested social media marketing tool, mainly for Instagram promotion. It is an all-in-one toolkit for influencers, brands, and digital marketers.

Using this tool, you can grow your followers, curate content, and analyze your competitors.

Key Features

• Using the Instagram Direct Module, you can set auto-replies based on trigger words, categorize clients by labels, and manage bulk messaging.
• Inflact’s scheduling module enables you to schedule feed posts, images, Carousels, and Stories.
• Their hashtag generator contains over 12 million hashtags that are regularly updated.
• Using their downloading feature, you can save all types of content from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter videos for re-use.
• Through their Instagram Search option, you can find influencers, competitors, and partners across different niches.
• Profile Analyzer is a free service that lets you get insights about any public account on Instagram, and monitor their activity and top content.

Final Thoughts

Social media marketing tools are very useful for promoting your business on social platforms. These tools can help you create content, automate posting, and get more engagement.

The reward will be increased traffic which could impact on your search engine ranking, click through rates and sales.