Social Media Marketers know digital marketing is not a small or easy job. There are tons of platforms you need to keep up with, different posting times for almost every one of those platforms, and of course, different content for each one. With all that going on in just your social media marketing, how is one person supposed to manage all those tasks plus run a business? That’s where we come in. The marketing experts at IDM know how hard it can be to juggle everything and they have searched the web far and wide for the tools and apps to help best manage all your business’s social media accounts.
Management Tools
Hootsuite tends to be the favorite among our social media marketers. One of its biggest perks is that it allows you to manage multiple platforms from one screen including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, WordPress, and Foursquare. You may not have that many accounts to manage in the beginning, but Hootsuite gives marketers room to grow and, as a bonus, allows for team collaboration. It starts at $19 a month, and you can add up to ten accounts at that time. The biggest downside? Analytics reports are an add-on feature that you will have to upgrade your account to get.
AgoraPulse is another fantastic management tool. It allows you to manage Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts all in one place. While it has a slightly higher monthly cost at $29 a month, it also has the added perk of being able to track the performance of your marketing with detailed statistics at no extra charge. It also provides excellent features for Facebook, such as the ability to conduct quizzes and run contests but sadly doesn’t seem to offer the same features for Twitter. Biggest downside? Besides not having enough features to use with platforms other than Facebook, it does not support Google+ either.
Tailwind is named commonly seen nowadays within social media marketing boards and comes highly recommended by most. The biggest downside? It can only be used for Pinterest and Instagram. The best things about this tool are that even though it only allows for the use of the two platforms, it can be used to schedule pins, suggest the perfect hashtags, and uses analytics to track the activity on Pinterest and Instagram helping to discover the best content and times that draw people to your pages.
Social Media Analytics Tools
While Google Analytics may not be the most straightforward tools to use, it is our social media marketers favorite! Its price can range anywhere from $0 to $150,000 a year depending on what you need and how big your business is. Google Analytics allows you to track not only the performance of your social media marketing campaigns but also website traffic from those campaigns as well. As an added perk, google analytics can be used on your computer or as an app on your phone. Great news for those busy marketers! The biggest downside we can find? You will want to have plenty of training and practice to use this tool.
SumAll works with over fifty major platforms including Facebook, Twitter, You-Tube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. As a bonus for those with Shopify or eBay businesses, you can also collect data on your sales and customers as well. They provide a seven-day trial period to see if you like it and then after their pricing starts at $59 a month. The only downfall we found in this is that there is no way to track your competitors.
Bitly is a free app that allows marketers to shorten links to their sites to post them to sites such as Twitter and Instagram. The best part about Bitly is that it can be used on any platform you can think of and allows you to do basic tracking of the clicks and shares of your links. Biggest downside? Bitly works great for the businesses that rarely share links, but if you are medium to larger business you will need to upgrade to enterprise pricing.
Campaign Tools
WooBox can run anywhere from $0-$299+ a month and provides users with a way to create sweepstakes that achieve results. Within this tool, you can collect entries and email, maximize viral referrals, request entrants to like or follow your social media, and pick one or more winners randomly with the click of a button. The user interface seems to be the biggest downside to this tool as many users report that it needs improvements.
Heyo has plans starting as little as $25 a month and boasts a very user-friendly platform. Within this tool, you will find widgets that can quickly help you to install features such as contact forms, share buttons, and payment options. Heyo’s biggest downfall? If you have more than one Facebook account, you’ll need to upgrade your plan.
Rafflecopter helps you to easily create and run giveaways through multiple social media platforms as well as your website. With bonus features, like a refer-a-friend entry option to attract more participants, and the ability to run your giveaways in six different languages! The biggest downside to this tool is that the better features, such as email integration, only come with premium accounts.
Every social media marketer knows that to be able to juggle all the different digital marketing platforms, you need a good toolbox. At IDM, our team of marketing experts has the best tools to be able to publish, manage, and track all your business’s social media marketing. Call (757) 514-1671 today to speak with one of our marketing experts about managing your social media or schedule a consultation.
