Social media has transformed from a way to connect with marketing experts, friends and family online to a comprehensive source of news and information.
Cultivating a social media experience can be difficult for individuals — but for businesses, it presents a whole different set of challenges…
7 Social Media Marketing Tools For Your SMM Strategy:
For businesses, your social media marketing strategy doesn’t just stop at the social media site.
In order to maximize the potential of your channels in the state of social media today, there are additional social media marketing tools that can help simplify your process.
From content creation tools to link shorteners, to tools that track brand mentions — there’s significant value that each of these types of tools will bring to your company’s social media strategy.
Let’s make sure that you’re setting up your social media strategy for success! Keep reading to find out the most important social media marketing tools, and an example of each…
Visually plan your posts. Drag & drop everywhere in seconds ✨
Contents:
- Planning 🎨
- Content Calendar & Scheduler 🗓
- Mention Follower 👥
- Analytics 📊
- Social Media Advertising 📱
- URL Shortener 💻
- Chat Bot 🗣
Social Media Planning #1: Best time to post
Every great social media account has a strong strategy behind it. This can consist of your positioning, perspectives, types of content, cadence of posting and when to post.
Your social media presence should follow your brand messaging guidelines and posts should contain an image or video to grab the attention of targeted audiences relevant to them and the time.
Deciding what and when to post can be complex especially for accounts with an international audience. Using the Hopper HQ analytics tool to find your Best Time to Post on Instagram lets you analyse your followers, their times of activity and engagement in order to find the best time to post on social media.
These times can then be used within your time settings of your account in order to ensure a regular Make use of social media marketing tools to easily create graphics or engaging videos. These programs give anyone the right tools to become a novice designer!
Related: Check our latest blog to find out the best time to post on TikTok
Social Media Marketing Tool #2: Content Calendar & Scheduler
Once you’ve created content that you’re ready to share, it’s important to publish it on a regular basis to your followers. Going silent for periods of time on your social channels can lead to low engagement and a loss of followers.
Lucky for you, there are social media marketing tools that allow you to plan out your social media calendar and schedule times for posting in advance!
These scheduling tools give you a comprehensive view of the content you’re sharing. It’ll help you see if you’re posting too much similar content back to back, as well as make sure you have variety in your posts. Your followers want comprehensive but varying content from your accounts.
Content calendar tools and schedulers help you save time by planning in advance, and can allow for weekly, monthly, or even quarterly content planning for your team – your social media can run itself while you’re out of office!
Hopper HQ specialises in Instagram scheduling, but supports Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as well. You can plan all your posts in advance, and track consistency with their calendar view.
> Video, gallery & image posts
> Calendar, feed & grid preview
> Instagram, Facebook & Twitter
Identify what your business needs out of a social media management software and find the right fit for you.
Check out a full guide to scheduling Instagram posts here!
Also Read: Hootsuite Vs. Buffer Comparison
Social Media Marketing Tool #3: Mention Follower
In a dream world, every time someone mentioned your brand they’d tag your social handles. In reality, that’s not the case. That’s why there are social media marketing tools available that can track brand mentions on different social sites.
Tracking your mentions can help your company connect with potential users and answer customer service opportunities. You can batch off certain points of your day to answer these mentions. Additionally, by having visibility of all your mentions, you’ll have a better idea of public perception of your brand.
Social media monitoring tools, such as Mention, allow for you to identify trends, analyze your competitors mentions, and even receive daily updates of your social media mentions.
Social Media Marketing Tool #4: Analytics
When deciding how to move forward with your social media strategy, you’ll want to make sure that the posts you’re putting out are working for you.
An analytics tool will help you identify trends and performance. The data gathered can help build a case for your social media performance and growth.
Find the best time to post, track your follower growth, and understand what content works best with post and account analytics.
The data behind your social media accounts can help your profile and strategy moving forward. You’ll have insight into locations and other demographics of your followers, be able to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, and can help increase brand awareness.
You can also use analytics tools to identify areas where your competition is outranking you in search engine rankings. Using your social media channels, you can promote your new content and track how your ranking changes. Additionally, this data can help build a case for your social media performance and growth.
This feature may be built into one of the tools you’re already using. For example Hopper HQ Analytics is included for free with every Hopper HQ account. However, if you’re looking for an exclusive additional tool, consider using Buzzsumo, or another social media analytics tool to keep an eye on your posts, keyword rankings, and to help target your desired demographics.
Social Media Marketing Tool #5: Social Media Advertising
You can’t scroll through social media without seeing an advertisement every few posts. Social media advertising allows you to target your ideal audience through customizable formats.
The great part about social media advertising is that it allows you to modify your audience specifics through very specific demographics.
Social media advertising can help you expand your brand’s reach. By promoting content to those not following you already, you’ll be able to reach potential clients and work to convert them into paying customers. Make sure that your advertisements are compelling enough to drive traffic to your site and lead to a sale.
Social media advertising tools allow for you to compile all your social media advertising into one location. Tools such as Mailchimp or Hubspot allow you to create, purchase, and analyze the ad’s performance all in one spot.
Social Media Marketing Tool #6: URL Shortener
Although it may seem simple, a URL shortener is needed when promoting content from your website on your social media accounts.
Long URLs can take up valuable characters in your posts that can be used for descriptive words. Platforms like Twitter limit the amount of characters used, and there’s often not much value to a viewer seeing your entire URL.
This tool, although not directly related to social media, can help increase the shareability of your content by your followers.
URL shortener tools such as Bitly can shorten your links, allow for you to create custom branded URLs, and even track analytics such as link clicks through their site.
Social Media Marketing Tool #7: Chat Bot
Using chatbots for messenger marketing is currently an untapped marketing channel for marketers, but offers tons of opportunities, especially now that people are using messaging apps than social media.
With Facebook messenger marketing, engagement rates can get upto 80% open rates in the first hours of a campaign.
Using a chatbot builder like MobileMonkey, you can create messenger chatbots that will not only engage with your customers, but also helps a lot in sending relevant information about your brand: may it be promotional content or a newly published blog post.
Customers.ai (previously known as MobileMonkey) allows you to create intelligent messenger chatbots that will help get, qualify, and nurture your Facebook leads.
Approaching your social media strategy can feel like a daunting task! With the help of the software available, these social media marketing tools simplify each step of the process and can help optimize your profiles for the maximum benefit. Work smarter not harder when it comes to your social media marketing strategy and take use of these tools to grow and streamline your process!
Visually plan all your social channels. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook + LinkedIn.
Guest Author: Anastasia Masters
Anastasia is a Content Marketing Associate at G2.com. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in history. In her spare time, Anastasia enjoys eating her way through Chicago’s different neighborhoods, planning her next trip, and binging a new show on Netflix. You can follow her on Twitter at @anastasia_mm0.
