12 Best Social Media Management Tools

There is a world of social media tools available today. Some, are created for enterprise businesses and others for small businesses. Some are multi-purpose and others have a singular purpose, designed for specific platforms.

With so much choice (and functionality) it’s hard to know where to start, and which tools are right for your business.

But, don’t worry, in this post, we break down 12 of the most popular social media platforms and highlight the businesses and purposes they are best suited for.

So, if you’re ready let’s get started.

1. Tailor Social

The first tool on our list is our own Tailor Social. And although the new kid on the block, Tailor Social is packed with experience and provides everything you need to manage and grow your business on social media.

Tailor Social is the complete social media marketing tool. Ideal for solopreneurs and small to medium-sized businesses.

You can schedule your posts and have them automatically posted to the major social platforms. You can also design beautiful social posts for more engaging images.

In addition to scheduling and designing posts, Tailor Social has a powerful content discovery engine that finds content related to your audience and industry; you can then quickly add this content to your schedule.

Tailor social also takes the guesswork out of your social strategy by providing actionable analytics that let you know what content your audience is engaging with, allowing you to do more of what works.

To take Tailor Social for a test drive, you can sign-up for a no strings 7-day trial.

2. Agora Pulse

Agora Pulse is a comprehensive social media management platform which allows you to enjoy full reporting, scheduling, and response functionality. Among its many benefits are affordable Facebook contest apps, and effective competitor analysis.

Agora Pulse is available with a 15-day free trial, and pricing begins at $49 and runs $299 per month on the top end. This social media management tool is used by 11,000+ customers, particularly SMEs.

Agora Pulse is ideal for agencies and teams, and it fully supports multiple networks including YouTube, G +, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The top features include publishing, engaging, listening, reporting, and collaborating with customers.

As a one-stop solution for all social media management functions, Agora Pulse has stellar metrics to track the power of your social media content.

3. Everypost

Everypost is an effective solution for social media publishing. This content duration wunderkind allows you to generate content from 1 place. You can pull audio-visual content from multiple sources including RSS feeds, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, and others, and instantly publish on multiple platforms.

Everypost allows for instant customization based on your audience. This allows for unique content to be created before cross-posting begins.

As with other powerful social media more management tools, you can collaborate with your team wherever they are in the world, schedule posts, publish posts, and streamline the workflow.

Everypost pricing is available in monthly or yearly installments, and it’s ideal for nonprofits and educational institutions too. The personal plan is free, and it connects you to 1 channel, and there are other plans ranging in price from $9.99 per month upwards of $99.99 per month where you can enjoy 120 connected channels with 12 group management options, and up to 25 team members collaborating.

Among others, users get to enjoy social analytics, unlimited content duration, and more. This service is ideal for personal and business purposes.

4. Hootsuite

Hootsuite has been around for many years, and it has established itself as one of the front-runners in social media management. It’s ideal if you’re looking to schedule posts across multiple social media channels and have them automatically post at pre-set times and dates.

Hootsuite is one of the most useful ways of creating a well-oiled social media machine across multiple channels with full collaborative features, team management, permissions, scheduling, reporting and the like.

There are many benefits to using this social media management function, including scheduling up to 30 posts, 3 social profiles in one place, and the ability to generate lots of leads with a variety of social contexts.

You can schedule hundreds of social media post simultaneously, irrespective of where they’re going to be posted. By managing your social content this way, you don’t need to log in and out of different social media channels to post. Everything is managed from one place and you can even track and prove the social return on investment (ROI).

5. Social Pilot

Social media professionals and ad agencies looking for a powerful scheduling tool and social media marketing tool will love Social Pilot.

Users report favorably about the analytics and scheduling elements in Social Pilot, and thanks to an effective client management feature, it is a useful tool for marketing agencies with scores of clients.

The value in this social media management tool is its ability to provide suggested content that is relevant to your market. The content calendar in this social media tool allows for scheduling and editing with drag-and-drop functionality.

Social Pilot is best suited to add agencies and large teams, and this resource is already used by 85,000+ social media marketing professionals around the world. Among its best features are its white label PDF reports, powerful analytics, collaborative elements, client management features, curated content, and more.

Individual plans run approximately $8.33 per month, professional plans $20 per month, and team options start at $33.33 per month, rising to $66.66 per month for agencies.

6. Friends and Me

Friends+Me is a great social media management tool for scheduling your content. Since you don’t have to publish posts immediately, you can choose when will be the best time to have them published. When you post at the right time, you can engage your customers far more effectively.

Friends+Me is ideal for Pinterest, Twitter, G +, LinkedIn, Facebook, and tumbler. By collecting content and creating content, businesses can increase their reach with their customers in a well-organized way.

Friends+Me has many SEO benefits, making it the preferred solution for increasing your brand’s online visibility. Other features include cross-promotion workflow on multiple social media networks.

As far as pricing goes, it is free for individuals, and you can schedule 5 posts per individual account with an additional team member available. The individual plan runs $7.50 per month, while small businesses can expect to pay $24.17 per month, medium-sized businesses $49.17 per month, and large businesses $215.84 per month.

7. Buffer

Another powerful social media management system is buffer. It allows you to manage all of your social media accounts on one dashboard. You can schedule your posts on G +, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, among others.

The management functionality of this system is awesome. You can install browser extensions, for Android or iOS, and the analytics allow you to track customer interaction and engagement with your posts. Plus, you can also see daily impressions on posts and collaborate with teammates at your leisure.

To date, some 8,000+ business customers now use buffer for their social media management initiatives. Buffer allows for automatic posting according to your chosen schedule, with single images. It also allows you to set reminders about image posts and videos. Full mobile functionality on Android and iOS makes it easy for you to instantly share posts to social media, while you’re on the go.

There are free plans and professional plans available.

The individual plan is free and allows you to manage 3 social accounts with up to 10 scheduled posts per profile. The professional plan is affordable at just $15 per month and allows you to enjoy 8 social accounts with up to 100 scheduled posts per profile. Businesses can also enjoy the benefits of buffer, with 150+ social accounts, and 25+ team members with the enterprise solution.

8. Sprout Social

Sprout Social utilizes data to help you make better decisions. It presents your social media marketing strategy in such a way that you can quantify and validate the results, with content and engagement habits in the analytics. You can plan, organize and control your social media content, and direct the narrative exactly as your company desires.

Sprout Social is ideal for strengthening customer relationships, since it entices engagement around your brand on social media channels.

This social media management resource is ideal for small businesses, agencies, and enterprise-level organizations. The platform is fully integrated with G +, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, with complete analytics and social CRM functionality.

Sprout Social is available in a free trial version, or $99 per month for premium accounts, and $149 per month for corporate accounts. The enterprise-level package runs $249 per month.

9. Social Flow

SocialFlow helps you to grow audiences, readership, and gain SEO authority on the Internet. This social media management tool empowers employees and team members by automating activities and allowing for mass publishing across social media. It also serves as a good way to unlock incremental value from readers, and its optimization tools are second to none.

SocialFlow offers many benefits to clients, including full analysis of responses with continuous loop feedback, quick identification of top-performing posts, the development of novel advertising opportunities, and the publication of posts at optimal times.

SocialFlow is best suited to large-scale publishing companies, where social media scaling of posts is required. According to the company’s analytics, an estimated 600 million+ unique social users now enjoy SocialFlow.

10. Social Oomph

The name says it all – Social Oomph. This powerful social media management resource is a great way to re-post content, or social media posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Whether you are a one-man show, or a small business with multiple employees, Social Oomph can certainly offer time-saving benefits to manage a rather limited social media strategy.

This service is available in a free format, and a professional format, and there are multiple social media channels supported, including Twitter, email, RSS feeds, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Facebook. The professional version costs $17.97, and the Twitter Unlimited Version is $6.97.

As far as affordable options go, this one certainly ranks right up there with the best of them. It is rather rudimentary on many levels, but effective at mass posting.

11. Quuu

It’s easy to increase the size of your social media fan base by engaging them with relevant content. Luckily, Quuu is one such social media management tool that can do that for you.

The social media channels that are supported on Quuu include Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others, and the Quuu promote feature begins by selecting your URL, topic and then heading off to the dashboard to make it all happen.

Among the many benefits of this software is the ability to receive curated content suggestions from 500+ interest categories. You can select up 6 suggestions daily and they can be added to your social scheduler.

Not only does this social media management tool free up plenty of time that you can allocate to other activities, it also allows you to add multiple social profiles, with scheduling functionality and evergreen content tools.

Quuu comes with a 14 day free trial, after your trial the pro-option starts at $15 per month while the small business option is $49 per month.

12. Crowd Fire

To close out our list of social media management tools to use, we have included Crowdfire. This social media management tool is a great scheduler and it allows you to manage multiple social accounts from one place. Take Twitter for a start – you can follow influencers, and instantly engage with your followers.

Content relevance is a big deal with social media management, and Crowdfire curates content from across the web including images and articles.

Crowdfire starts with a free plan that allows you to post 10 posts per account. After the free plan you can opt for:

The plus plan is $5.99 per month and allows for 100 scheduled posts.

The premium plan is $9.99 per month and also allows 100 scheduled posts with unlimited article cure ration and image correction.

The VIP plan is $33.32 per month and allows for 800 scheduled posts per account with unlimited functionality and up to 25 RSS feeds.

Which Social Media Management Tool is For You.....

No matter what your business size there is a social media management tool to meet your needs.

If you’re not sure which one is best for your business, don’t worry, they all come with free trials so you can take them for a test drive.

Whichever one you pick, all social automation tools will help you grow your social presence and get more exposure, followers and customers for your business.

Ready To Start?

Simply Start Your Trial Now to explore all Tailor Social features for free.

July 19, 2018November 8, 2018

18 Social Media Marketing Benefits

18 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

If you’re looking for the best bang-for-your-buck marketing strategy – social media marketing is probably the right move for your business.

Social media has over 2 billion active users, it’s arguably the most affordable means of advertising, it’s got more demographic data than any other form of advertising, and offers you a ton of analytics so that you can constantly improve your paid campaigns and organic efforts.

Let’s take a look at 18 ways that social media marketing can benefit your business.

1. Exposure

With over a quarter of the world’s population active on social media platforms (a number expected to keep climbing) there’s no better place in the world for brand exposure.

Whether you’re a new company or one that’s been around for a while, building a presence on social media is a great way to attract new customers and familiarize an audience with your brand.

Tip: It’s great to be active on all channels, BUT, it’s often more profitable to be active on channels that provide you the most return. For example, if you’re a tech company that sells tech to other businesses, LinkedIn might work much better for you than Instagram.

2. Early-Stage Growth

If you’re a new company, social media can help power your early stage growth.

To get the most from your social efforts:

Use Relevant Platforms: Build a solid follower base on the platforms that provide you the most return on investment (ROI). Meaning, don’t waste time on LinkedIn if you’re selling to millennial consumers who are most active on Snapchat.

Use Hashtags: Use Hashtags to give each post a boost to new eyes that it wouldn’t otherwise have. Use RiteTag to help find hashtags that will work best and expose your posts to the most viewers.

Stay consistent: Even when you only have a few followers. If you post quality stuff on a consistent basis, you’re going to grow your follower base. Stay patient in the process and don’t give up!

3. Ads Have Massive ROI

One of the best things about social media is how affordable the ads are. Plus, they have huge returns. There are ways of almost guaranteeing you’ll see 2:1 (or better) returns.

Social platforms have optimization built into them. For example: if you run a Facebook ad, Facebook will automatically post the ad where it has the most success (like Instagram or Facebook).

They’ll also expose the ad to an audience that’s more likely to convert. And you don’t have to do a thing, all of that is automatically done by the platform!

4. You Can Create Superfans

Superfans are people that can’t get enough of your product or service. They’re repeat business – and a mere 5% increase in repeat business can amount to a whopping 95% increase in profit.

Here are a few ways to create Superfans:

Celebrate your repeat customers and fans – if someone gives your brand a shoutout on social – repost it, thank them publicly, celebrate them!
Give free gifts. For example – Citizen bikes gives a free pair of branded socks to everyone that buys a bike. You could something similar, and share a photo on social media channels about your freebie.
Hold contests and encourage participation. Contests are a way for your followers and fans to engage with you – with the addition of a prize.

5. Marketing Automation with IFTTT

There are ample ways to use social media and an automation tool called IFTTT (if this then that) to grow your business – and the best part is – it’s free. With IFTTT, you create automations (a.k.a. recipes) that complete tedious tasks for you.

Here are a few example IFTTT recipes for each platform:

Facebook – With Facebook, you can automatically send a post to your Facebook from a text message.

Twitter – You can build Twitter lists with IFTTT. This means that everytime a user Tweets a certain hashtag, for example #startups – you could save that user name to a list – essentially building out a list of prospects.

LinkedIn – You can automatically share your Medium posts with your LinkedIn network.

Instagram – You can use IFTTT to sync your Instagram posts with a Pinterest board.

6. Audience Insights

There’s no better way to become familiar with your target market than through social media advertising. There are THOUSANDS of ways to target users on social media channels.

Here are a few:

Demographics: like age, gender, income, job title, and more

Location: You can target users in any specific location in the world

Interest: You can target based on interests like R&B music, vegan food, or animal activists

Here’s an in-depth guide to building a highly-targeted social media audience.

7. It's Easy to Automate

Automation is a giant benefit of social media. With the help of free tools like Buffer or MeetEdgar, and our own tool ‘Tailor Social’ you can spend 20 minutes scheduling a week’s worth of posts ahead of time.

Automation tools also provide analytics insights to help you determine which type of posts perform best on the different social channels.

With platforms like ‘Tailor Social’ you can also automate content discovery, saving you lots of time when it comes to finding content to publish.

8. Analytics Data

With social media, you can look at reports to improve your campaigns and posting based on data and insight.

A few things you might note are:

– Which channels perform best for your brand

– What time or day or which days of the week are best for posting

– Which types of content receive the highest engagement (blogs, pictures, etc.)

9. Private groups

Private groups are groups on social media channels that you must be invited to join. They are a fantastic way to build a captured audience and engage with your customers one to one.

Media: There are social media groups specifically for helping people find opportunities to be featured in the media. Do some research in your particular niche for these types of groups.

Relevant Audience: You might join a group so that you can share your blog articles with, or join a vegan group to share your business’ vegan recipes, etc.

Business Referrals: There are groups for all types of people and all types of industries. This is great for networking and generating referrals. Remember, the best way to get referrals is to give them!

10. Media Attention

Building a following on social media is a great way to garner the attention of the media. To do this, you need to focus on creating content that gets lots of shares.

Here’s how:

Use analytic data to determine which of your posts receive the highest number of shares – post more content like that
Spend time creating the BEST possible content. If your blogs get the most reshares, then hire excellent writers to help you knock your posts out of the park. The better quality content, the higher the likelihood of reshares.
Create a group (maybe an email chain or private social media group). This group’s purpose is to reshare all the content that is shared with the group. This can be your friends, colleagues, etc. Just as long as whenever something is sent to group members, all members reshare.

11. Customer Service

Social media is a wonderful platform for increasing customer satisfaction. Big brands like PayPal are taking advantage of this as well. You can answer common questions publicly, or private message with customers that have issues or concerns.

It’s a great way to make your brand more available to customers, and you should definitely take advantage of customer service via social media platforms.

12. Sales

You can communicate with prospects via social. LinkedIn is perfect for searching for very specific prospects. You can search by location, company name, company size, job title, etc.

This helps ensure you’re reaching out to a qualified prospect vs. any random person at the company you’re trying to work with. You can even send a InMail message to these prospects, which reportedly have a higher chance of being seen than a regular email.

13. Lookalike Audiences

You can create ad campaigns targeting users who behave similarly to users that have engaged with your brand previously on social media. This target is created automatically for you by the social platform you’re using.

You can also upload a list of emails and target users similar to those in the list of emails.

14. Refer Traffic to Your Website or Blog

Social can generate a ton of traffic for your domain. It’s also a great way for driving traffic to your new website or blog that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Make sure you link to your blog or website in your social bio
Add a call-to-action (CTA) to social posts encouraging users to visit your webpage
You can even make posts about products or services and direct users to the purchase page

15. SEO and Link Building

Social media is important for building links to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.

As you build your following, and the more shares your posts get, the higher the likelihood that those pages will be linked into other web pages and blogs. This is one of the best ways to increase domain authority and improve search rankings.

16. Become an Authority in Your Industry

By sharing your own written content (like blog posts and ebooks) on social media, you’re spreading the idea that you’re an authority in that space. You can also share other people’s content that is relevant to your audience.

The content you share should always be high quality. It should educate your readers/teach them something new. It should use high-resolution images and graphs and charts when relevantUse free apps like Grammarly or Hemingway to edit your content so it’s more professional.

17. Pixels and Retargeting

Retargeting was a game-changer for social media advertising. By embedding snippets of code into your website, you can retarget visitors to your site when they login to their social media accounts.

Here’s how it works:

You download the code snippet from each social channel and embed it in your site (you should ask for help from a developer if you aren’t familiar with this stuff). You can then set up a retargeting ad campaign (those ads the follow you around the internet) for each social media channel you want to run ads on:

The visitors on your website will see the ads when they log back into their social media accounts

18. Help a Cause

Consumers are crazy about brands that give back – especially millennials. Lots of companies set up campaigns on social media that encourage followers to donate to a cause.

For example, Disney gave $5 to the Make A Wish Foundation, each time someone shared a picture of themselves wearing Mickey Mouse ears.

This is a win-win, building brand awareness for your company, encouraging engagement, and giving back all at the same time.

Conclusion

There are infinite ways to use social media to your benefit your business – we’d have to write a book series to cover them all. You want to focus on delivering quality content on all your channels, whether you’re sharing news articles, tips, or high-res photos.

Take advantage of the affordability of social advertising – there are thousands of ways to zero-in on your target market. Plus, you can use embedded code snippets to retarget users who have already visited your webpages, and are therefore highly-qualified prospects.

Now it’s your turn to harness the power of social media marketing.

Ready To Start?

Simply Start Your Trial Now to explore all Tailor Social features for free.