Marketing through social media can be surprisingly complex. It seems easy at first glance: post anything, browse existing content, interact with people, and showcase your best-looking employees on Instagram. It sounds like a no-brainer for anyone who grew up with social media.
However, this approach won’t get you far if you want a return on your social media marketing investment. It might appear simple, but achieving effective social media marketing is nearly impossible without financial backing, a skilled team, and the right tools. This article will delve into these essential social media marketing tools, highlighting those that are user-friendly and constantly evolving to keep up with the ever-changing social media landscape. I’ve categorized them based on the key social media marketing tasks they automate:
- Managing social media marketing
- Monitoring social media
- Advertising on social media Here’s a sneak peek at all 12 social media marketing tools:
- IFTTT
- Buffer
- Quuu
- MeetEdgar
- Awario
- Mention
- Brandwatch
- Talkwalker
- Social Insider
- Facebook Ads Grader
- Qwaya
- Perfect Audience …but continue reading for deeper insights into how these tools function, their costs, and more!
Tools for Social Media Marketing: Streamlining Your Workflow and Scheduling
These social media management tools simplify and organize your workflow, reducing stress and ultimately making your efforts more impactful. Let’s explore a few of my top picks. 1. IFTTT
Imagine having your social media posts scheduled and content curation taken care of. What’s next? Automating the remaining steps in your workflow. That’s where IFTTT comes in. This tool, short for If This, Then That, connects various apps and services, automating multi-step tasks to your liking. For instance, whenever you publish a new blog post, you can create an IFTTT “recipe” to automatically generate a tweet and an Instagram post about it. If you find yourself constantly forgetting a specific task in your social media marketing workflow, despite reminders, give IFTTT a try. Price: free 2. Buffer
Buffer, a widely used scheduling tool, enables marketers to schedule posts across various social media platforms. You can either customize each post for different platforms or publish the same content everywhere. The Buffer Chrome extension allows you to add any interesting content you find online directly to your Buffer queue, adding a touch of spontaneity and creativity to content curation and sharing. This way, you can maintain a consistent posting schedule without the need for extensive pre-planning. Additionally, you can track link performance to identify the content resonating most with your audience. Price: freemium; paid plans from $15/mo 3. Quuu
Already using Buffer? Take simplification a step further with Quuu. This tool curates high-quality, relevant content and adds it directly to your Buffer queue, eliminating the effort of sourcing content yourself. This allows you to focus on sharing content you’re most passionate about, like your own blog posts and promotional material. Price: plans start at $15/mo 4. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar, another standout social media scheduling tool, enables you to breathe new life into old posts. It’s more valuable than it sounds. Even exceptional content can fade into obscurity. Recycling it ensures it reaches a new audience and maximizes your content’s potential. MeetEdgar allows you to categorize your posts, schedule content by category, and automatically republish older content from each category once your scheduled posts are exhausted. Price: $49/mo
Social Media Marketing Tools: Monitoring the Conversation
Organic social media marketing has two sides. The first revolves around your brand’s content - what you create, curate, share, and promote. The tools discussed above help streamline this aspect. The second side stems from your audience - their mentions of your brand, reviews, questions, praise, and complaints. While posting is crucial for building brand awareness, actively listening and responding to your audience is equally vital. Manually tracking every brand mention across social media is practically impossible, especially since people don’t always tag brands directly. That’s where social media monitoring tools like these come in: 1. Awario
Designed for solopreneurs and small businesses, Awario is a budget-friendly social media listening tool that doesn’t compromise on features. It tracks mentions of your brand or any keyword across major social media platforms, including influential ones like Reddit, categorizing them as positive, negative, or neutral. It also identifies influencers and provides comprehensive reports on those mentioning your brand. Price: starts at $29/mo 2. Mention Mention delivers real-time social media monitoring, allowing you to set up alerts for mentions of your brand, competitors, and industry. This tool enables you to view and respond to every like, tag, and mention directly within the app. You can also prioritize mentions by importance and use filters like source and language.
Mention caters to diverse needs with two tailored options: one for small businesses focusing on brand building and another for agencies managing client accounts. Price: starts at $29/month 3. Brandwatch
If you have a more substantial budget, Brandwatch might be the ideal fit. Its visually rich analytics are perfect for demonstrating the value of social media marketing, particularly for agencies presenting to clients. Brandwatch’s “Signals” feature sets it apart. You can configure alerts for specific keyword mentions from chosen authors, notifying you of significant data shifts like sudden spikes in mentions or negative sentiment. Price: starts at $800/mo 4. Talkwalker
Talkwalker, an enterprise-level social media marketing powerhouse, offers an extensive range of filters, sub-filters, and platform coverage, encompassing not just social media, news sites, blogs, and forums, but also broadcast, TV, and print. Its data reach is vast. By combining insights from Google Analytics, social media, sentiment analysis, and image recognition, Talkwalker provides a comprehensive understanding of your audience. Designed for marketing and PR teams, it facilitates seamless collaboration, allowing for efficient workflow management and data sharing across departments. Price: starts at $9,600/year 5. Socialinsider Socialinsider is an analytics and benchmarking tool specifically designed for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
With Socialinsider, you can gain insights into your competitors’ performance, optimize your clients’ social media strategies through advanced analytics and competitive benchmarking, track crucial social media KPIs, and create visually appealing, branded reports for your clients, complete with your logo and brand colors for a personalized touch. Save time and impress clients with data they haven’t encountered before. Price: Starts at $59/month or get a free 7-day trial.
Social Media Marketing Tools: Mastering Paid Advertising
Social media marketing can be deceptive. While organic reach and creativity seem sufficient at times, achieving success without a dedicated advertising budget is becoming increasingly challenging, particularly on platforms like Facebook. However, navigating Facebook Ads effectively requires the right tools. Here are some top contenders: 1. Facebook Ads Grader
While Facebook offers some ad analytics, it can be difficult to assess their effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. nexus-security’s Facebook Ads Grader bridges this gap by providing a comprehensive, free assessment of your Facebook Advertising performance. This report-based tool generates a detailed summary highlighting your strengths and weaknesses, comparing your best and worst-performing ads against competitors, analyzing your spending efficiency, target audience accuracy, and more. It even assesses if your campaigns, ad sets, and ads align with Facebook’s industry standards. Essentially, the Facebook Ads Grader helps you maximize your budget and optimize your campaigns for better results. Price: free 2. Qwaya
Qwaya is a valuable social media marketing tool for creating and managing Facebook and Instagram ads, making it a wise investment even before you allocate a budget for paid advertising on these platforms. Qwaya allows you to schedule ads, integrates analytics, and facilitates team collaboration. Most importantly, it empowers you with A/B testing capabilities. Testing is crucial in marketing to identify the most resonant message for your audience, and social media advertising is no exception. Qwaya enables you to test various elements, ensuring efficient budget allocation and optimal outcomes. Price: starts at $149/mo 3. Perfect Audience
Despite its outdated design, Perfect Audience is a powerful retargeting tool for Facebook advertising. Retargeting is a crucial element of any effective advertising strategy, and Perfect Audience simplifies the process, from setting up campaigns to analyzing results, providing insights into impressions served, click-through rates, conversions, and cost. This tool can be used for both web and mobile platforms, as well as Facebook. Price: charged on a CPM basis (more details here)