Social media is a powerful marketing tool if you know how to use it and make the best out of its features.
Most companies are already active on social media accounts and some of them are really successful at combining the content marketing and social media marketing into a powerful and effective marketing tool.
Almost 95% of today’s young audience is most likely interested in following a brand or a company on social media.
Moreover, 71% of the consumers who have had a good overall experience on social media with a company are likely to recommend it or its services to others.
Considering that there are more than 2,5 billion social media users right now and that their numbers increase with 1 million each day, we can only admit that social media makes one of the greatest channels for increasing awareness of your brand, reaching out to a wide audience and of course, communicating with all your fans and clients.
However, regardless of all these benefits, we need skills and knowledge in order to be successful as social media marketers.
There are many social media tools that you can rely on if you want to be successful and make the most out of your content marketing campaign.
Here are some of my picks, the tools I am using right now and that I would recommend to all of you, as the most powerful and useful tools available at the present.
1. Buffer
If you are looking for free social media tools, Buffer may be exactly what you need. Here you have a powerful app that allows you to manage up to 150 social media accounts and schedule your daily posts. The free option is somewhat limited but it should be enough if you are looking to promote a blog or a personal website. If you work in an agency, however, I suggest subscribing to a premium membership which starts at $15.
What can you do with Buffer?
Well, you can schedule your posts, manage all your social media accounts and analyze your performance, all from one place.
You can sign up with Buffer here.
2. Anchor
When you are searching for social media tools to increase your awareness and build up a solid brand, you need to think outside the box. And, social media, means more than sharing pictures of cats and dogs. Success in this area depends on how you manage to adapt to your audiences and when it comes to younger audiences, video and audio content is essential.
While video content requires valuable content, skills and good hardware, audio podcasts rely only on good diction and valuable information to share. You can record audio with your smartphone and share it on your social media accounts in just a few minutes.
What can you do with Anchor? You can start recording and creating your own podcasts, easily and without much of an effort.
You can do it online, on the main website or, you can download the dedicated apps for Android and iOS and work on your smartphone.
You can sign up with Anchor here.
3. Bannersnack
Social media marketing is more than a simple collection of posts and messages your fans can read and share. If you want to be successful, you need great visuals and maybe, even some ads. There are many tools that can help you create visual posts and ads. Bannersnack however, is my favorite. For once, this app is available online, so you won’t have to install any third party software on your hard drive. It’s a browser-based app so, it can be used on all devices, regardless of the operating system. In other words, you get a truly cross-platform app.
What can you do with Bannersnack? As the name suggests, the tools are indeed, intended for banner designers. However, banner design in today’s environment means more than traditional website advertising. You can use this tool to design banners for social media platforms and use them as regular posts.
You can sign up with Bannersnack here.
4. PixelMe
PixelMe is a tool every social media marketer should look into. Basically, the tool is a standard URL shortener.
What can you do with PixelMe? If you look under the surface, you’ll discover that PixelMe gives you more than the opportunity to make your links more visible and easy to understand. It allows you to track your social media visitors, to create branded URLs and increase your average clickthroughs.
You can sign up with PixelMe here.
5. Quuu
Social media marketing on autopilot. These are the words that describe best what Quuu is and why you should give it a try.
What can you do with Quuu? The app will allow you to save time and still, be a great social media marketer. How? Quuu experts curate all social media content and help you develop a solid strategy that can ensure your success when it comes to pleasing your already existing online community. Quuu will supercharge your feed and help you schedule effectively whatever gets to be published.
You can sign up for the service here.
6. Story Slicer
Video content is more popular than ever on social media. Now, with Facebook and Instagram Stories, you can even share short length video clips and make the most out of your content marketing strategy. However, if you want to be successful in this field, you need to really know what you are doing, arm yourself with patience and with the best tools for editing and cutting your videos.
What can you do with Story Slicer? This simple yet powerful app allows you to slice your long videos into smaller clips that you can later use to share stories on Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp. It will allow you to save precious time you would have otherwise spent on editing and cutting and focus on what’s important here: the content.
You can download Story Slicer from the AppStore here.
7. Planable
Do you have a lot of team members in your company who are all engaged in social media marketing? Are you spending a lot of time on approving, scheduling and reviewing their posts? Well, there is one app that will allow you to relax a bit and get everything done from one simple and intuitive interface.
The app is called Planable and it is available here.
8. Tagwin
Publishing valuable content on social media and actively engaging with your audience may prove to be quite fruitful for your marketing campaign. However, sometimes, you may need a little help and attract your audience with something different. The most direct way to engage them is through a contest.
What can you do with Tagwin? You can set up and publish your own contests on social media and even add some entry conditions such as the requirements to like, follow, comment or mention a post.
Access the app and sign up here.
9. Iconosquare
Are you actively engaged in social media marketing? You think that you need a better time management? Well, you are not the only one. Well, we all could use some extra time when we are actively engaged in creative work. Fortunately, there are ways to deal with such issues and one of the best comes from Iconosquare.
What can you do with Iconosquare? If you work with Facebook and Instagram, there is no better way to manage your conversations, track and moderate comments, schedule posts and plan your entire marketing campaign. Iconosquare is one of the best social media management tools available today.
You can sign up with Iconosquare here.
10. Giphy
Animated GIFs are a great source of fun since the dawn of the Internet. They were popular ten years ago and they remained so even now when the speed is not an issue anymore. We all have access to broadband connections, we are able to stream full HD videos and still, we consume GIF based content on social media and websites.
What is Giphy and why you need this app? If you are looking for a way to easily create an animated GIF, Giphy may be the answer to all your questions. It features a huge database of GIFs you can download right now and it allows you to create your own animations as well.
Access the tool and the database here.
11. MeetEdgar
If you want to be thorough and work with increased efficiency, you can pair two or more social media management tools. Or, you can use Edgar, a tool that may prove to be exactly what you need in order to improve your social media strategy.
What can you do with MeetEdgar? According to MeetEdgar founder and CEO Laura Roeder, the app was created for professional marketers as a mean to “manage their social media with more consistency and in less time“. Edgar is a full social media management tool that allows you to effectively manage everything that relates to your work, including the set up of an updates library and the means to repurpose content.
You can access MeetEdgar here.
12. Buzzsumo
As a social media marketer, I am sure you already know how important is to reach out to the targeted audiences and keep them engaged long enough to become fans. The easiest way to do so, if you don’t want to invest your entire budget on advertising campaigns, is via one or more influencers. Buzzsumo is the app that can help you find the right influencers for your brands based on keywords and social media activity.
What else can you do with Buzzsumo? Well, you can also check how your blogs or web pages are doing on social media, adapt your strategy according to actual data and study the competition as well.
You can access Buzzsumo here.
13. SocialBakers
The SocialBakers’ website gives you more than a social media management tool. In fact, here you can get access to a full suite of tools that can help you become better at what you are doing and work effectively towards increasing your pool of customers.
SocialBakers’ social media marketing suite includes really great features such as access to analytics, post analysis tools, social content inspiration tools and many more. The suite is AI-powered and allows you to manage effectively your social media strategy starting with the content creation and up to the measuring and benchmarking your influence.
You can sign up with SocialBakers here.
14. Mention
Do you need a real-time social media monitoring tool? Well, if your answer is “yes”, I may be having exactly what you were looking for.
The tool is called Mention and it’s a must-have for all social media marketers who are actively engaged in branding and awareness growth. You can use Mention to check on your competitors, for influencer marketing, competitive analysis or of course, for social media monitoring.
You can sign up for Mention here.
15. Hootsuite
We’ve finally reached the end of this journey and hopefully, you have already found the right social networking tools you were looking for in the first place. Before concluding, I am going to present you one more tool, a very popular social media management tool, Hootsuite.
What can you do with Hootsuite? Well, if you work with a team of marketers, there’s no better way to schedule posts, pre-approve content and measure your stats. You can use Hootsuite even if you work solo, as a great social media time management tool for scheduling your posts across your all social media accounts from the same interface.
You can sign up with Hootsuite here.
Social media marketing is effective when you know what you are doing and when you address the right audiences. It is a solid marketing strategy, but it takes time and a sustained effort in order to be effective. Besides the content creation part, you need the right social media management tools to help you be more effective and save precious time while undergoing a lucrative marketing strategy.
I hope the list presented throughout this article will answer some of your questions regarding the best social networking tools and finally, help you become a better, more organized social media marketer.
