5 Must-Have Social Media Marketing Tools for 2021

When social media platforms such as MySpace and Facebook first emerged in the ‘00s, few casual users could have predicted the proliferation and influence that this type of medium would have on our lives in the ensuing decade and to the present day.

What once was mostly a simple, fun, and easy way to stay in contact and communicate with family and friends has become an authority presiding over our day-to-day lives, with one platform or another being our go-to for virtually everything. 

With such a large and fast rise, it was inevitable that businesses would become both involved with it as well as spring from it. With online presence being essential while markets are so saturated, it is more important than ever to have optimal and efficient social media strategies and tools to get you and/or your business floating to the surface and be seen.

From coming up with the perfect Instagram bio ideas to regularly posting quality on-brand content, managing your social media accounts can be quite time consuming. Now social media marketing has become more than just creating a page, adding your website address and virtual business number to your profile, and posting daily. 

Here, we’ll take a quick look at some top social media optimization tools to get the maximum results from online marketing strategies and campaigns that can create a strong, visible presence for your brand, so as to stand out in a crowd of trending topics.

We’ll start with a household name in social media optimization: –

Hootsuite

Now well established, Hootsuite is a veteran social media management tool that is still going strong. It provides a comprehensive and broad hub from which you can view and control all of your social media. Though web-based, Hootsuite is available via an app for both Apple and Android devices and has a wide range of maneuverability of use, and allows you to create a social media calendar for timed updates. Suitable for an individual or a whole team, multiple tasks can be handled simultaneously.

Monthly plans begin at $29, which is more affordable than some – though its base free package which only gives the option of operating up to 3 accounts may not be enough of a try-out to induce stepping up to the lowest subscription. 

BuzzSumo

Research, connect, track are the three core principles of this Chrome extension. As well as researching whatever market it is you intend to enter so as to be able to offer the best service you can, you need to see and know what your competitors are up to in the field too, so that you are able to get ahead of them and into the lead.

Customizable, with its popular topics search, ability to stalk trends, and engage with online influencers, BuzzSumo has the chops to separate and analyze your chosen target audience and zero in on what is most popular amidst your competition – giving you the opportunity to inch ahead. It also represents a valuable tool for content marketing research and ideation. 

Planable

If you are focused on an efficient, productive, workflow, Planable is your tool. It’s a social media collaboration platform that allows teams to create, plan, review, approve, and schedule content. The main advantage is that it’s super visual and 100% focused on collaboration. You can invite everyone involved in the process, tag them, request their approval on social media posts, and schedule everything out from the same place. 

If you manage multiple brands, they also allow you to create separate workspaces, private from one another. Meaning you can group your stakeholders and social media accounts without those Drive folders. 

HeyOrca

Manage multiple social media accounts? Want to easily schedule social media posts across multiple platforms? Want to share your scheduled and draft content with clients or colleagues? Need a platform with an approval workflow? Datis Mohsenipour, Director of Marketing & Partnerships at Outback Team Building & Training suggests you check out HeyOrca. 

“HeyOrca is the most collaborative social media platform out there. They have all the standard features you’ve come to expect from a social media management platform, but their biggest standout feature is their approval workflow. You can quickly create a month’s worth of content and share it with a client or your manager for approval. Scheduled posts will only go out once the required approval(s) has been given.” says Datis.

Datis adds that “another great thing about HeyOrca is that they are constantly collecting feedback from their customers, and making improvements to their platform. Having worked at HeyOrca, I can tell you first-hand that they truly put their customers first. When I was working there, we were releasing at least two major updates per month… often as many as four.”

SproutSocial

Efficiency and community are at the heart of this social media marketing tool. Designed for smart, speedy conversations across multiple platforms in an as efficient manner as possible, SproutSocial has proven popular, especially among small-to-middling businesses. It’s a well-balanced blend of platform management – including multiple platform profiles – and analysis, geared at generating strong connections with audiences.

Opinions can vary in regards to SproutSocial’s social listening strengths, both the negative and positive on this are subjective rumbles – its case dependent, one person’s needs may not be someone else’s, as with anything else, but SproutSocial has earned stripes in the social media marketing industry. Fairly priced, its analytical capabilities are what has it running at the front of the marketing pack. 

Google Analytics

So far the social media marketing stars have been getting dished to companies that require subscriptions beyond any free trial that may be offered. So it’s worth giving a shout-out to a social media marketing tool that comes without a price tag, has muscle, and is used by more than half of all website owners.

Google Analytics will tell you virtually everything about any visitor to your website and what they do while they are there: how much time they spend there, how they got there – be it a search (which a SEO consultant can help optimize), or via an ad, and so on, and where they are located. For a tool that costs nothing to pick up, its use is indispensable. 

Biteable

An artfully eye-catching or jarring, in-your-face image is more likely to turn heads than some exquisite font on a plain background. Images have a fast and immediate impact – and Biteable has secured a seat on the social media marketing bench with their streamlined, well-put-together visual marketing for social media platforms. Biteable was created with ease of use and maximum effect in mind: even the free versions are surprisingly feature-heavy.

All you could need for stunning visuals that look professionally put together to stamp your brand into the consciousness of viewers, are all there waiting to be utilized for a winning marketing campaign. if you upgrade from free, an affordable gold mine of marketing possibilities. 

Conclusion

With so many marketing tools available, it might be hard to know where to start, but there’s no reason not to experiment with any that offer free trials to find the ones that seem the best fit for you. You may be platform-specific, using one as your base – for example, Twitter, – while having Facebook, YouTube, and so on, as peripheral presences. If so, there are many social marketing tools around, which are tailored for more effectiveness with particular social media outlets. 

Buffer, for example, has just introduced a feature made for Pinterest users. Whatever your preferences, the tools are out there waiting for you to take your marketing strategies to the next level. 

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