15 Social Media Marketing Tools You’d Be Crazy Not To Try
At AutoGrow, we love writing about marketing tools.
In the past, we’ve written about tools for AI, blogging, SaaS, automation, and more.
But we haven’t talked about social media marketing tools yet.
Managing your social media accounts can eat away a lot of time.
And who couldn’t use a little break?
Today, I want to talk about:
- 15 must-have tools for your social media marketing — that will help you boost brand awareness and your customer base.
- How each tool can be used to improve your social media strategy.
- And how using these tools will take a load off by saving you time and increasing productivity.
When it comes to social media marketing tools, there’s a near-endless supply of options.
But we’ve narrowed the list down while keeping it as diverse as possible so that you have all the features you’ll need.
Social Media Marketing Tool #1: ManyChat
What Is It?
According to research from Zendesk, 67% of consumers prefer to use self-service as opposed to speaking to a company representative.
And ManyChat allows you to accommodate this sought-after feature.
More specifically, ManyChat uses a chatbot to communicate with your audience on Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
With ManyChat, you can reach out to consumers in a personalized manner.
Automate marketing and sales efforts like generating leads, booking appointments, recovering abandoned carts, and more.
Social Media Marketing Tool #2: SocialPilot
What Is It?
There’s nothing like being organized and staying on track.
And the key to social media marketing success is sticking to a schedule.
SocialPilot is the central hub for all your social media calendar needs.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
Never again will you have to worry about forgetting to schedule an important post.
A great feature of SocialPilot that many other scheduling tools don’t have is bulk scheduling that includes images. And you know how people love their imagery.
You also won’t have to worry about running out of ideas for posts since SocialPilot has a content-curation feature. With it, you can see what kind of topics are trending in your industry.
Social Media Marketing Tool #3: Buffer
What Is It?
Buffer is an all-in-one platform where you plan and publish social media content.
Plus, it allows for full transparency so that team members can collaborate effortlessly.
Besides content creation, Buffer also has a feature for analytics tracking.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
You have access to everything you need for your social media game plan in one place.
From a landing page builder to tracking your results, you’re all set.
And you can keep an eye on what’s working and what needs some improvement.
Now, be mindful that to gain access to all of these features, you’ll need to sign up for a Team or Agency plan.
Social Media Marketing Tool #4: Scoop.it
What Is It?
Thought leadership is a pretty big deal in B2B sales.
And to a smaller degree, the same applies in B2C commerce too.
In fact, 80% of buyers want to see trustworthy data from brands, as per Edelman.
Actually, this is what we do with all of our content at AutoGrow (for example, the previous sentence).
Scoop.it is a tool for your team to identify relevant third-party research that will grab the attention of your audience.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
Gain the trust of your social media followers and attract new ones by sharing exciting content that uses authoritative sources of information.
You see, valuable content can’t simply be your opinion. No, you need to have proof that what you’re saying is true.
And Scoop.it is the place to be when it comes to finding data that your company can’t collect on its own.
By the way, you can also use Scoop.it to share content between colleagues. That way, they can post the content on their personal profiles for even more engagement.
Social Media Marketing Tool #5: Sprout Social
What Is It?
Now, there are a lot of features that Sprout Social offers.
And that’s probably why it has a 25.55% market share, according to Datanyze — taking first place in social media marketing software by a long shot.
But to summarize, Sprout Social lets you schedule all your social media posts, listen in on your audience, track performance, and deliver superior customer care.
But you can also use the platform to connect to your online store from Shopify.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
In social media, it’s crucial that you pay attention to what your customers are saying.
With Sprout Social, you’ll know how people feel about your brand and your industry. Using that insight, you can take action to change your strategy in a way that meets consumer preferences.
Sprout Social makes recommendations too, such as the best times to post.
With all of the messaging features, you’ll be able to automate your customer care with relevant messaging and build a community of loyal fans.
One last thing, Sprout Social allows for managers to delegate tasks to employees, making collaboration easier.
Social Media Marketing Tool #6: Bitly
What Is It?
Bitly allows you to manage all your shared links.
Not only can you shorten your URLs, you can track which links are performing the best.
Considering it’s used by big-name brands like Bose, BuzzFeed, and Gartner, it’s safe to say it’s a trustworthy social media marketing tool.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
By creating customized links, you can turn your URLs into branded content.
Instead of using a generic link, you can make your URL shorter and straight to the point.
See how much more visually pleasing the second link is? And yes, I know it’s an example from a text message, but the same concept will be applied to your social media posts.
In addition to the link customization, Bitly also gives you access to how well your links are performing. With that insight, you’ll have a hub for tracking what content resonates with users on each platform.
Sometimes, what works on one platform doesn’t work on another.
But by consistently keeping tabs on your reports, you can mix things up to improve engagement.
Social Media Marketing Tool #7: Brand24
What Is It?
Brand24 is a brand reputation management tool.
Monitor how social media users are interacting with your brand. For example, are people acting positively or negatively towards a piece of content?
Plus, you get in-app and email alerts for when people mention your brand. That way, you can reach out to people quickly.
In a world where, according to Sprout Social, 79% of consumers expect a response from you on social media within 24 hours and 40% expect a response within an hour, you have to be responsive.
What’s cool is that the text of brand mentions are color coded, based on sentiment.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
Get in front of potential PR blunders, discover new audiences, and track the performance of your content and hashtags.
Using the innovative Influencer Score feature, you’ll be shown social mentions with the greatest potential impact on your brand. Plus, you can find personalities that might be willing to vouch for you in the future.
For example, if there were 200 mentions of your brand one day, the mentions from users with greater social followings would be prioritized first, which will save you time.
Social Media Marketing Tool #8: Influential
What Is It?
Influencer marketing has an average ROI of 550%, according to Tomoson.
And Influential leverages an AI solution from IBM Watson to identify which influencers are best for a brand’s specific needs.
Basically, it takes all the guesswork out of the equation.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
You can’t just wing it when it comes to partnering up with social media influencers. If you do, you risk wasting your money.
With this social media marketing tool, you’ll be taking a data-driven approach that’s trusted by 60% of Fortune 500 companies.
Influential will dissect your social media audience, looking at factors like:
- Demographics
- Behavior
- Psychographics
- Interets
- Purchases
Influential gets to know your target audience inside and out — then finds influencers that will resonate the most with them.
Social Media Marketing Tool #9: Creatopy
What Is It?
Creatopy is a platform where you can automate your social media ad designs.
Choosing from a library of templates, you’ll save a great deal of time. Additionally, there are plenty of stock photos at your disposal too that you can use for your ads.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
Creatopy streamlines the process of designing your social media ads.
Since design templates are tailored for each platform and for each ad type, there’s really not much for you to do other than add your copy, images, and color palette.
With this tool, you can also share comments so that you can collaborate with team members or clients.
Social Media Marketing Tool #10: Tailwind
What Is It?
Similar to Creatopy, Tailwind is a tool to speed up the process of social media designs. More specifically, for posts on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook.
Tailwind will take your industry into account and provide some recommended design templates that are already optimized for each channel.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
By using Tailwind, there’s no reason to start from scratch for social media posts that use images.
Right at your fingertips, you have numerous templates to choose from.
Tailwind will remember your brand color palette and apply them to each design.
Besides helping you with designs, Tailwind finds optimal hashtags and lets you schedule your posts in advance.
Social Media Marketing Tool #11: Keyhole
What Is It?
Keyhole takes care of your social listening needs across multiple networks.
You’ll gain a deeper understanding of how consumers interact with and feel about your brand.
Keyhole has other features, such as predicting when a post is about to go viral, competitive analysis, hashtag monitoring, and more.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
With Keyhole, you unlock the mystery of how to engage with your social media audience.
When brand sentiment is dwindling, you’ll know why.
If there’s a new trend in your industry, you’ll be the first to learn about it.
And you’ll also discover the best times to post your content.
Social Media Marketing Tool #12: NinjaOutreach
What Is It?
NinjaOutreach’s dashboard makes it easy to see what influencers your business should reach out to.
You can search for Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube personalities by keywords, industry, and location.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
NinjaOutreach serves as an influencer lead-generation tool for you since it collects email addresses.
You can send an email campaign, including automated follow-ups, en masse. Doing so, you really save yourself a ton of time.
One more thing to note…NinjaOutreach tells you how much an influencer charges. That way, you don’t waste your energy reaching out to someone who is out of your budget.
Social Media Marketing Tool #13: Animoto
What Is It?
Are you new to creating videos? Then Animoto is the social media marketing tool you need.
With it, the video-creation process is as easy as can be with its drag-and-drop interface.
- And there are lots of templates, stock photos, and music to select from.
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How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
Video content is a huge deal in online marketing.
Recent survey data from Wyzowl shows that 73% of people prefer short videos when it comes to learning more about a product or service.
Although video marketing may sound time-consuming and too complex, Animoto simplifies the process.
Whether you’re promoting a webinar, sharing a testimonial, or showing off a new product, you’ll have high-quality video content that will look like a pro created it.
Social Media Marketing Tool #14: Agorapulse
What Is It?
Agorapulse doesn’t specialize in any one key area.
Instead, it’s more of a juggernaut hitting on all aspects of social media marketing.
You can use Agorapulse for managing mentions, publishing posts, listening to what people are saying about you, and reporting campaign results.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
By using Agorapulse, you’ll have mostly everything you need for social media management.
Your team can decide which content to push forward and which content to put to the side.
Community management is much more effective with Agorapulse since you have access to an inbox of social media comments for you to reply to.
Lastly, Agorapulse’s social listening capabilities will open doors to new business opportunities as it gauges what content users seek.
There’s also a mobile app to take things on the go.
Social Media Marketing Tool #15: LastPass
What Is It?
LastPass isn’t designed specifically for social media, but it’s perhaps the most important tool you could possess.
You see, LastPass creates and stores encrypted passwords.
At AutoGrow, we use LastPass to share credentials with internal team members in an uber secure way.
With the prevalence of cyberattacks these days, your social media logins need sophisticated passwords that can’t be stolen.
How Can This Tool Help Your Social Media Marketing?
Your social media accounts are the face of your business.
Imagine a troll taking ownership of your profiles? Your brand reputation would be in major trouble.
According to a recent report from Verizon, 80% of hacking breaches involve login credentials. And that can be through theft, negligence, or brute force.
But the encrypted passwords stored in LastPass make it extremely unlikely that your social media logins get exposed.
If you opt for a business account, you’ll also benefit from a feature that alerts you when your credentials may be compromised or on the dark web.
Conclusion
There are a lot of moving parts that go into social media marketing.
Fortunately, there are plenty of tools out there to help you manage your accounts.
Now, some tools specialize in a specific niche (like hashtag analysis), while others are an all-in-one package.
So you can either opt for an all-in-one platform or you can mix some of your favorite tools together.
Either way, you’ll have the right tech stack that helps you meet your business goals.
And if you need help choosing your tools and using them for your social media marketing campaigns, then you can partner up with AutoGrow today by signing up for a $7 trial.
Now before you go, which tool do you want to start using for social media first?
Let me know in the comments below.
Keep AutoGrowin’, stay focused.
