In this digital age, there is no escaping the value of social media for your business – whether in B2B or B2C. And all industries can reap the benefits of connecting with customers, prospects, influencers, and employees via social platforms.
To get the most out of your social engagement and to maximize social results with a powerful strategy that delivers, your organization should be utilizing various social media tools.
There’s a right solution for your unique needs so don’t feel compelled to implement every social media tool that exists. But there are quite a few platforms that can really take your social media marketing to the next level.
Below you’ll learn more about why you should be using social media tools and the best options you should consider utilizing at your company.
Why Social Media Tools Matter
While social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram continue to provide value for your business, there is much more to these platforms than just connecting and posting.
But social media strategies and posts require more thought and time than outsiders may realize. And it’s why there are many social media tools that exist, which are built to make social media management, creation, organization, design, and more much easier to handle.
And choosing the right social media tools can:
- Save you time and help you be more efficient
- Help you stay organized and are easy to use
- Improve your overall ROI and engagement, boosting your bottom line
Best Social Media Tools for Business
Whether you work for a small business or enterprise company, social media must be a part of your marketing, sales, and recruiting strategy. Additionally, there will be many tools available for you to maximize efforts and results.
Instead of listing all the social media tools out there, I chose some of the best options to consider. These will cover a range of categories, ensuring your company will have one of the strongest social media solutions currently available.
And these are in no particular order, just some great social media marketing tools you might want to add to your tech stack.
1. Buffer
If you have dabbled in social media over the last decade, then you are most likely very much aware of Buffer. The company quickly became one of the most trusted social media management platforms and is the go to social media tool by marketers and businesses.
And just how popular are they these days? Over 60,000 businesses are using Buffer to schedule and organize social media content.
Besides planning content, creating, and scheduling social stories, Buffer allows your company to measure social media performance, create in-depth reports, and even get custom recommendations to grow reach, engagement and sales.
There are plenty of product features that I highly recommend checking out, but you might want to give Buffer a try for free and see how it fits your social business needs.
2. MeetEdgar
When it comes to social media tools, MeetEdgar has a different twist to the marketing game. For those smaller teams looking to get the most from their content and time, MeetEdgar social automation platform will be valuable.
Essentially, MeetEdgar automates content for your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts.
For example some features include, the platform can write social copy for you by pulling important information from blog posts, it can create content for you from their browser extensions, categorize social content, create workflow rules to set up various social sharing cadences like repurposing older content.
You can also A/B test social content variations and get analytic reports to your email inbox about what is happening, what’s working, and more.
3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
This blog post is primarily aimed at social media, so you might be wondering why there is a sales tool listed here.
Well, social selling has become a top strategy for sales and marketing teams to help connect with buyers and there are social media tools that can assist in this process.
One of these in LinkedIn Sales Navigator which is a paid platform through the popular social network for professionals and brands. It’s definitely one of the most powerful social selling and social media tools available today.
With LinkedIn Sales Navigator you can find prospects and companies faster, keep track of company news and if prospects switch companies, find key people at targeted accounts, engage with the right contacts, and integrate with your CRM.
I’m only scratching the surface with capabilities, but this tool is a must for your sales and marketing team who take social media seriously for building pipeline and lead flow.
4. EveryoneSocial
One of the growing social strategies among organizations is enabling employees as “influencers” to create, share, and engage online. This concept is called employee advocacy and started nearly a decade ago.
Thankfully over the years, there are now platforms that make this strategy easy to organize, adopt, and measure. One of those platforms is EveryoneSocial, the leading provider of employee advocacy solutions for sales, marketing, comms, HR, retail, and more.
The software easily allows employees quick access to content, to share to their networks or schedule ahead, connect with colleagues, suggest and create content, and stay informed about the latest news concerning their company.
Features include desktop application, mobile apps, application built into Salesforce, browser extensions, push notifications, email notifications, content newsletter, detailed internal and external analytics, numerous integrations, and much more.
Customers of all industries and sizes use EveryoneSocial, although the midsize and enterprise organizations are generally the clientele. T-Mobile, Dell, American Family Insurance, Mattress Firm, and many other recognizable brands utilize EveryoneSocial.
5. Tailwind
While many of the social media tools for business on this list focus on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook primarily – I did not want to leave out Pinterest or Instagram.
While many B2B companies might not necessarily be utilizing those visual social media platforms, there are plenty of companies that do. However, to make the content schedule and process faster for those platforms, Tailwind can be an excellent tool to use.
Schedule posts for Instagram, get the best hashtag suggestions, and let their tool optimize for when your social posts should go live based on times that perform best for your content.
And similarly for Pinterest, you can create and schedule a handful of pins to keep your account fresh, analytics about pins and boards, reshare options that you can schedule, find relevant pins to add to your boards, and a drag-and-drop calendar to have a content schedule for weeks ahead.
6. Canva
Besides some strictly social media tools, I wanted to add a few others that assist in the social content process as well.
So I had to include Canva on this list, which has become a widely used popular tool to create graphics and custom images that are on brand for your company. And the best part is, Canva is free to use!
Of course you can upgrade to a paid account for more features, stock images, unlimited storage, templates, and more – this is great for enterprise companies with multiple needs and team members. But if you are a small team or a solo entrepreneur, their free version will do wonders.
Canva has layouts and templates for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, infographics, Zoom meeting backgrounds, and even print templates for brochures, invitations, etc.
7. Falcon.io
As you are probably well aware, there are quite a few social media management tools that are available for you to choose from. Which you may ultimately choose will depend on your needs and your personal preference.
But because of that, I wanted to add another social media tool that could be useful for your social marketing called Falcon.io.
With Falcon, you can create paid and organic posts for all your social networks in one collaborative content calendar. Now you and your marketing team can manage all social channels, workflows and campaigns in one place.
Another big feature is the ability for community management and customer support. There is one social inbox for all your networks and “profile cards” of all your customer data. This allows you and your team to easily engage customers and prospects as soon as possible.
Other features include social listening, data around content performance, and merge social data into your CRM for more detailed information about customers and prospects.
8. Buzzsumo
Over the years, Buzzsumo has quickly grown a following and user base for all things social media.
It’s easily the best content and social media tool to discover topics that are trending, get insights to help guide your own social content, monitor social performance, and find influencers in your space.
You can also monitor your competitors and see what content of theirs is performing well with their audiences. This can give you more ideas to further guide your own strategy.
Another solid feature is social listening, where you can have the platform monitor for your company in terms of domain, keywords, and other news to stay on top of what people are saying about your brand online.
9. Quuu
For many people, growing their social media following and personal brands is important. And additionally, you might be looking for interesting third-party content to share from your company’s brand accounts as well.
This is where the platform Quuu might come in handy for you.
Here’s how this social media marketing tool works. You connect your social media management platform (like Buffer or example), choose from 500 categories that interest you and the audiences you want to attract, then let Quuu automatically promote content and/or your RSS feed to social networks for you.
And another cool feature of Quuu is you can get your content in front of real people who will share to their networks. Like some other platforms on this list, there is a free version to try. But the paid options will get you the most features and yield the best reach and impact.
10. Nuvi
Naturally, we had to support a fellow Utah company but also the product is pretty sweet too. Nuvi is a social media marketing company that is built to listen across social media channels and the internet in real-time.
With Nuvi, you can gather information about your audience, what people are saying about your brand, monitor specific social campaigns, competitor tracking, get instant alerts to jump in on conversations, and keep tabs on competitors.
This can also be great to understand your customers better and ensure you provide the best support via social networks. You can plan when to respond and also publish right from Nuvi as well.
11. Crowdfire
As I previously mentioned, there are plenty of social media management tools for you and your company to consider. Another one that might be worth looking at is Crowdfire, which has been around for a decade and boasting over 19 million users.
With Crowdfire you can automatically discover articles and images that are specific for your audiences, schedule your own social posts in advance and publish them during the best times for the most engagement, post customization for each social profile so there is no need to create separate posts for each.
Besides that, you can build customizable reports with various data, highlights, and competitor analysis information to easily distribute to your team or executives.
Lastly, Crowdfire also has customer support options for social media. With this, you can send replies to mentions with images, videos and gifs. You can also reply instantly via the mobile app, so you stay connected no matter where you are currently located.
And like many other platforms in the social management space, you’ll find some overlap in features. However, the design, the organization of these features, and your budget can help determine your preference and ultimate choice.
Final Thoughts
A few of the social media tools above will have overlap in features and functionality, where others are a bit more specific.
However, the above tools are some of the best in the social media space and must be considered at your business regardless of your industry.
Explore each company’s website and product further, sign-up for any free trials or schedule a demo and see what would work best for you and your company.
As you are well aware, social media networks are only growing and your company must be utilizing these networks to their fullest potential.
