9 Social Media Marketing Must-Have Tools

Over the last few years,
social media has grown to become an essential aspect of everyday life. For
entrepreneurs, using social media has become a
routine marketing mix. Various social media platforms have millions of
users that allow vendors to connect with the target audience, build
relationships, attract new leads and share information related to your industry
with much ease.

With the endless benefits,
if you aren’t using the various social media channels for your marketing, you
are certainly missing out on various business opportunities for your
venture. Just to prove this, below are
some social media statistics courtesy of social media analysts WebDam,
Advertising Age and JeffBullas.com.

Approximately 72% of internet users are active on
social media daily. 43% of online marketers have found a customer
through LinkedIn. 52% of all online marketers have landed a customer
through Facebook. Emails with social sharing buttons have a 158%
click-through rate higher compared to emails without social sharing buttons. Approximately 47% of online customers attest that
Facebook is their number one influencer of purchase. Up to 86% of online consumers agree that they use
social media in their purchase decision-making process.

Well, with the above
outlined stubborn facts, it is time to create the right social media marketing
strategy. However, doing this by yourself can be daunting, time-consuming and
costly. This is why the introduction, and use of social media tools
received a huge applaud. Well, some of the essential social media marketing
tools you should have are outlined below.

1.    Buffer – best for social media management

Photo credits – Buffer.com

Are you looking to save
time on your social media management? If so, consider integrating buffer in the
list of your marketing tools. Initially, buffer
was a Twitter scheduling tool. However, it has evolved and currently supports
all the major social media channels including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Google+ and Pinterest.

This social media scheduler
makes it easy staying active and engaging on social media. It lets social media
marketers schedule and publish marketing
content on all social media networks.

Some of the neat things Buffer does include; You can add articles and content from web to your buffer queue and share content on
the go through its chrome extension. Shorten links automatically as you share. Upload quality photos and videos Access social media analytics that tracks your
performance over time.Develop a posting schedule to have your content
spread out throughout.

2.    AddThis – best for content distribution, tracking, and analysis

This is an essential social sharing and engagement tool common in various social media websites. It features share and follow buttons that makes it easy to distribute your content, grow your audience and boost your channel social media presence. Besides website marketing, this tool provides valuable data on social media audience behaviour, number of people sharing your content, social engagement, and where your traffic originates.

Photo credits – AddThis.com

Intriguing features of
AddThis include;

Has follow
buttons for easy and quick audience building Gives insights on browser language,
type, date and time of visits to your website and traffic referrers. Responsive as it works with various devices. Easy to install Available for browser extensions

3.    Buzzsumo – best research and insight tool

For effective marketing,
research is a crucial aspect. To succeed among many competitors, you should
research and understand what they are doing. Buzzsumo is a powerful tool for
this. Leverage this tool for keyword research and find trending topics your
audience might be interested in.

Use Buzzsumo to search for interesting posts to share on social media,
share content ideas and competitor research if you have some cash to invest in. Read a thorough review of Buzzsumo.

4.    Google Trends

This is yet another trends hacking and market research
tool. It helps you find what’s hot at that time. This analysis helps you create more relevant content. Searching
through various categories helps marketers understand what concerns followers
at the moment, helping them create content around the issues.

5.   
Google
Alerts – best social listening tool

Social media marketing
isn’t about talking always. Marketers should also have time to listen what followers and potential prospects
have to say. Well, Google alerts is a
free and overly effective tool that helps
monitor what happening around you. You can use it to set alerts for various
keywords, keep track of your brand mentions and important
topics within your niche or about some key competitors.

Mention and social proof
are other amazing social listening tools.

6.    IFTTT – best for social media automation

Employing automation tools
is the best way to save time and money in your marketing strategy. If This,
Then That is a tool that makes running your social media marketing strategy
much easier. With this tool, all you need
to do is create rules that end up triggering specific actions when an action
happens.

Photo credits – IFTT

For instance, you can
create a rule where every time a Google notification or a specific alert
occurs; it is automatically added into
Google documents. You can then check the document
later at your own time. The best part being
that you can override the rules if you are active.

7.    ContentGems – best for content discovery and distribution

This is a content discovery and distribution tool that
scans thousands of online content helping marketers find timely, interesting
and relevant content for distribution to their audience on various platforms.
Having updated content is essential as it leads to more traffic to your
website.

The tool monitors leading
news sites and blogs for exceptional content, gives users access to thousands
of RSS feeds, send weekly emails, has Twitter filters that weeds out
low-quality content and allows marketers
to build customized feeds. Thing is, you
will get to enjoy advanced features of
this tool at a small cost.

8.    Hootsuite – best for social media management

This is a time saving social media marketing tool that allows marketers to manage all their social profiles from a single location. Users can discover and easily schedule content, identify social media influencers, connect with customers and social media platform followers easily.

Photo credits – Hootsuite.com

The tool is easy to
understand and offers an entirely complete set of tools for social media
management. This includes content
scheduling, analytics, curation, monitoring, contests hosting and team
management. It also works as a helpdesk, allowing social media marketers to
protect their reputation and answer clients straight from the application.

9.    Keyhole – for hashtag tracking and keyword analysis

For major social networks
such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, use of hashtags and specific keywords
is vital. Well, to track the performance of hashtags and keywords, you will
need Keyhole. It tracks your account
data, generates analyzed reports and offers ideas and suggestions on how you
can optimize your social media marketing strategy.

It gives analytics for
brand mentions and hashtags, embeds widgets for your website, provides
customized alert email notifications and other collection of social media
marketing features.

Final Thoughts

Social media tools keep on
evolving with new apps and updates being
released regularly. This is an
advantage as it helps boost your social media marketing efforts, ensuring that
your marketing strategy is a success. However, note that not every tool is
necessary or relevant. Not all tools meet
the needed functionality. Therefore, revise your social media strategy,
consider your marketing goals as well as the social media channels you use
before determining the important tools.
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