Best Social Media Marketing Tools

Today, no one can deny the power of social media as a ubiquitous tool for reaching target customers. Social Media has become a trendsetter, an appealing component in marketing strategy, and a substantial medium to influence the buying decisions of tech-savvy consumers. Social media marketing has become a new model of marketing for all businesses, and managing this social interactivity with the target audience is, therefore, a crucial aspect of a business's strategic plan. 

Using social networks for long term customer commitments and converting networks into sales are complicated and challenging processes. Managing privacy issues, data security, and customer-generated data such as reviews and feedback require managers to automate processes and deploy comprehensive software tools. Social media marketing is a time-intensive model of marketing that requires frequent interactions. Regular posting of content at the right time on multiple social media handles, engagement of the audience with the curated content, understanding, and monitoring audience reactions, addressing grievances, and many more activities cannot be handled manually. 

Marketing managers, therefore, require a reliable Social Media Marketing Software that manages, integrates, and optimizes their marketing strategy across all social media channels. With a plethora of social media softwares available in the market, it can be confusing to choose and deploy the best suitable Social Media Marketing Platform for managing your business's communication. This buyer's guide for Social Media Marketing Software intends to be a helpful resource and guidance tool for those seeking to buy and implement an SMM tool for their organization. This buyers' guide will assist you in selecting the best available Social Media Marketing Software option for your needs. But before we discuss that, let us understand what social media marketing means and why it is important? 

Social Media Marketing uses social media platforms to increase the visibility of the brands on the Internet, social media sites, and online business platforms. It uses multiple tools to promote a company's products and services. Social Media Marketing that started in Web 2.0 (the Age of Content Creation and Collaboration) has evolved extensively in the Web 4.0 (the age of the Internet of Things). With interactive open applications and social media services,  social media marketing promotes brands by sharing video content, audio content, photos, infographics, online questionnaires, blog posts, and even live streaming. 

The times have changed for the corporates. Earlier, they communicated about their brand through traditional media only. With traditional media like television and print, they could engage only in one way communication with the audience. Therefore, the corporates were unable to gauge their communication outreach and effectiveness. 

Today, things have changed drastically. With the evolution of advanced smartphones, every individual owns a 'screen' with proximity to 'social media platforms.' This proximity has given the power to the individuals to instantly express their opinions regarding a particular post, brand, service, product, or company. It has established two-way interactive communication with the companies. 

Therefore, the magnitude of audience engagement with a marketing campaign, and analysis of audience behavior can be well understood with social media analytics. Marketing managers understand that social media visibility is a significant parameter of their brand's status. Therefore, marketing managers use social media to create an impact on people's minds. 

A social media marketing software is an application program which helps the corporates to successfully manage their communications and marketing strategy across multiple social media handles like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin with the convenience of a single dashboard. A social media marketing software provides several advantages like -  social media listening where it can keep track of people's conversations and analyze what interests the followers. It can also schedule posts on the decided date on all the social media platforms, and Monitor negative or derogatory comments to ensure that community guidelines are followed. 

Almost every organization, irrespective of big or small, carries its marketing and branding activities online. An SMM tool helps to solve an organization's communication hurdles by timely scheduling of posts. Social media marketing software responds quickly to any negative feedback and analyzes reports measuring the campaign performance.

Social media marketing software is needed for varied reasons: Here are the top 5 reasons why you need one;

• Companies need Social media software to aggregate large quantities of data being generated from mobile apps and devices to single storage.  This software allows better management of multiple social media accounts and helps nurture customer relations by brand storytelling as well. 
• Earlier, it took a long time for the potential audience to absorb a brand's message and communicate it to other people. But now, with interaction tools available in social media platforms such as– comment, share, like, and emoticons, the content penetration within the target audience has become fast. You need a social media marketing tool to keep posting the right content effectively. 
• With every brand's social media presence, companies are inquisitive about the activities of their competitors. By analyzing the audience's behavior, the companies can gain positive feedback and can earn the people's favorite reputation on social media. A social media marketing software can monitor people’s activities and posts on social media and help to analyze their social media behavior.
• A social media platform has also been the biggest platform for people to vent their anger or disgust if dissatisfied with a particular product or service. Also, it is the greatest platform for customers who want to express their gratitude to brands for their exceptional services. Social media marketing software can keep a tab of the history of conversations enabling the companies to personalize the customer experience and improve customer service.
• Social media marketing software gives you updates about the conversations happening in real-time. Companies can immediately plan a remedial action where the negative and inappropriate messages are addressed quickly to ensure brand security. 

Desktop-based/On-Premise 

These types of social media marketing services are licensed, and social media marketers can easily install them on their computer systems. They offer a highly customizable working platform with a large number of features. Admins can install these software solutions on their mobile phones also. 

Web-based

Third-party vendors from their servers host these types of social media marketing platforms.  It is a popular type of SMM tool as it can be accessed from anywhere. You just require the login ID and the password provided by your vendor to access these solutions.

Cloud-based

These types of social media marketing services are hosted through third-party vendors that have cloud servers. These are popular with large organizations that require massive data storage capacity. 

Open Source

These types of social media marketing tools allow users to customize the software source code to fit their requirements. Admins can modify the inbuilt settings and add extra plugins to improve the utility of the software.

When you want to improve your ROI

In a data-obsessed world, the ability to measure and analyze results has become vital. Social media marketing software allows the extraction of campaign performance data from each platform. It further collates it in a single excel sheet. The results allow companies to form short-term strategies to improve the Return on Investments (ROI). 

When you want to improve the relations with the customers

The brand marketing of today is- to harness the power of social media platforms to be seamlessly in people's conversations. With target customers now being present on social media platforms, the brands must communicate themselves to the people in the times of grievances and happiness. 

When you want to grow your social reach locally

For many businesses, the local audience is their target audience. To optimize ad expenses, the geo research tool feature in Social media software can be used. It helps to track the conversations happening on social media networks within the specific radius of a geographical location.

When you want quality content to be published

With keyword monitoring and research, we can find out what kind of content will engage more with the people. With this, businesses can track the behavior of the target audience, competitors' activity, etc. This will help to strategize communication. 

When you want your marketing productivity to be improved

Social media marketing software assists in increasing marketing productivity by doing multiple tasks single-handedly. With automated features, it reduces the need for manual intervention of social media marketers. This saves time for social media managers that can be utilized in other productive activities.

When you wish to reach your customers in real-time

Suppose your customer has posted something on his or her timeline related to a specific problem he or she is facing.  If your brand product is the solution to that problem, and you post your answer within minutes that solves the customer’s issue, then you have won the brand marketing game. Social media marketing software can track multiple posts for keywords related to your brand’s product or services. This feature can help you find the relevant posts in real-time.

Ecommerce

Social media has the ability to influence the buying decision of shoppers. It provides a sense of oneness to people who are on the same community group on a social network. This makes social media very crucial for every business that wants to reach its target audience. Ecommerce businesses can use platforms such as Instagram for sharing their product's images, Facebook for redirecting traffic to their website, LinkedIn for connecting with the distinguished professionals in their field, Twitter for solving customer issues, and other platforms for increasing more participation and reach. Social media marketing software can help to bring all this on a single dashboard.

Education

Social media has become an integral part of every sector of the business world. In the education sector, social media is now widely used for promoting schools and colleges. Colleges and schools post their co-curricular and extra-curricular activities on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Sharing announcements, notices, event information, guest lecture news, seminar details, etc. on social media platforms is considered a direct communication tool to reach students and their parents. E-learning opportunities via social media platforms provide a new learning curve for learner-centric education systems.

Hotel

Hotels are using social media marketing software to share valuable information on social media platforms to tourists and business professionals looking to visit the city. Hotels managers know that hospitality is a visual-centric industry. The more images and photos that hotel posts of visitors enjoying their ambient environment, the more traction the hotel is going to get on social media. Reviews on social media about a hotel influences other visitors. Hotels deploy social media marketing software to engage their happy customers in sharing positive stories on their social media handles.

Technology

Today people go to social platforms such as Facebook and Youtube for finding solutions for technical issues related to their computer systems, hosting plans, latest information on new technology and gadget releases. The technology sector can easily monetize this by sharing the information necessary to the users. Social media marketing software tracks what people are looking for on various social platforms. This can help technology companies to curate the information according to the demand and share it on various social networks.

Real Estate

The builders, property managers, agents, brokers vehemently use social media to showcase their offering and generate leads for the same. Here, social media tools will help to get insights about the number of people who have commented or asked the location, or for a visit to the sample flat or building. Also, the geo research tool showcases a property to the audience who are in the vicinity of it. 

Entertainment 

The entire entertainment industry thrives on social media. Whether it is a new movie trailer release or a song they publish in the social media sites to understand the people sentiments and using the sentiment analysis, they can determine if it is going to be a hit amongst the viewers. Social media listening is a major feature of an SMM tool that helps to understand people 's reactions for the new release of a movie or song by examining the type of comments, no. of shares, retweets, etc. 

Retail 

The retail industry is not behind when it comes to social media marketing. Be it a new service launch or offers and discounts on products, all of these are well communicated through social media. In retail, the biggest benefit the industry gets from using social media marketing software is that it provides customer service and support before any negative news gets viral. Also, with the positive feedback received from people, it helps them to roll out new strategies to grow their business. 

Fashion

The speed with which content penetration happens in social media is fast and has proved to be an asset to the fashion industry.  Social media marketing tools aid the fashion houses to gain an insight into what kind of fashion interests the people. It acts as a research platform for them.  

Small businesses can reach their target audience without spending large sums of money on advertising expenses by using a social media marketing tool. The follow links, blogs, posts, referral links, backlinks, and others can increase organic traffic to their websites. The traffic can improve not only the sales of their products and services but also the page rank of their business website. Social media also adds more vigor to their other marketing strategies. For instance, the paid advertising campaigns can be boosted by adding social media marketing to it. Small businesses that choose to participate in discussion forums and customer interaction sessions build more credibility for themselves.  With the ability to discern the campaign success in the form of data and numbers, small businesses can monetize more on the social media platform than opting for the traditional form of advertising.

Augmented reality 

Augmented reality is currently being embraced by real estate, paint, furniture, and cosmetic companies to give people a slice of the idea of what and how a product would look if bought in real. For example- how a piece of furniture would look if put in this space or particular wall color in the room would look? It merges reality with the product chosen for buying. Social media marketing tools integrate with augmented reality software to provide the best buying experience to shoppers.

Chatbots 

Chatbot technology is evolving day by day. Earlier, the chatbots were filled with pre-decided answers and solutions to limited problems. Now chatbot technology is exploring more algorithms to understand the issues and, in fact, are surfing the web to solve new problems, hence giving ease of customer servicing. Social media marketing services use chatbots integration to engage their customers initially. Chatbots can converse with multiple people at a time. 

Storytelling

The storytelling trend used by the brands provides the audience with authentic insights about new products. With appealing storytelling techniques, marketers make sure that the audience will see the videos or posts.  It ensures that customers will not miss the newest offers, discounts, and deals.

Shopping on social media

With alluring photographs, discounts, offers, and reviews available on social media, shoppers are trying to monetize the opportunity. Buying options being available on social media are allowing the audience not to give a second thought to go over other sites and buy from the social media there itself. 

Live streaming and Live Chat

Social media live streaming on Channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to create eye-catching on-demand content is a growing social media marketing trend. Live streaming increases human interaction and attracts more audience to your business. Live streaming is a zero cost brand-building activity. Data compression technology has made it easy to live stream video using minimum bandwidth.

Multiple platforms can be managed from a single dashboard 

Companies have their accounts on multiple social media platforms. Marketing the content individually for every social media handle becomes a tedious job. A social media marketing software helps to market your brand on multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard. 

Automatic bulk scheduling of posts 

There are specific time slots when your target audience is more active on social media handles than the usual. In those peak times, posts can get maximum traction from the target audience. Those peak times differ from one social platform to another. The automatic bulk scheduling feature has the ability to track and identify those slots based on past data. It allows social media marketers to ‘time’ the posts when the target audience is live and publishes posts accordingly.  They also eliminate the use of regular spreadsheets, that are generally used for social content calendars. 

Social media listening and monitoring

After brands publish their posts on social media, they know that people are talking about the brand, the industry, and their competitors. With people engaging with social media excessively, it takes no time to malign a brand on social media platforms. In times like these, social media listening can help mitigate a brand's reputation by addressing people's grievances actively. A social media marketing software keeps a tab of all conversations. 

Customer engagement

If companies are quick in responding to messages, comments, and mentions with prefabricated messages sent out to customers, it will boost customer engagement. Social media marketing tools have features to send prefabricated messages instantly.

Analytics 

The engagement of a campaign may not be the same on every social platform. It means that the target audience may be unavailable on some platforms. Understanding the availability and traction of target audiences on social platforms helps businesses to plan better content strategies and also to optimize the advertising expenses. This feature of social media software can gauge a company's performance on social media by using real-time analytics derived by the number of likes, retweets, or shares a post gets.

Collaboration within team

It simplifies communication within the team. If you have a team that replies to customer queries on social media, then this feature is very helpful.  Your team can view all your social messages from all channels in one stream. The live activity feature notifies you when a team member is responding to a message in real-time.  It increases the response time and makes sure no tasks or responses are repeated.

Content library and sources

This feature allows for easy management of content across multiple social media handles. A content library makes it easy for teams to share appropriate content. 

Social media advertising 

It helps to manage social media advertising along with posts and marketing campaigns. It also simplifies social media managers' workflows. 

Software Integration

This feature helps integration enable social media marketing software to integrate with many external applications, websites, and services seamlessly. It increases the capability of standalone social media software.

Security 

Security features alert the team of any undesirable activity happening in social media channels. Also, if multiple people are handling social media accounts, it is essential that we give correct permissions to each team member. This prevents the publishing of content, which has not been approved and makes everybody responsible.

Keyword tracking 

To ace social media marketing, we must develop content that consists of words usually used by the searchers. Social media marketing software allows social media marketers to set up a stream containing allocated keywords. Tracking the keywords helps businesses in finding followers who would be more interested in their brand. 

Real-time reach

The real-time reach feature of social media marketing software allows businesses to engage or customers based on breaking news and recent information. Instant posts based on trending topics and current news can engage customers in a positive manner.  This feature tracks all real-time changes in the social network world, and based on its real-time marketing strategy can be made.

Cutting the advertising expense 

A budding startup doesn't have enough budget to advertise through traditional media. Social media advertising provides low-cost entry barriers, and social media marketing software helps you to successfully communicate about your brand’s unique selling proposition on multiple social media platforms. 

         The convenience of managing customer relationships: 

Online social media marketing tools help to manage and track the conversation history to provide a personalized experience to customers.  This also helps to connect customers with the right person from your team to solve grievances.  

         Increase team collaboration: 

It allows the convenience of task delegation to the team. A social media software provides a tool that allows you to work within a shared inbox, that will show you when someone is currently interacting with a message. 

Managing multiple social pages

It will be tedious if one has to individually log into every social media account and check the messages. An online social media marketing software eliminates the difficulty of juggling from every single account. It can aggregate all messages sent to all profiles into one spot, thus saving the time and effort of continually juggling through multiple accounts.

Increases social media accountability

Many times, you will find that several outsiders or employees publish irrelevant content from the official social media accounts. This leads to a question mark on the credibility of the brand for the visitor. Maintaining hygiene in the comments is necessary. Social media tools provide the admin control that prevents such posts from getting published automatically without your permission.

Easy monitoring of Keywords

At times, customers may praise or bad mouth about a brand, but the information may not reach the brand as they may not have used the hashtags. This software will aid us in finding out the adjacent brand keywords to understand their activities. 

Analysis of social media performance

The social media marketing software provides a comprehensive analytics report indicating the content performance on each platform. It gives businesses adequate insights about the target audience, demographics, the peak time when the audience is active online, the most engaging content format, etc. This helps to plan a better content strategy. 

There are many online social media marketing tools available in the market that promise to help you ace the marketing game on social media platforms. While buying, you must keep the following things in mind to evaluate which social media marketing app will work best for your business. 

• Decide upon a budget on how much you want to spend on social media marketing software. Always look into payment options, as there are many vendors who give discounts if you can afford to pay annually. 
• It is mandatory to look for the plan cancellation options. Many online social media marketing software have plan cancellation options and get the amount refunded for unused service. 
• Take maximum advantage of the live demo and get maximum queries and doubts cleared. 
• Always select Social media marketing apps that can be operated from mobile as well as laptops. 
• While buying make sure the software can connect to platforms which are essential and make your evaluation basis the following questions- 

1. Can they post to personal accounts? 
2. Can they post to company accounts?
3. Can they post to groups? 
4. Can they access and use other platform features? Such as liking, commenting, using lists, and so on? 

For further evaluation, go through the checklist below.

Spam Filtering

Please ensure that the software which we are purchasing has a spam filtering feature. The spam emails may contain malware that can hijack social media accounts. Many vendors pass off their products to be free of spams. It is always advised to check user reviews before purchasing. 

         Inaccurate Automated Sentiment Analysis

At times, the software generates inaccurate reports of customer sentiment analysis. This can put a business in jeopardy as we tend to miss valuable social media insights for the automated sentiment analysis reports. 

         Publishing to multiple networks

Though the basic feature of any social media marketing tool is publishing your posts to multiple social media platforms, not all software publish to all networks. Hence, it is important to review as in which social media platforms are essential for the business and see to it that the particular software does publish to those required platforms. 

          Free trial

Before buying any social media marketing software, please ensure that the vendor allows a free trial period to understand and evaluate the software. Any vendor denying the free trial of software can be given a second thought.

The costs of Social Media Marketing  software depends on the following number of factors such as:

• Number of users/admins 
• The number of social networks you can connect – The free pricing tier can allow you to connect only one social media site; the premium tier will allow you to connect with more social media platforms and price to be more as well. 
• Inclusion of analytics data   
• Integration with Google analytics

Social Media Marketing software such as Hootsuite, Hubspot, Mailchimp, etc. have both premium and free plans. SMM tools such as SEMrush, BuzzSumo, SproutSocial will cost you around $79 to $99 a month. AI-powered social media marketing software such as YouScan can cost around $500 per month. Other social media marketing platforms such as Ryzely (also has a free plan with limited features), Buffer, Zoho Social, and PromoRepublic charge between $5 to $15 per month. If you are looking for a free and open source social media marketing software, then you can go with Socioboard. 

With more smartphones and large involvement of individuals with social media platforms, the marketing strategy has evolved over the years. Today 3.8 billion people use social media. Brands that inform and educate on social media platforms rather than adopting a sales strategy are well-placed to build a large customer base. The increasing number of social media users is a positive factor that will drive growth for social media marketing strategy. Companies investing in the right social media tool for b2b social media marketing needs will benefit a lot in the future. 

Goodfirms assist you in understanding the authenticity and accurate categorization of social media marketing software. Goodfirms, researches, categorizes, and lists the best software solutions based on their merits, functions, pricing, customer support, and usability. Goodfirms meticulously analyzes and regularly updates a database of above 9000 software solutions and services. All software included in the final list are further reviewed by the verified users. This makes the Goodfirms' software list highly reliable and trustworthy. Businesses and academic professionals looking for the best social media marketing software for their needs are advised to apply filters based on deployment criteria, pricing models, available support, devices supported, etc. to find the SMM tool that will best suit their needs.