Having a robust social media presence and a strong user community has become a cornerstone of successful digital marketing. And in-line with the popularity of using social media to connect with audiences, there is now an entire industry of social media tools to help brands create and schedule content, analyze their performance, and manage marketing campaigns spread across multiple social channels.
Trouble is, there are so many tools out there it can be hard to see the wood for the trees and know which ones will be the best for you. So we’ve done the leg work for you. Here are our top picks of the three best social media tools for content curation, content creation, scheduling, and analytics.
Social media tools: benefits for brands
But first, what’s the actual point of using social media tools and how can they help you create a competitive advantage? The benefits of using social media tools go far beyond simply scheduling posts for the week and can even help you analyze spending and prove ROI. Using social media tools can help you to:
- Keep up with and track social media engagement to get closer to your customers.
- Manage multiple social pages from one place for all your locations, campaigns, and products.
- Build social calendars and analyze performance so your next campaign is a finely tuned and well-oiled machine.
- Pull performance reports to review spend, compare actuals with goals, and prove ROI to stakeholders.
Top content curation tools
These tools help you scour the web for inspiring content to plug the holes in your social calendar and keep your audience engaged:
*All prices are in $ and billed monthly
Feedly
A news aggregator that gives you an awesome way to find and save interesting content to share on social.
Great for: compiling news feeds that you can customize to your audience.
Cool features:
- Add notes and highlights to content
- Save content to Evernote, Pocket, and OneNote
- Share to LinkedIn, Buffer, Hootsuite, Zapier, and IFTTT
Price: Free, $8 Pro or Enterprise level
Hootsuite
An all-in-one dashboard to find, schedule, and share relevant content.
Great for: managing multiple social media channels in one place.
Cool features:
- Automatically updated content streams to create your curated posts from
- Social media analytics
- Social media listening to track key phrases across posts
Price: Ranging from $40 a month to $520 for businesses, or custom Enterprise packages
BuzzSumo
Helps you find trending content based on keywords.
Great for: finding the most popular content that gets the highest engagement over time.
Cool features:
- View “most shared content” reports
- See what’s trending with your audience right now
- Real-time monitoring
Price: $99 Pro, $179 Plus, $299 Enterprise
Top social media scheduling tools
These social media scheduling tools save you time manually publishing posts for you so you have more time to create content and operate your social account efficiently:
ContentCal
A content calendar and social media scheduling platform in one.
Great for: planning your content and posting to social media from the same app.
Cool features:
- Manage multiple social accounts in one place
- User permissions and streamlined approval flows
- Communicate and collaborate with your team in-app
Price: $17 Pro, $47 Company, Custom
Sendible
A social media management platform that connects to just about any social network.
Great for: agencies managing several client social media accounts.
Cool features:
- Post directly to social media as well as to WordPress, Medium, Tumblr, and Blogger
- Geo-targeting to reach specific audience segments
- Integrated dashboard and tools for publishing, collaborating, analytics, CRM, and social listening
Price: $29 Creator, $199 Scale, $399 Expansion
Sprout Social
An all-in-one social media scheduling and posting tool.
Great for: scheduling and posting across multiple social media platforms.
Cool features:
- Monitor and engage multiple social channels
- Profiles, keywords, and location monitoring
- Tasking and social CRM tools
Price: $99 Standard, $149 Professional, $249 Advanced
Top content creation tools
Creating social media content that has a chance of standing out takes time. That’s why these specialized content creation tools can save your hours by designing content that’s tailored to your audience and channel(s):
Rocketium
Create designs and videos for social media and advertising in minutes.
Great for: creating high-impact videos and stories.
Cool features:
- Get started with on-brand creative templates
- Creative automation to scale production
- Multi-channel integration for quick delivery
Price: Free, $49 Pro, Enterprise
Canva
Incredibly easy to use graphic design software for a range of marketing needs
Great for: creating images, quotes, stories, and infographics
Cool features:
- Thousands of ready-to-go templates to choose from
- Teams can collaborate on projects in real-time
- Speech bubbles, text boxes, photo effects, and image editing features
Price: Free, $12.95 Pro, $34 Enterprise
Infogram
An app that helps you visualize data beautifully
Great for: creating stunning infographics, charts, and maps
Cool features:
- 35 charts and 500 map templates to choose from
- Create on-brand template designs
- Add animations and interactive elements to charts and maps
Price: Free, $67 Business, Enterprise
Top social media marketing metrics and analytics tools
Where do you turn when you want to find out how your social media campaigns are performing? Thanks to these clever apps you can understand how you’re engaging with your audience:
Zoho Social
A unique and powerful app to manage your brand on social.
Great for: understanding your audience and how they engage with you.
Cool features:
- Listen to multiple channels and measure individual post engagement
- Create intuitive reports based on your audience segments
- Analyze content formats connections engage with most
Price: $17 Standard, $70 Premium, $370 Agency
Keyhole
An app with various trackers that help you monitor social media performance and trends.
Great for: tracking events, campaigns, influencer activity, and brand mentions.
Cool features:
- Use AI to predict your campaign’s performance and make pre-launch optimizations
- Analyze audience sentiments when they engage with your posts
- Track posts, reach, shares, and more for you and your competitors
Price: $99 Standard, Enterprise
Socialbakers
A collection of analytics tools for everything you’d need including profile tracking, KPIs, competitive intelligence, and automated reporting.
Great for: analyzing audience sentiment towards your campaigns
Cool features:
- Tools for publishing and optimizing content, identifying influencers, and persona mapping
- Decide whether to boost posts based on predictive analytics
- Compare your performance to competitors on Facebook and Instagram
Price: $200 Essential, Custom
Plan and manage your next marketing campaign in its entirety from one place
Social media marketing is just one piece of the marketing puzzle and running campaigns across digital and offline channels often feels like spinning plates. That’s why Mediatool integrates with social media channels including Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook and feeds the data into your overall marketing campaign so you can see how your socials are performing alongside your other digital and offline channels. See how Mediatool can help you plan, track, and optimize your marketing campaigns and contact us to book a demo.
