10 Tools to Make Your Social Media Strategy Pop

Social media has not only grown in the last decade, but is the one marketing channel the majority of your audience spends time on. It may not be all on the same platform, but utilizing social media to get in front of your targets is becoming increasingly important.

At this point, there is no reason to not include social media in your marketing strategy. It provides you an opportunity to build up a strong following, increase your brand's exposure and awareness, boost sales, and even improve customer relations.

Luckily there are plenty of tools out there that can help you with your social media strategy.

Five benefits of marketing on social media

In today’s world, social media is no longer an option but a necessity that every business needs to consider. Read on to the benefits that social media can provide for your brand.

1. It can make your brand stand out

One thing you'll notice about social media is how people tend to favor those brands or companies they currently use. They follow them, like their updates, and sometimes interact with what they post. Having a good amount of followers on social media makes your brand appear more reliable, which is always beneficial to businesses.

To stand out and build brand awareness, you need to share good content that tell a good story through creative captions and illustrations. This way, you will be able to catch the attention of your target and potential customers, which can, later on, turn into your loyal brand followers and users.

2. Social media can help you sell more products or services

There are many ways that social media can help improve the sale of goods and services of your brand. Companies with accounts on social media tend to have their products bought more often than those without it because they are more visible to the customers. By just being present online, you can start meaningful and personal conversations with your target market, which helps you build credibility and generate and nurture leads.

Constant communication with your customers can result in them trusting your products and services, and it creates a parasocial relationship between and entity and an end user. The more you interact with them, the more they feel heard, resulting in them sharing what they want, which can lead to more insights for new opportunities.

3. Allows you to promote even with a small budget

When tracking your marketing expenses, it's important to note that social media advertising is likely one of the cheaper ways to promote your business.

You should track the metrics of your social media spend so you will know which kind of content is working for your brand and which ads you need to pivot on. Some social media platforms, like Pinterest, even offer free consultation opportunities with their staff to help you investigate your existing campaigns and tweak them to fit the needs of your audience.

4. Gives you the power to measure your marketing efforts

Social media platforms and management tools give you a view of your key performance indicators (KPIs). By looking at the back end, you will know which online campaigns are doing well and which ones are not. Constant optimization is key to a successful social media strategy, so using data to your advantage to understand what's working is important to progress.

5. Makes you learn the buying patterns and behavior of your target customers

You can use tools designed for social listening to know what people are saying about your brand and the general perception and sentiment. This allows you to improve your brand presence, or even develop new products and services that can cater to their needs based on what discussions are happening online.

Best social media marketing tools for every marketer

1. Buffer

Buffer has browser extensions and a mobile app. It allows you to post on social media channels like Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn. With Buffer, you can schedule your posts in advance so don't have to be online when business hours are over. Buffer can help you set up a posting schedule on your social media accounts. After adding your chosen content and material to your Buffer queue, it will be published at the time that you have designated. You also get detailed analytics for all your posts so you can measure their performance and fine-tune it for better results.

Buffer offers a free trial for those individuals who are just starting and need basic publishing tools and landing page builders. As for its paid packages, the cost ranges from as low as $5 per month to $100 a month.

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an established name for social media management tools. It has both online and mobile versions for iOS and Android devices. What sets Hootsuite apart from its rivals is that it allows you to manage up to 10 different accounts across 20+ popular social media channels. It has an easy-to-use dashboard that lets you see all your accounts at once to do posting quickly without switching tabs.

Hootsuite also has a powerful analytics engine, so you have the option to track your social media campaigns. The good thing about this tool is that it's designed from the ground up for professionals rather than being created as a side-project.

It offers a free trial for new users. As for its paid version for professionals, the price starts from as low as $49 / month.

3. Optinmonster

This is a powerful lead generation tool that allows you to engage with your visitors in real-time. It features a drag-and-drop template and has everything you need, from growing your mailing list to recovering carts that the shoppers left.

As part of your social media campaign, you can use its new chatbot feature and connect it to your Facebook messenger. This will make it easier for you to communicate to shoppers who prefer messenger to other forms of communication.

Its packages start from as low as $9/month to $49 a month.

4. SharedCount

This is another app for marketers looking for accurate social media metrics since it's packed with data on more than 500 million posts. This tool will give you detailed statistics like total tweets, likes, shares and retweets of links shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Like some other apps mentioned in this list, SharedCount also has its own browser plugin that lets you see traffic stats without leaving the page you're currently on.

Personal packages cost $40/month, while professional and enterprise packages are at $160/month and $640/month, respectively.

5. MeetEdgar

This automation-focused social media management app can be used for multiple purposes. You can use it to distribute your content, or you can make it share your best posts repeatedly without having to lift a finger. Edgar will do the rest of the work for you by posting at optimal times when internet traffic is high. It also has an excellent algorithm for choosing the right time to post, depending on what works best with your target audience.

To get the most out of this app, you need to create a content library which you can do in minutes. Edgar has its own search engine, so it's super easy to find your best posts for distribution. MeetEdgar has no free trial but provides a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you don't have much to lose if you want to try it before buying it.

6. Animoto

This tool helps you produce videos using video clips, photos, and music. You can also create video slideshows and customized presentations. It allows you to choose the orientation of your video – either square, landscape or vertical. You won’t worry even if you need to start from scratch because it has an easy-to-use template just to upload the photos and the clips.

Animoto also allows you to customize your videos’ fonts, colors, and transitions and also gives you access to licensed songs from their music library.

It offers a free plan, but it costs $8/month for unbranded videos and $39/month for branded videos for its pain packages.

7. AgoraPulse

This social media management tool aims to help businesses and agencies manage their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Youtube activities better. It offers an easy-to-use solution with powerful features like intuitive publishing, insightful analytics, and social listening.

Apart from its basic scheduling features, you can also hold some contests, quizzes, and promotions through this tool. Moreover, it gives you a view of your social media marketing campaign and how it is doing versus your competitor.

Its Pro plan costs $79 / month, white it costs $159/month to avail of its Premium plan.

8. Tailwind

With the help of this tool, you can transform your simple photos into beautiful social media posts with just one click. With Tailwind, you can apply your fonts, colors, and logo to your every design to make it look more customized for your brand’s social media post.

Tailwind already has thousands of layout options, pre-curated color palettes, and one-click edits that can definitely reduce your lay-outing time. What’s also good with Tailwind is that every design that you create can be optimized to different networks and formats.

To experience the Pro features of Tailwind, it costs $9.99/month. For those who want to try their Advanced plan, it costs $19.99/month.

9. Commun.it

It is a tool that helps in managing your relationships with influential people within your niche and beyond by giving them shoutouts and helping them in return in subtle ways like retweeting their posts etc. It's great for social media marketers because it automatically creates a list of potential partners you can work with.

The best part about Commun.it is that all the accounts on its network are verified, so you don't have to worry about spam users, bots or anything like that. It lets you communicate with influencers by adding them on Facebook, Linkedin and other networks as soon as they're added to your account. Its free plan gives you access to 10 community members per month, which means only 10 contacts every 30 days.

However, if this is not enough, you can always upgrade to one of its paid plans, which costs from as low as $19.99/month up to 117.99/month.

Takeaway

Social media is an incredible platform for improving a company's image. It also gives businesses beneficial marketing opportunities. To become a social media marketer, the only thing you may need to keep in mind is the time commitment. Social media can be a nuisance if you don't have the time to maintain it, so that's something you'll have to work around by delegating things, finding someone else to do it for you, or trying some social media marketing tools available online.