In the past few years, social media marketing has evolved into one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. The sheer volume of users and interaction makes it a great platform for any business to gain exposure. Companies can easily turn a Facebook presence into profits. So how can you stand out amongst your competitors in this crowded space?
What is Social Media Marketing Tools? Social media marketing is an online technique of marketing products and services using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and other similar platforms. The goal of social media marketing is to boost brand awareness and credibility through networks like these.
Social media marketing tools are software programs that allow you to create social media marketing activities. These software programs provide a range of functions that focus on specific areas like managing social networks, scheduling posts, developing and measuring strategies, communicating with followers, and so on.
IFTTT
So you’ve got your social media posts scheduled and maybe you even crossed off the content curation task. What’s the next step? To automate everything that comes before and after (and in between). That’s what IFTTT is for. The name of this automation tool stands for If This, Then That. It links all kinds of apps and services together to automate multi-step tasks in whatever way you want. So for example, if you publish a blog, you can create an IFTTT “recipe” that will see the new post and create a tweet as well as an Instagram post about it. If there’s a task in your social media marketing workflow that you always forget about despite all the post-it notes, try IFTTT. Price: free
Buffer
Buffer is a popular scheduling tool that allows marketers to schedule posts across a variety of social media platforms. You can either tailor each post to each platform or publish the same one everywhere.
You can use a Buffer Chrome extension to add any content you find on the Web to the Buffer queue. This adds a bit of fun and creativity to the whole process of content aggregation and sharing because for once you don’t have to plan what to share in advance. Yet your posts still will be shared at the best possible times. You can also track links to see which content is most popular with your readers.
Price: freemium; paid plans from $15/mo
Quuu
Already got Buffer? To simplify your work even further, i.e., to eliminate the part where you are the one looking for valuable content to share, start using Quuu. This is a social media marketing tool that curates content for you: it takes hand-picked, always relevant content, and adds it to the Buffer queue. This eliminates any trouble of curating and sharing any content other than the stuff you most want to share (i.e., your own blog posts and promotional content).
GaggleAMP
Price: Starts at $12 per month w/ free demo
The double-edged sword that many marketers face when developing their social strategy is finding the time to post consistently, while also having enough reach to make such efforts a wise investment.
Enter GaggleAMP.
GaggleAMP is a social media tool that allows you to automatically tap into a larger network of people – coworkers, influencers, or business partners – to auto publish your posts to their own social networks.
How It Works
GaggleAMP allows you to request members to join your “Gaggle”. Once you have your group of influencers, you can then schedule a post simply by composing it in the editor and choosing which social platforms you’d like to publish to. Pick a time to publish – and then once posted you will have reached not just the followers of your business, but also the networks of your influencers.
It’s an easy way to amplify your social voice while increasing reach and drawing traffic back to your website.
MobileMonkey
Price: Free Version or plans start at $21.75 a month
You may already utilize a chatbot strategy for your website. MobileMonkey allows you to extend that strategy to Facebook Messenger. This is a very valuable tool, specifically if Facebook is the primary social platform for your buyer personas.
MobileMonkey allows you to build customizable chatbots for Facebook Messenger, which automatically respond to your prospects or customers. It also offers features like Chat Blaster – where you can send a “bulk chat” to all of your Messenger contacts, Drip Campaigns within Messenger, Facebook Messenger Ads, and Auto-Response to Facebook Comments.
How It Works
To build a custom bot within MobileMonkey, head over to the Bot Builder. Here you’ll be able to create your first dialogue. The tool has easy to use widgets, which can be combined to create your bot conversation template. Some of the features you add to your conversation include:
- Text
- Images
- Image galleries
- Native video
- Attachments and PDFs
- GIFs
- Email notifications
- Navigation elements
- Questions and forms
Once you have your chatbot created, you can then set up different campaigns like those mentioned above.
OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a powerful lead generation tool that lets you engage visitors at exactly the right moment. It has a drag-and-drop template for building visually stunning lightboxes, popups, and landing pages that capture leads. Everything from growing your mailing list to recovering abandoned carts can be solved using OptinMonster’s amazing set of tools.
Ready to hear something really cool? OptinMonster can now be part of your social media marketing campaign. Simply use the new ChatBot element to connect to ManyChat. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to share your best-performing optins over Facebook Messenger.The ChatBot element requires a Growth Plan. That way, you can bring the optins to your leads. Not the other way around.
RafflePress
RafflePress is the best giveaway plugin for WordPress. With its drag-and-drop giveaway builder and viral giveaway templates, you can quickly create a fun online contest for your audience.
Where RafflePress comes in handy for social media marketing is with the verified bonus actions feature. This feature lets you reward users with extra contest entries for performing specific actions like:
- Following you on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
- Viewing a Facebook post/video
- Visiting your YouTube channel
- Sharing your giveaway on social media
- And much more
RafflePress is the perfect tool for boosting your social media following and engagement. Plus, it can also help you drive more traffic to your site, grow your email list, and even increase sales.
Followerwonk
Followerwonk is a tool exclusively for use with Twitter. It’s also one of the most in-depth and useful tools on this list. Followerwonk will help you analyze and optimize your Twitter audience. It does this by suggesting people for you to follow, ultimately helping you grow your base. If Twitter is part of your social media marketing campaign, this tool is a must-have.
Agora Pulse
Agora Pulse is a simple and affordable solution to social media management. It has all the basic scheduling and analytics features, and you can also run contests, quizzes, and promotions. It even allows you to see how your social media marketing campaign stacks up against your competitors. Want to give it a try? Take advantage of their free trial and see how you like it.
CrowdBooster
CrowdBooster delivers real-time data that you can access quickly. You can create reports measuring your key performance metrics, and even export them via graphs and tables. This information helps you adapt to your audience more effectively. It gives you suggestions for who to engage and how you can improve content.
Conclusion
The world of social media moves fast. As you’re reading this, new sites are popping up, and others are declining in popularity. That’s why having a strategy and the proper tools to track your efforts is so important for your business. Social media marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your target customers. It also provides you with an opportunity to build relationships that can lead to sales of your products and services.