Julia Miashkova — June 11, 2020 Social media marketing is all about resources. One part would be human capital — the masterminds behind marketing moves. The other would be technology — powerful tools built to carry the massive social media load for marketers of every caliber.
Social media marketing has never been easy because it’s not a static field. All things changing, coming, and going, you need solid toolkits to rely on, every step of the way. Research and analytics, content curation, scheduling and publishing, with effective visuals to complement it all — there’s an arsenal of SMM tools to be employed.
Let’s take a look at some of the best social media marketing toolkit options used by businesses of all shapes and sizes. There’s very likely a perfect match for you somewhere on the list.
1. Awario: social media listening and analytics
Before you set off to win the SMM game, you need to know what kind of environment you’re operating in. This goes both for your competitors and customers, as well as for other important parties such as mass media and influencers. Let’s see how you can nail all of this research with social media listening.
Social media listening is the process of tracking and analyzing every mention of a brand, product, name, or any keyword online. All of this is done with social listening tools designed to scrape the entire Internet, for every mention of whatever you want to track. A perfect example of such technology is Awario, and we’ll now look at the use cases it covers.
- Brand monitoring/reputation management — check what’s being said about your brand online and manage reputation crises like a pro;
- Competitor intel/market research — uncover competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to reverse-engineer marketing strategies;
- Campaign monitoring/user engagement — keep close tabs on your marketing campaigns and reply to brand mentions as they appear;
- Mass media monitoring/influencer marketing — discover the biggest names talking about your industry and win brand allies.
Awario processes tons of social listening data and delivers marketing insights as often as you prefer: via daily/weekly emails or real-time notifications on Slack.
Pricing: Starter is $ 29/mo, Pro is $ 89/mo, and Enterprise is $ 299/mo. Annual plans save you 2 months. A 7-day free trial is available.
Similar tools to try: Brandwatch for advanced audience insights, Mention for competition intel, Keyhole for AI-powered hashtag analytics, Sprout Social for team collaboration.
2. Hootsuite: content curation
Content curation is all about making sure you never run out of content ideas, post consistently to all your social media platforms, and don’t go crazy over it. Content curation tools make this a reality, so let’s take a closer look at one of the best.
Hootsuite is a 360° solution for content curation. It offers several approaches to content sourcing, which enables you to post and re-post top-performing content effortlessly, covering all of your social profiles.
- Content streams — follow hashtags, locations, and keywords through personalized streams and share top-performing posts;
- Content library — organize your posting as a team, with the option to pre-approve content for instant posting later on;
- Instant scheduling — use Hootlet extension to draft and schedule posts as you’re browsing the web;
- Cloud content — connect a cloud file service of your choice as accessible storage of content ideas that you can jump to from your Dashboard;
- Content calendar — explore the tool’s interactive content planner to overview scheduled posts, streamline approvals, and collaborate with your team.
Pricing: billed yearly, the Professional plan is $ 19/mo, Team is $ 99/mo, Business is $ 599/mo, and Enterprise is available upon request. A 30-day free trial is also available.
Similar tools to try: Crowdfire for smooth content coordination, MavSocial for user-generated content, SmarterQueue for recycling evergreen content, Sendible for publishing and analytics.
3. Canva: professional designs
Social media is very much a visual medium. Even with thoughtfully curated content on hand, you need compelling visuals to power it. On top of that, depending on the social platform you’re targeting, visuals need to be adjusted and diversified. Luckily, all of this can be nailed with design tools.
Canva is a tried and tested ally of every content creator without much time or design training. It’s a freemium graphic design app relying on drag-and-drop functionality that makes creating professional-looking images a breeze.
- Templates library — access Canva’s templates library and build upon the designs broken into categories;
- Logo maker — create or re-think your logo to make sure your visuals are branded consistently;
- YouTube thumbnails — explore Canva-made thumbnails to make clickable and high-performing videos;
- Facebook Apps — boost your Facebook apps with ready-made designs or use them as templates to create unique visuals.
Pricing: the Free plan is forever free, Pro is $ 9.95/mo, Enterprise is $ 30/mo (billed yearly). A 30-day free trial (paid plans) is available.
Similar tools to try: Stencil for stock images, Animoto for drag-and-drop video making,
Typito for text videos, InVideo for article-to-video transformations.
4. BuzzSumo: advanced social media management
The beauty of social media marketing tools is their versatility. Among the multiple perks of social media tools available today are digital PR, link building, leads generation, and sales data. On top of planning, collaboration, and posting features, social media management tools offer in-depth performance analytics and audience insights. Let’s now review one of the best toolkits for advanced social media management.
BuzzSumo is a social media management tool that covers media monitoring, competitor intelligence, influencer marketing, and even crisis management.
- Trends discovery — access real-time results for trending topics, apply geographic filtering, and predict content virality;
- Digital PR — boost your outreach strategy by exploring top-performing headlines and collaborating with the biggest publishers;
- Competitor intel — analyze competitor content by keeping tabs on the main performance metrics of your competition;
- Crisis alerting — create monitoring alerts for brands and follow their reputation online;
- Video marketing — find video ideas and experiment with formats to make sure your videos are a perfect fit for different platforms and audiences.
Pricing: Pro is $ 99/mo, Plus is $ 179/mo, Large is $ 299/mo, and Enterprise is $ 499+/mo. All annual plans save you 20%.
Similar tools to try: Buffer for customer support intel, SocialBee for lead generation, eClincher for growing engagement, SumAll for ad and sales data.
Final thoughts
Social media marketing is challenging and demanding, yet it offers a slew of gains and valuable insights to everyone putting enough effort and resources into it. I hope my list of SMM tools navigates you towards better and more reliable resources for your social media marketing activities and campaigns.
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