Which social media tools make sense for your brand? Even if you already know what kind of new social media tools you need to look for and why, validating your findings is wise—this list will help!
There are always shifting trends and technological advances happening, and our updated social media tools list captures them. They showcase corresponding social analytics that offer the most powerful insight options available for your social media strategy!
So, let’s get to it! Here’s our list of tools to help you navigate at light speed:
- NetBase Quid
- Rival IQ
- Awario
- Photoshop
- Canva
- Creatopy
- Unsplash
- MavSocial
- Feedly
- Tap Clicks
- Animoto
- Animakr
- Mondaye
- Post Planner
- AdEspresso
- Google Adsense
But first, let’s discuss what social media tools are!
WHAT ARE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS?
Boiled down, social media tools assist with managing social media. And there are a variety of ways they do this. They provide aid in:
- Content Creation
- Automated Responses
- Boosting social media presence
- Brand analysis
- Social Listening Efforts
- Content Scheduling and Publishing
- Monitoring social engagement and reach
Additionally, social media tools increase the fruitfulness of any brand’s social media effort, empowering companies, and amplifying brand messaging across social channels.
And there are important key features businesses should seriously consider when shopping around for social media tools—here are a few:
IDENTIFYING INFLUENCERS:
Consumers trust other consumers more than they trust you, so influencers with a passion for your brand are very valuable. Social listening helps you find them and separate genuine influencers from inflaters. And even with genuine influencers, understanding the extent of their niche influence is crucial as well-social media tools inform you on this as well.
TRENDSPOTTING:
From consumer to industry and category trends-it’s critical to spot them all. Whatever topics have audiences chattering obsessively online – you’ll have the power to identify if it’s a fad or a trend. Additionally, locating industry and category trends inspire new products to meet unmet needs and/or changes in how you do business.
CREATING ENGAGING CONTENT:
Social data reveals what consumers want and which social media sites they’re looking on. And this empowers brands to provide the right content, on the right channels, at the right time. It’s a critical part of any good social media strategy.
KEEPING AN EYE ON COMPETITORS:
Keeping a critical eye on the competition identifies their successes and failures. Social media monitoring helps you understand what is and what isn’t working for your competitors-this way you can copy their winning moves, and likewise, avoid their pitfalls. Additionally, when they fall, you’ll be there to swoop in and pick up the customers they’re leaving in a lurch!
GUARDING YOUR REPUTATION:
Avoiding a brand crisis is critical. One bad post can go viral in seconds, creating a snowball effect. Social media monitoring keeps you aware of potential problems, so you can nip them in the bud before they get out of hand.
There’s really no end to the use cases social listening supports. The right social media management tool can gauge your social media performance across multiple social networks, all from one platform.
With all of that in mind, here are top social media tools to really dig into this year – and we’ll start with the most important category for any brand’s efforts and work our way through the rest!
NEXT GEN AI-POWERED SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS TOOLS
1. NetBase Quid
There’s so much noise online that brands find it increasingly challenging to distinguish between critical and non-essential business issues quickly and accurately. Next generation consumer and market research makes short work of this dilemma, offering a combo approach that reveals the diamond in the rough.
When capturing online insight, a complete picture is key. NetBase Quid®’s social media tools® capture the most complete picture for brands and gathers it onto one platform. And it boasts an insight combo that businesses will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. Our source list includes, but is not limited to:
- Social media
- Business profiles
- Forums
- Blogs
- News articles
- Patent applications
- Consumer reviews
- Voice of customer
- Product reviews
- Bring your own data
That last bit is important, as NetBase Quid® is able to integrate businesses’ CRM, survey and really all kinds of structured and unstructured data they have on hand an apply our powerful next generation AI to analyzing it as part of a big picture output.
And those big picture outputs are not only visually stunning, but exceptionally informative.
Providing actionable insights that leaders need to make strategic business decisions in the moment. These critical business needs include:
- Brand health and perception
- Campaign strategy and execution
- Cultural and market trends
- Product innovation and research
- Competitive and market intelligence
- Key opinion leader identification and influencer marketing
- Strategic risk and M&A analysis
Already the leader in transparent and accurate intel, the social analytics provider helps brands breathe easier with contextualized insight found via social listening, social monitoring, image analysis, competitive analysis, influencer identification, crisis response, and tons more.
Understanding the voice of the customer to create an unparalleled customer experience, and guarding brand health with real-time visual reporting and alerts, combined with a commitment to innovating as the industry changes, keeps this tool at the top of industry-leading brands “must have” list. Rounding out this comprehensive solution with stellar customer service makes this social media tool a no brainer to take for a test drive ahead of finalizing 2023 social media management budgets!
Pricing: Reach out for a personalized quote.
SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS
Putting the “networking” back in social networking, these top social media tools help brands create, monitor, and enhance targeted conversations on social media channels, and sometimes beyond. They’re not only great for helping you get the word out, but to help activate sponsors as well as customers.
2. Rival IQ
There’s a lot that Rival IQ’s social media tools offer, including actionable insights on Facebook and Instagram ads, combined with Google analytics. It also tracks whether competitors have had success with boosted posts and alerts you to every move your competitor makes. Additionally, you can view popular phrases and topics that are driving social engagement in your industry, keeping you in line with trending conversations, maintaining relevancy with your target audience.
You’ll get performance data on Instagram Stories, follower adds and removals, LinkedIn post insights, and more. The insight is super valuable, and it provides context to understand the direction your brand needs to take.
Pricing: Reach out for a personalized quote.
3. Awario
Brands are being mentioned all the time online, and it’s critical to have the top social media tools and listening practices to capture all the murmurs. Mentions are in text form and even images, as we explored above, but companies are also being talked about on video – one site being Vimeo.
Vimeo is the platform where you can upload high-quality videos and show them to your target audience without any ads. So, for those consumers who would like fewer ads, this top competitor of YouTube is a win. And this means you should be monitoring it to see how your brand is perceived.
Awario’s social media management software finds every mention of your keywords on Vimeo and uploads them to your Mentions Feed. These mentions are pulled from videos’ titles, descriptions, comments, and community posts on the platform. Next, you can engage with these mentions and analyze them. This includes understanding sentiment, uncovering demographics, and analyzing mention volume.
Pricing: From $24 to $249 per month, when billed annually
DESIGN TOOLS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
4. Photoshop
This is one of the top social media tools which powers creativity and gets a brand’s social media posts noticed. With their many tools for photo editing and compositing to digital painting, animation, and graphic design-their visual content options can’t be beaten.
You can make the real surreal and the imagined lifelike—something in demand with the growth of TikTok and Instagram’s Reels.
And it allows you to think big – it’s not just for photo touch-ups but also for business card designs, posters, packaging, websites, banners . . . the list goes on.
Photoshop’s stylus comes as close to feeling like the real thing when using it as a paintbrush or creating multiple layers or masks. And it allows you to start on an iPad and finish on the desktop later – making it versatile and appealing for those on the go.
Pricing: Starting at $20.99 per month
5. Canva
This isn’t a new social media tool, but it’s a good social media tool. Canva is perfect for those wanting to maximize their visibility and stand out at the fraction of the cost. This photo and design editing tool has a freemium version and a monthly paid option. Both provide picture templates and access to photo elements, as well as storage-everything you need to create eye-catching social media posts.
The difference comes in amount. With the paid option, you receive a much wider use of the program with 610,000 premium and free templates, as well as larger storage space, the ability to remove backgrounds from photos, and the use of its logo maker. This tool is limited, however. But if all you need is something simple, then it’s a good option.
Pricing: Free edition with limited capabilities, and then Canva Pro is $119.99 when paid annually
CONTENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Creating post content for different social media accounts can be overwhelming. Having social media tools that deliver fresh ideas, is a boon to any content marketing strategy. These next tools deliver new ideas daily to your social media team management and help your brand stay relevant.
6. Creatopy
Scale up your content curation and ad design efforts using the social media tool Creatopy. Use it to customize your own look and feel while adding in those eye-catching details that will draw in a crowd.
With industry-specific templates, you can customize motion, uncover creative elements, use HTML5 animation, and everything else you can think of. Or start with a blank canvas and create your own brand-defining ad using the intel from your social analytics tool.
And because it has workflow control, you can assign and track your team’s efforts, keeping everyone in the same mind.
Pricing: Starts at $17 per month, billed yearly and need to call for enterprise pricing.
7. Unsplash
If you’re looking for fantastic visual content and graphics to help create ads for Facebook, Instagram, or other social media channels, then Unsplash may just be what the ‘ads doctor’ ordered!
They have images for all kinds of endeavors, whether you need marketing images specifically, or something more geared towards TikTok, or even email images. To find just the right graphic, you can search by keyword and then narrow your results by orientation and color. Then simply download your image to use as you see fit.
This tool is a wonderful and quick way to grab images in a pinch.
Pricing: Free
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Managing post schedules and the overarching content brands publish on social media can get complicated. Having team management tools that help you stay organized is important – and a bit of analytics to flesh out the narrative is helpful as well. This one goes out to all the social media managers!
8. MavSocial
Social media management tools that streamline processes makes brands happy and MavSocial customers are apparently the happiest!
MavSocial’s strength lies in streamlining the content curation, publishing across multiple social media accounts, and analytics process. There are stock image libraries and editing tools so you can create eye-catching graphics, and you can monitor content performance, track keywords to identify trends, and reply to all social media accounts from a singular inbox. Sentiment appears to be lacking – which is a big oversight.
Pricing: Starting at $69 per month, billed annually up through enterprise pricing, starting at $499
9. Feedly
Feedly is “where readers become leaders” by curating expert content that helps them establish a presence online as a thought leader.
Brands can organize content into folders and save things to read later or share it to one of their various social media accounts. They also offer social media scheduling for multiple accounts through Hootsuite or Buffer.
Pricing: Free version, and then $6 per month, billed annually; call for enterprise pricing
SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNEL TOOLS
10. Tap Clicks
When Facebook announced they were doing away with their analytics, everyone started scouring to find alternative social media tools. Tap Clicks offers detailed insights into your Facebook efforts, as well as surfaces data on your audience.
This social media software drills down to the granular level to slice and dice intel, revealing a very detailed view of your creative efforts or even your campaigns. Using clusters, it segments this data for easier digestion so you can make better decisions based on more detailed information.
So, though it’s not the Facebook analytics we all knew and loved, we’d argue it offers more, bringing you data you can really use to inform your company on any decision.
Pricing: Contact for pricing beyond that.
Video Tools
11. Animoto
This tool is an online video editor which helps you make professional videos to engage your audiences across your various social media accounts! It features a variety of video types, such as slideshow, promo, social media, and more. It also provides some ready-made templates for busy brands who need a helping hand.
Social media management tools are integral to advertising today, and Animoto knows this. They provide logo watermarks, as well as provide 3 different video aspect ratios so you can optimize your videos by platform. And the cherry on top, is their collaboration tools for teams. This is a top social media tool for video makers.
Pricing: $8-$39 with an annual plan.
12. Animakr
Animation, watermarks, overlays, and other visual content make this all-in-one tool a winner. It’s not just videos, as it offers design tools for GIFs and pictures alike.
Animakr is straightforward with many simple social media management tools, such as one-click picture resizing and drag-and-drop options. They have oodles of templates that are integrated with Getti and Giphy to be used in your next video project, GIF or image.
They are also home to loads of royalty-free music and sounds to incorporate into your ads or social media posts. Your videos can be subtitled, or you can add voices to the animated people you create.
It’s fun to play around with and the potential for creating social media marketing seems endless here.
Pricing: From $10 – $49 per month, billed annually
WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Following the social media content tools, we have workflow management tools. These beauties help brands manage workflows with multiple users around not only content but also lead generation, customer advocacy, and ROI. It’s a mishmash of potential, particularly when partnered with the right next-generation AI-powered social analytics tool!
13. Monday
This is a total social media management package, with social media tools that tackle budgets to campaign ads and sales to team projects, this amazing tool offers big rewards. This all-in-one platform can be integrated with many other existing social media management tools including Facebook, Calendars, Dropbox, and loads more! There are many customizable templates and visual tools to help you better plan and organize your next big moves as a company. And its use cases are variable such as working from home, IT, and software development to name a few.
And the Monday app can be used to build your own apps using their framework—just another way this tool covers all its bases. They also include code-free automation, reducing your chances of human error when managing workflow. For teams, it’s a great addition as you’re able to visually see each member and their workload, so you know who can take on more work and who isn’t.
There’s not a lot that this social media management platform doesn’t do—definitely worth the time.
Pricing: $8-$16 a month Call for enterprise pricing.
14. Post Planner
This site provides some light social media management and falls into the publishing platforms category. It allows you to add your social media platforms as well as RSS blogs to manage and plan your posting days and times. A stand-out feature is how it searches for relevant content and subjects specific to your brand, taking out the stress of trying to constantly come up with new ideas each day.
And if that wasn’t helpful enough, it’s predictive. Each post is analyzed before publishing to predict popularity – so brands have a head start in publishing pertinent content each and every time.
Another aspect of this tool is being able to see all your social media posts in one feed with the ability to organize them into collections. And of course, its low cost makes the investment less risky.
Pricing: From $6 – $349 per month when billed annually.
ADVERTISEMENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
These social media tools are straightforwardly descriptive – they help you plan and measure the impact of your paid advertising and marketing efforts. Social media management platforms also do a variety of other things, but advertising management is super important in itself, so we’re highlighting that part here.
15. AdEspresso
This is best described as a campaign management tool. Brands can create, analyze, and edit campaigns from multiple social media accounts using AdEspresso by Hootsuite. Their SMB option offers AdEspresso University, to help you improve your social media marketing skills and social media management skills, while their agency option allows integration with clients for easy approval of campaigns.
Brands can create experiments to test ad options in minutes, auto-optimize, or auto-boost campaigns for best performance.
Pricing: From $49 – $259 per month, when billed annually.
16. Google Adsense
In the realm of simple marketing tools, Google Adsense is a good one. A well-placed ad is paramount to social media marketing success. And though this free advertising program run by Google doesn’t provide complete social media management, it can boost your brand awareness and your revenue.
It’s best described as a clickable advertisement. When you go to a website and see an ad for Hootsuite, this could be Google Adsense. It allows websites, blogs, and even forums to show ads via text, image, video, or interactive media on their website, with the idea that people will click on them.
Google oversees matching ads to websites, and they are content appropriate to what you’re publishing. With every click your site’s ads get, you get paid a percentage of what the advertisers paid to have their ad shown.
It’s free and easy to set up, as a social media marketer, why not take advantage and see what it can offer you?
Pricing: Free
To sum up, choosing tools to manage social media can feel daunting – especially for small business owners, or those just getting started with social analytics. For those using fewer platforms, or with smaller budgets, built-in analytics like Facebook Audience Insights, Instagram Insights, Twitter Moments, Pinterest Discover, and YouTube Trending you can uncover some basics to help you engage your audience effectively for free.
But ultimately, investing in a social media management platform that provides social listening tools are an investment worth making.
WHAT MAKES A TOP SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL?
The social media marketing and social media management tools you use will either enhance or limit your brand’s capabilities. There are endless social media tools for businesses to choose from and each sub-category serves a different need. But, in combination, you’ll want options that cover the following:
- Basic to sophisticated social sharing capabilities
- Advanced advertising understanding
- Tracking media mentions
- Creating influencer marketing collaborations
- Curating and managing content
- Managing employee advocates’ online activity
- Creating benchmarks for all brand-related activity web-wide
- Understanding and communicating ROI
A few more questions to keep in mind when choosing a social media tool include:
Does the social media tool offer easy integration with other tools?
If you’re searching for one solution that meets every social media management need, you’ll be left with zero options. Top social media tools in different categories will offer ways to integrate data into its tool or ways to export data from it.
Does it offer bells and whistles that are more of a distraction than informative?
Lots of social media tools add easy options (for them) that don’t really have social media management in mind. And unless you keep this forefront as you explore your options, you’ll be left with sound and fury (from your CFO) signifying nothing. Well, except for your reduced marketing budget and potentially your job . . . but we digress.
Is it worth spending more on a social media management tool?
You may start with a less expensive tool to manage social media that excels in one or two areas, as many of the above do. Or you may choose a provider like NetBase Quid® to cover all the bases social media listening requires.
At a certain point, a more streamlined and powerful platform will earn its price tag quickly.
We’re ready to help you when that day comes. In the meantime, start “listening” and see where better insights take your brand. It’s bound to be someplace amazing.
Ready to embrace all that social listening can do for your brand? Reach out and we’ll show you how our tools do the job.
