Whatever your thoughts may be on social media, you simply cannot deny the fact that, from a business perspective, it is one of the most beneficial and rewarding tools for any business to have at its disposal. With that, the use of social media tools is forming a critical part of social media managers to maintain sanity in their day  to day tasks.

The great thing about social media, is the fact that it has gone from strength to strength as it continues to grow and evolve, and as there are currently so many different outlets currently available, now is an extremely exciting time to be a business owner.

In the early stages, we had pages such as Facebook, and Twitter, but as the years went by, more and more pages began appearing, and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In order for you to get the jump on your competitors, however, you will need to ensure you embrace technology and social media, and that you welcome it into your business with open arms.

To stay relevant, you need to stay ahead, so here’s a look at several social media tools for you to make use of in 2016/17.

1. Buffer App

Buffer is a social media tool currently being used by more than 3 million people, and that number is going to continue to grow on a daily basis. For people with multiple social media accounts, and, in terms of business strategies, the more the better, Buffer is designed to make posting across these accounts a whole lot easier.

Buffer functions as a scheduling tool, so you can make a scheduling time for when your posts go live on various social media platforms. For example, if you are based in the UK, but have a lot of US customers, what with various time differences, your peak times and theirs, will be different.

With Buffer, you can schedule a post to go live at a time when it is most likely to be viewed by the most US individuals. It allows you to choose which posts go live on which sites, and at which times, making your posting schedule a whole lot simpler.

2. Meet Edgar

Edgar, despite the slightly unusual, albeit pretty cool, name, is marketed as being a social media queue with the ability to fill itself.

Edgar is a great tool because it allows the users to relocate old posts and content that may have been lost in translation, and, for one reason or another, not have been viewed by as many people as you may have hoped.

Edgar allows posts to be categorized, it can be used as a scheduling tool, similar to Buffer, and it saves a whole heap of time in the process, so you can focus on running your business.

3. Brand 24

Brand 24 is a great tool for people looking to get an understanding about what people have to say about their brand/company online, and what’s more, all of this is achieved in real time.

This means you can hear, or should that be read, what people have to say about your company, good and bad. What’s more, it allows you to understand what people are saying about your competitors as well.

Brand 24 is great because it allows you to respond to comments, good and bad, and to hopefully get a better insight into your potential customers, and interact with them in the process.

4. Nuzzel

Nuzzel functions not only as an iOS app, but also as a web-based app, and it allows you to get some better organisation on stories which have been shared by your Twitter and Facebook friends.

The info is then split into simple-to-read links which allow you to get some better organisation of your newsfeeds, and get a better insight into your friends. Nuzzel allows you to access stories which have been shared by friends of friends, so you can get a more comprehensive understanding of your target audience and demographic.

5. Nuvi

Nuvi functions as an analytics tool, which helps you to delve deeper into Facebook conversations and to see things which other people cannot see.

You can monitor, analyze, report, and publish content, allowing you to find out what people have to say about your business, and how they may be interacting with your page online. Nuvi provides real-time data visualisations which will help to enhance and guide your overall decision-making process.

6. Sendible

Finally, last on our list we have Sendible. Sendible is a social media tool which allows users to organize virtually all aspects of their social media accounts much easier than previously before.

It allows you to publish content on multiple social networks, it allows you to schedule posts in order for them to achieve optimal engagement, it allows you to manage multiple clients and users, and it provides the user with the ability to place all comments and posts into one dashboard, for better organization, analysis, and engagement.

Have you used any of the tools above? Let us know any favourite’s that didn’t make this (like, totally comprehensive) list in the comments.