A very important aspect of social media marketing is being able to manage your social media activity. Many people are often overwhelmed as to what tools to use for social media marketing.

They ask questions like:

• How do you schedule posts to go out at a particular time?
• How do you post on multiple accounts simultaneously?
• What tools should you use for meaningful insights on your social media marketing?
• How have your followers grown this month?
• Which times make the most sense to post and drive engagement?

Today, I will be sharing 7 of the best social marketing tools I’ve worked with so far. These tools help you manage, market and measure results of your social media activities. Here we go!

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a great platform to monitor your activities and also post to multiple social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. If you have not tried using Hootsuite yet, you’ll be blown away by how much you can actually do on this great platform.

Hootsuite also allows you to create posts and choose exactly when you want it to be published to your selected accounts.

Hootsuite is an easy web-based dashboard that gives instant data on the performance of social accounts while being integrated with Facebook Insights and Google Analytics.

Check out Hootsuite (https://hootsuite.com)

Price: Free version, then advanced plans vary.

2. Social Mention

Social mention is among my most favourite ‘listening’ tools. This tool is a great, great way to track and measure what people are saying about you, your product, your brand or any topic across the social media platforms.

Social Mention searches and analyses data in a deep and detailed format with four metrics: Strength, Sentiment, Passion and Reach.

Price: free

3. IFTTT

IFTTT is a fantastic tool for all marketers, it stands for – If This Then That.

This tool posts, reads and also does automation with almost all major social networks. Each series of events that you create are called ‘recipes’, and there are thousands of social media recipes that lets you automate and connect the different apps and platforms you love with ‘If this, then that’ statements.

For example, you could thank new followers with the ‘If I get new followers then send them thank you for following tweets’.

The IFTTT is a great app when it comes to time management while sending some repetitive and re-occurring posts.

PS: We use this tool on our Twitter account. Do check us out!

Price: free

4. Buffer

Yes! Buffer has got to make this list, closely related to Hootsuite but still uniquely different.

The idea behind Buffer is this: create a posting schedule for each of your social media accounts, all in one place. You can connect different social accounts like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, and Google+ pages.

After connecting accounts, you can then add posts to your “queue” inside Buffer. Based on your settings, Buffer will automatically share posts from your queue to the social accounts you’ve chosen.

The most interesting thing about Buffer is that you can add content to your ‘queue’ from anywhere on the web. For instance, if you find something interesting online you can easily add it to your Buffer queue.

Price: free version, then advance plans vary.

5. Google Analytics

I’m grateful for the great insight I get from Google analytics. Google Analytics is a completely free tool for analysing website traffic.

Some of the questions Google Analytics helps you answer include:

• How many people visited my website?
• How long did people stay on your website?
• Where is my website traffic coming from?
• Do more people visit my website using mobile devices or PCs?
• How many people visit my website from social media sites?
• What countries are my website visitors in?
• and much more useful insights.

Price: free

6. Buzzsumo

This is one of my favourite online tools that I just can’t get enough of, and I’m sure you’d find it helpful too.

There are many useful features found within BuzzSumo, however, the most useful of these to me are:

• Ability to monitor your social presence
• Finding the most popular content that would resonate with your audience

Buzzsumo gives you a detailed overview of what kind of content is popular and sought after in your industry and what the social numbers are.

It also allows you can check the most influential people in any industry, and even ‘spy’ on competitors to see what has worked for them.

Price: varies from $99 – $999 per month

7. Social Media Platform Tools

Finally, most social media networks have their own built-in analytics that you shouldn’t neglect. Two popular examples include Facebook’s Insights and Twitter Analytics. Using these tools will provide you with a full overview of things you should take note of. Some of these analytics tools even give you the opportunity to export data into spreadsheets and allow you to have really neat reports. Platform tools is a big YES! for me.

Price: free

In summary…

You don’t have to sit glued to your computer all day to get good results; you just need to choose the right tools. Feel free to give the tools listed above a try. You’ll be glad you did!

Do you know of other great social media tools? Feel free to mention them in the comments.