Around 37% of the world’s population is on social media. It’s a fantastic place to engage your customers, build relationships and ultimately sell more.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – 37% of the world’s population is a lot.
Moreover, social media campaigns can look absolutely exhausting. You have to strategize, create content, perform split-tests, engage with people, come up with awesome CTAs, and manage your brand across lots of different channels.
The thing is that we’re in 2018, the year where there are tools for everything – including tools that will complement your social media marketing efforts and make your life so much easier.
Let’s take a look at the best ones that you can use in your business.
Hootsuite
Got lots of accounts to manage? Are they getting on top of you?
HootSuite is a budget-friendly social media automation tool that works as an all-in-one for managing, tracking, scheduling and analyzing your various campaigns so that you never lose track or get a major headache.
There’s a free plan available, and as a bonus Hootsuite also lets you personalize streams so that you can search and monitor for brand mentions on all your different platforms.
Buffer
Buffer is a bit like Hootsuite, and social media marketers tend to either prefer one or the other. It’s a bit like The Beatles or the Rolling Stones – you’re either one or the other.
Buffer has a cleaner interface than Hootsuite and its analytics features are simpler, which will suit some people. However, they’re both social media scheduling tools, so it’s a case of trying before you buy to see which one works best for you.
Buffer comes with a cool Chrome extension that might appeal to you. This extension means you can share it across your social media channels with absolute ease.
MeetEdgar
Remember that one post that did REALLY well and got lots of engagement? What the heck happened to it?
That’s right – it got buried alive by all your subsequent under-performing content.
In a perfect world, there’d be a tool that reposts your best content without you having to do anything.
But while the world isn’t perfect, MeetEdgar exists anyway. Get on it.
Google Analytics
If you haven’t yet got a Google Analytics account, now’s the time to sign up.
Even if you have but you’re still not using it to assess your social media campaigns, it’s time to take things to the next level.
Google Analytics gives you invaluable information about where your traffic is coming from. Is it coming from Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? Without access to this kind of information, you simply won’t know what needs to be tweaked, eliminated or double downed on.
Social Flow
One of the age-old questions related to social media marketing is “when’s the best time to post new content?”
Good question – and it’s one that I personally can’t answer for you.
However, Social Flow can.
Social Flow is a cool tool that analyses the behavior of your users before using real-time data to forecast when you should publish content for best results. It basically optimizes your posts so that they end up in front of the right eyeballs at the right times. This boosts engagement, conversions, and revenue per customer.
Nifty, huh?
Hubspot
It’s all well and good when you know which channels are driving the majority of your engagement. But what about the rest of your funnel? What’s driving the leads and the sales?
This where Hubspot comes in handy, an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps you attract more people and boost conversions.
Shopify Logo Maker
Social media is very visual, with images getting almost 40% more interaction than text.
Branding is important too, which is why it’s key that you get your logos looking consistent and awesome across all your channels.
Shopify’s Logo Maker is a free graphic design tool that helps even beginners create cool-looking brand logos that they can share on social media in minutes.
Fastory
Instagram Stories are one of the biggest Instagram trends of 2018. Brands just like yours are using the feature to tell compelling stories that encourage audience interaction and engagement.
Standing out is key. Download Fastory – an online graphics editor – to create static and animated stories that help you make stronger connections with your customers.
Feedly
Feedly doesn’t have the best name for a tool we’ve ever seen, but it’s fantastic for anyone who’s struggling to stay up to date with the latest and best content in their area of interest. And for social media marketers who need to stay on top of trends, this is key.
The app describes itself thus in the iStore:
“Feedly is a smart reader that connects you to the information you need to stay ahead of the curve in your space.”
It’s essentially a news aggregator site that’s aimed at social media marketers just like you. It creates a daily magazine of-sorts for you so that you can keep up to date with what’s going on, and share the best content you come across.
Moreover, it also means that you can jump into important conversations and share your own ideas (and therefore brand) with key influencers in your niche.
Feedly integrates with Hootsuite and Buffer, which means you can schedule and share posts from its dashboard. This has the potential to save you a wealth of energy and time by ensuring that you no longer need to manually scour the Internet in order to find the best, most share-worthy content.
Canva
How good are you at graphic design? If you’re like most social media marketers, you might have a bit of an eye for creativity, and you might know what looks good … but you might also not be very good at actually creating things yourself.
Either that or you just don’t have the time.
The problem is that you might also not have much of a budget to hire a top-class graphic designer who can make awesome images for your social media posts. So what do you do?
Well, one thing you could do is turn to a tool like Canva.
Canva is totally free to use – and it’s also VERY easy.
Even better, you can create amazing, eye-catching images for your social media posts even if you’re not very good at graphic design. You can be a complete beginner because Canva provides all the templates, colors and fonts you could ever need to make this look easy.
Socedo
One of the issues with being a social media marketer is that there’s just so much to do and take care of. There are countless pieces, and they all seem to be moving at the same time. And when that happens, things can get really stressful.
This is where Socedo comes in. It’s a B2B demand generation tool that takes a load off. It’s a bit of a workhorse that does the irksome stuff so that you no longer have to.
How does it work? It automates your lead generation campaigns, seeking out and acquiring targeted leads via various social media outlets. Meanwhile, you get to devote more attention to bagging more sales and boosting revenue.
It sounds too good to be true, but Socedo is able to successfully automate your lead gen campaigns via a blend of demographic criteria and keywords. It targets, finds and engages potential customers across the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This differentiates it from other automated lead gen tools that focus on email.
Social Clout
Winning on social media isn’t a case of posting something that you think is amazing, before grabbing some coffee, patting yourself on the back and drafting up another piece of “amazing” content. It’s about what your audience loves.
In other words, the winning posts are those that have the most engagement. But how do you know which ones these are?
This is where a tool like Social Clout proves super useful. It’s a neat social media analytics tool that focuses on the key metrics so that you know what’s working when it’s working and where it’s working. These metrics allow you to assess your social media marketing campaigns and make the necessary changes.
Conclusion
These are the best tools in 2018 that will complement your social media marketing campaigns. They will make your life easier while enhancing your brand and ensuring it stands out.
About the Author: Michelle Deery is a freelance content writer and content marketer for Heroic Search, a Tulsa based SEO company. She writers persuasive and compelling copy that converts readers into paying customers. Find her at @MichWriting