Social Media Tools Guide: Streamline Your Best Strategy

Social media tools are essential components in digital marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes and industries. These tools often serve as platforms enabling brands to connect with their customers; grow brand awareness; and drive sales. 

With over 4 billion social media users globally, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter offer immense opportunities to connect with target audiences. However, managing a successful social media presence requires relying on the right social media tools and strategies.

In this post, we’ll be sharing our top picks for the best social media tools currently available. Whether you’re an entrepreneur managing your own social media, or a marketing professional looking for software to make online engagement easier, this post will highlight some of the most practical social media tools on the market right now.

From social media management tools that simplify organising and scheduling content, to data-driven social media analytics tools that provide actionable insights – we’ll be covering the key categories of social media tools businesses should consider. You’ll learn about versatile free social media tools that offer basic functionalities, as well as more advanced paid social media tools worth investing in if you want powerful capabilities.

By the end, you’ll have a better understanding of which social media tools can help you effectively manage multi-channel social media activities and gain more value from your social media efforts. Whether free or paid, the social media tools highlighted will equip you with greater control and direction when it comes to growing your business’s social presence.

Top Free Social Media Management Tools

When it comes to social media tools, one of the key categories brands look for are platforms to simplify social media management. Handling multiple social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (X) can become overwhelming without the right solutions. The good news is that  there are some robust free social media tools available now that offer centralised publishing and scheduling, making it easy to manage your social media profiles.

Free Social Media Management Platforms

For businesses hoping to organise their social media efforts, free management tools like Hootsuite and Buffer offer as great entry-level social media tools. These free social media tools allow you to integrate profiles from top networks and schedule posts in advance.

Hootsuite, one of the most popular free social media tools, enables users to manage several social media accounts from a single dashboard. Hootsuite offers a variety of services including scheduling and engagement tracking.

Buffer, on the other hand, simplifies the process of scheduling posts to multiple social media platforms. This platform also offers a variety of analytics tools to help businesses track social media performance. 

For businesses that are looking for a more comprehensive free social media tool, Zoho Social is a good option. This social media management tool offers all the features that Hootsuite and Buffer provide, plus additional ones such as paid social media advertising and team collaboration tools.

So for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs managing their own social media, tools such as those mentioned above offer a unified platform to simplify social media marketing efforts without the need to log in to each platform separately.

While the advanced analytics and account management capabilities will be limited, they offer a central dashboard to access core controls when getting started with social media tools.

Best Social Media Tools for Scheduling Content

When it comes to social media tools, having an effective scheduling solution is essential for streamlining your workflow. Rather than manually posting content every day, scheduling tools allow you to plan and queue social media content in advance. This saves valuable time and enables more consistent posting across your channels. 

Social Media Scheduling Platforms

A few of the top-rated scheduling tools integrated with key social platforms include Later, Sendible, Hootsuite, and Buffer.

Later has become increasingly adopted by businesses as a social media scheduling tool, specifically designed for social media platforms Instagram and Pinterest. Later offers several features, such as the ability to schedule posts; add comments and hashtags; and track social media performance.

Sendible is another option which supports a wider range of platforms including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The features are relatively similar to Later, however, this tool also offers social media listening and team collaboration. 

These tools make planning and scheduling social posts incredibly simple, allow you to bulk upload image/video content, and provide analytics on performance. The ability to visually plan and preview scheduled posts gives you greater control compared to manual posting.

Paid versions of Buffer and Hootsuite provide more advanced features like suggested best posting times, team member permissions and integration with RSS feeds or Google Analytics. However, all have free tiers suitable for solopreneurs and small business owners getting started. 

Overall, social media scheduling tools are essential for businesses that want to effectively manage their social media presence. These social media tools save you time, improve workflow, and enable a more consistent and engaging social media presence.

Social Media Analytics Tools

When it comes to evaluating your social media efforts, having access to insightful analytics is key. These social media tools enable businesses to track and measure their social media performance. This is why utilising social media tools with analytics capabilities is highly recommended for brands investing time and resources into growing their social presence. 

Social Media Analytics Platforms

Most social platforms offer their own native analytics, for instance Instagram Insights and Facebook Insights. These provide fundamentals like engagement rates, reach and follower demographics. However, for more sophisticated tracking of performance across multiple networks, dedicated social media analytics tools are extremely valuable.

Popular analytics focused social media tools include Sprout Social, Raven Tools, Quintly and Hootsuite. These tools compile insightful performance statistics beyond the native analytics offered on social platforms. 

Benefits of Social Media Analytics Platforms

Social media analytics tools can help businesses in a multitude of ways, including:

• Understand their audience: social media analytics enable businesses to better understand their target audience, including their demographics, interests, and online behaviour.
• Measure the effectiveness of social media campaigns: social media analytics tools can help businesses to measure the effectiveness of their social media campaigns and content through metrics like reach, engagement, and lead generation.
• Make data-driven decisions: Social media analytics tools can help businesses to make data-driven decisions about their social media strategy. By tracking performance, businesses can identify trends and patterns that can be used to make informed decisions about their content, timing and targeting.

The beauty of analytics oriented social media tools is they take the guess-work out of optimising social strategies. You can easily identify growth opportunities and shape future initiatives based on hard audience insights.

Paid Tools Worth the Investment

Whilst free social media tools provide a solid starting point for basic management, scheduling and analytics – paid upgrades unlock more advanced capabilities. For brands managing multiple social profiles, investing in premium social media tools is worth considering. 

All-in-one platforms like Agorapulse, Sprout Social and Sendible represent powerful paid tools that combine sophisticated management, analytics and engagement features beyond most free versions.

The main appeal of these paid social media tools is they centralise key tasks to boost productivity. Features like collaborating with team members;  monitoring brand mentions across the web; surveying customer sentiment; running dedicated ad campaigns; and tracking performance through customisable dashboards can save substantial time and effort. Packages are available based on the number of user seats and social accounts needed. Most also offer free trials which enables businesses to experience the platform and features before committing to the premium option.

While the subscription fees might seem an added expense, the sheer efficiency gains and audience insights unlocked by paid all-inclusive social media tools make the costs justifiable for brands investing in social media marketing.

Key Takeaways

Social media tools play an invaluable role when it comes to managing multi-channel marketing strategies on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Whether you’re a startup on a limited budget or an agency managing countless social profiles, the right social media tools provide structure and insight.

There are a multitude of options depending on your business needs and resources, from user-friendly entry-level options to advanced functionality platforms. Social media tools’ main purpose is to amplify efforts and streamline workflows. Incorporating the right tools enable you to work smarter – scheduling more efficiently and optimising your content based on hard data.

With the wide range of social media tools available today, there are many options to make your social media management more seamless and efficient whilst fitting your business’ budget and resource requirements.

If you found this article useful, check out our other blog posts on social media tools: Social Media Monitoring Tools: The Essential Toolkit for Every Business | A Guide to 10 Most Used Social Media Platforms and Effective Marketing Tactics | Why Use Social Media? Tips to Create Engaging Content That Converts