7 Social Media Tools to Level Up Your Brand Online

With the pandemic, social media is more relevant than ever. Experts have seen a huge leap in social media usage, with over 3.6 billion people on social media, and users averaging 144 minutes online daily. As a marketer, this means bigger opportunities for you to leverage your business on social media. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it seems; social media is a real jungle. To navigate your way through it, take a look at these seven smart tools that will help you level up your social media management game.

The Best Social Media Tools to Use in 2021

These are our picks for the top tools for businesses in 2021:

#1: Figma
#2: Google Docs
#3: Hootsuite
#4: Buffer
#5: Hubspot
#6: Sprout Social
#7: Sendible

Social Media Content Creation Tools

There’s a lot more to social media than simply hitting “post”. For smart businesses, a long-term social media strategy will guide the direction of individual posts, as well as helping you come up with new ideas and establish a brand presence on social networks. If you’re a marketing manager at a small to medium sized business, you’re likely either collaborating with designers, project managers and stakeholders, or you need tools for a smooth content approval process. Here are the main two social media content creation tools that our team uses, at Vine Digital.

Figma

(Forever free plan or $12 and $45 monthly plans)

Figma is a design tool designed for collaboration between team members. By smoothly integrating design features with feedback elements, you can move products quickly through the process of planning social media strategies and posts. For our team, we’ve used Figma to store and create moodboards. This sets the tone for our visual presence on social media, determining how we come across and in turn, how we embody Vine Digital’s values.

Google Docs

While every man and his dog has probably heard of Google Docs, our team uses it so often, we had to include it. This free tool allows for real-time collaboration, with multiple people able to edit cloud-based documents at once. In terms of drafting, editing and approving Vine Digital’s social media copy and captions, Google Docs is a must-have.

Social Media Management Tools 

For savvy businesses, social media management tools are a fact of life. They offer automated social media scheduling and management, all in one easy-to-use software. This can be a major time saver, especially for the busy business owner. Wrangling content takes time, and these tools do it for you.

Hootsuite

(Free plan or $29, $129 and $599 monthly plans)

Hootsuite is now the biggest social media management tool in the world—and for good reason. With over 15 million users including 80% of Fortune 1000 companies, this unique platform has everything you need in one place, from managing multiple social media streams to measuring your social media ROI.

Image source: Shuttershock

Hootsuite is a favourite social media tool among many social media marketers because of its flexibility. Here, you can connect to over 35 social networks, schedule your posts so they get the exposure they deserve, view your analytics to see if your strategies are working, and track conversations within your target market for social listening purposes.

Buffer

(Forever free plan or $15, $99, $199 and $399 monthly plans)

Social media is all about driving meaningful conversations and maintaining good engagement between you and your followers. But things can also get easily overwhelming when you’re juggling different social media platforms trying to figure out what to post and when to post, to get the best results.

Image source: Shuttershock

Buffer makes this all easy with its intuitive social media management platform that allows you to streamline all your processes so you stay relevant and consistent across all your social media channels. This tool is especially popular for its publishing, analytics, collaboration and engagement features that allow marketers to work cohesively towards achieving their social media goals.

HubSpot

($1,120 per month)

Just this year, HubSpot already surpassed more than 100,000 customers and over $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, making it the most popular CRM platform today. With your plan, you get access to an all-in-one marketing software that has everything you need to run campaigns and track results seamlessly.

Image source: Shuttershock

HubSpot specializes in SEO, email marketing, CRM and social media management. Here, you can schedule posts across different platforms all in one place, track engagements, clicks per message, interactions and ROI through its social media reporting system, and build meaningful relationships with your followers.

Sprout Social

($99, $149 and $249 per user per month plans)

Sprout Social may be newer to the business than other social media tools, but it’s gaining more leverage because, like Hootsuite, it offers an all-in-one platform for managing all your social media efforts. A lot of users love Sprout Social because of its clean dashboard where all your information is categorized into Tasks, Messages, Feeds, Discovery, Publishing, and Reports. This makes navigation very convenient even for beginning marketers.

Image source: Shuttershock

Sprout Social also offers a unique feature that allows you to find relevant content ideas to share on your social media channels. This cuts down your time in finding share-worthy content that would add interest to your channels and articles are categorized based on your niche or industry. Although Sprout Social is more expensive because of its per-user plan, a lot of marketers still use this tool because it adds value to their social media efforts.

Sendible

($29, $99, $199 and $299 per month plans)

Sendible has been making waves as one of the best social media management tools for agencies with several clients. This tool supports all the big social network sites and allows you to manage several accounts under each platform. One of the best features of Sendible is the convenience of creating and scheduling posts across different social media platforms. It also features a content recommendation tool where you are given a long list of relevant content to share online.

Sendible also has a built-in CRM where you can automate a lot of your tasks and keep up with all the interactions, engagements and metrics in all your social media accounts without having to do the legwork yourself. It even has a Twitter auto-reply and auto-retweet feature where Sendible’s system can track certain keywords or hashtags and automatically retweet or respond to these posts. Reporting is made easy with Sendible, because you can customize your dashboard according to what you want to show. You can also use any of the platform’s existing templates or create one specific to your needs.

Image source: WOCinTechChat.com

Finding The Right Social Media Management Tools For You

No two social media management tools are the same; just as no two businesses are the same. That’s why it’s important to try out a few different tools, and discover what works best for you. The social media management tools we’ve mentioned generally have a lot of flexibility, which means you can customise its functions to fit the unique needs of your audience. Above all else, remember that there’s always tweaks you can make; a solid social media strategy is always a work in progress—forever evolving and always adapting to the climate of social media. So long as you stay focused on a set of clear goals, you’ll find the best social media management system for you.

Taking Your Social Media Game to the Next Level

These social media management tools can definitely make your life easier while ensuring that you’re leveraging your brand to its full potential. With that said, it can quickly feel overwhelming as you try to decide which scheduling tool is best for you. For many businesses, an agency can provide much-needed support and expertise in a field where it’s easy to get lost in all the knowledge. Should you need help taking it to the next level, speak to one of our experienced social media managers and see how we can be of help.