Best Apps for Social Media Management
Managing your business’s social media channels can be difficult, especially if you’re posting on each site manually. By now, we all know the power of social media, and that we should be posting at least once per day on each social channel to establish our brands and connect with our audience. But it gets overwhelming, right? Going on to each platform — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, …and more — and creating individual posts is tough, even for seasoned social media marketers.
So, I wanted to put together a list of a few tools that have helped me to manage my business’s social media profiles better. Here are the tools you need to be using to make managing your social media marketing a lot easier.
#1 Hootsuite
Hootsuite is my favorite tool for managing all of my social media platforms. It allows users to schedule their content for weeks in advance. It supports many social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
What I like about Hootsuite is that it allows me to post the same piece of content onto multiple platforms at once. I like the option to set engagement targets and goals so that I can track my social media campaign’s success. Hootsuite also makes it easy to follow comments left by your audience. It compiles all comments and lets you respond from the Hootsuite dashboard.
Hootsuite does have a free version that allows 1 user to connect up to 3 social accounts. But they also have a 30-day free trial for business users, which allows for multiple users and 10 or more social accounts.
#2 Canva
Canva is a content creator’s best friend. It’s basically like an easy to use photoshop. It’s a web-based app that allows users to create really nice social media posts — both still images and animations. It comes with a huge range of templates, including templates for all popular social platforms, like Instagram story templates, Facebook banners, Twitter posts, and more.
I really like the tools that Canva offers. I can choose from a huge range of images, shapes, animated icons, text fonts, and more. Pretty much anything you need to create awesome social media images, Canva provides. It also lets you provide a sharing link with other Canva users so that you can collaborate on the same piece of content with your team.
The free version of Canva is enough for my needs. But their premium version offers even more tools, images, and icons, which are a lot more professional looking. So it might be worth trying Canva’s premium version if you’re looking to create a lot of high-quality content.
#3 TweetDeck
TweetDeck is like Hootsuite, but it’s only for Twitter. TweetDeck lets you schedule tweets, monitor audience engagement, see notifications, reply to messages, and respond to your followers’ comments.
It basically gives you an easy to understand breakdown of what’s happening on your Twitter account.
The best thing about TweetDeck is that it’s 100% free! It also allows you to add multiple users, so your team can collaborate and manage your business’s Twitter page.
I much prefer managing my Twitter via TweetDeck than I do via Hootsuite. If you’re using Hootsuite’s free version, using TweetDeck allows you to remove your Twitter account integration from Hootsuite and replace it with another social profile on your free Hootsuite account.
#4 Sprout Social
Sprout Social is great for tracking the performance of social marketing campaigns. It creates detailed reports on each of your social channels’ performance, which can help inform your social marketing strategies.
I like Sprout Social for a few reasons. First, for a very professional tool, it is straightforward to set up. Second, all reports are detailed yet simple to understand.
Sprout Social also has social listening tools that help users better understand the types of content they should be posting to get the best engagement.
Sprout Social does have a free trial. But they don’t have a free plan. The paid plans are pretty expensive, but as Sprout Social is one of the most advanced social media tools available, I’d say it’s worth the investment — if you’re going to be using it daily.
#5 Biteable
Biteable is a video content creation platform. It’s similar to Canva but specializes in video content.
Video content is super important. It’s responsible for the largest engagement numbers of any other form of content, including blogs, image posts, and text posts. So it’s great that Biteable makes creating high-quality video content very simple.
I found Biteable very easy to use. There’s a decent range of tools and a massive library of clips to create professional video content.
Biteable does have a price tag, but I think it’s worth it. My business probably posts around 3 to 4 videos per month, and Biteable makes this very cost-effective compared to hiring a video editor or using more professional apps like Adobe Premier.
Staying On Top of Your Marketing Strategies
Marketing is fun. But it’s even better when you’re very organized and have a solid strategy in place. Social media is one of the most important aspects of a modern-day business’s marketing strategy. It’s super important that you do everything you can to make the most of social media platforms.
Using the tools mentioned in this article will save you so much time and energy when managing your social profile, allowing you to focus on more important aspects of your marketing strategy.
If you’re looking for more ways to improve your marketing strategy, check out some of the latest posts on the Intentionally Inspirational blog.
Written by Lewis James
