The Executive Suite: 7 Social Media Marketing Tools to Up Your Game

Sunday, December 17, 2017

7 Social Media Marketing Tools to Up Your Game

Today’s marketers (especially the social media kind) have to be data geeks.

With the amount of information we have to filter, categorize and organize every day, there’s no way to have any kind of success without tools that turn big data into relevant bits of knowledge. So we rely on automation, analytics, listening tools and more.

At the digital marketing agency I run, we use at least three research and SEO tools for every blog post we write and at least five tools to help us create, implement and monitor social media strategies.

I have personally tested dozens if not hundreds of said tools and I keep on doing that. I know that every day new tools are being developed and new features appear in older tools. So I need to make sure that we use the best tools available in order to generate the best results for our clients.

This is what our social media marketing tool deck looks like. In other words, these are the tools that help us make sure we keep our clients ahead of their competitors:
7 social media marketing tools we use on a daily basis

You’ll notice that some of these tools are completely free. Others have free trials or limited options in their free mode.

I’ll be honest: some are definitely worth paying for. For others, the free version is enough if you have a single brand to manage or if you’re up against moderate competition.

Since we offer professional social media marketing and management services, we use (and pay for) the vast majority of these tools.

1. Sendible

Along with Buffer, Agora Pulse, HootSuite and others, Sendible is one of the top social media management platforms out there. It may be less known than its competitors, but I personally believe that’s not fair.

We’ve been using Sendible for more than two years in house. For some of our clients, we use other tools, so I have done my fair share of comparing between them.

What I like about Sendible is its user-friendliness, the in-depth reports you can generate with it and the stellar customer service. I chose it and passed on others because at that time it was the only one to support Pinterest. Now, there are, of course, other tools that do that, but Sendible is still among the first to introduce new features and new platforms.

Pro tip: If you have a single set of social media channels to manage (for a single brand), Buffer is a free option, while Sendible is not.

2. SEMrush

SEMrush is our go-to competitor analyzer. We use it for both social media (for instance, to check our growth compared to that of our competitors) and for copywriting (mainly for keyword research).

You can get quite a lot from SEMrush’s free version, but if you’re serious about in-depth analytics, I strongly recommend the paid version.

3. Social Quant

I have used Social Quant on more than a dozen Twitter accounts to boost their growth. Here’s how it works: you link your Twitter account to Social Quant, add a few hashtags that are relevant to you and SQ will follow those accounts on your behalf. Briefly put, it’s a great way to automate Twitter growth.

What you can expect: the free trial lasts 14 days. Depending on your industry, you can get 100-700 new followers during that time. For the paid version, you can expect 1,000+ followers every month.

4. BuzzSumo

This is a great tool for both copywriting and social media. Search for a topic on BuzzSumo and you’ll learn which articles covering it were the most shared on social media. You can also search for social mentions and monitor your profiles.

For us, it’s a good place to start our research and get a sense of what we’re up against. The paid version gives you access to more in-depth reports and more results on a query.

5. TweetReach

This is one of the tools that can give you a lot of insight even in its free version. Simply search for a hashtag, a username or a keyword and you’ll get a thorough report on it.

We use this to see how well our Twitter accounts perform over a given period of time. Along with other similar tools and reports, it helps us make more sense of data and transform vanity metrics into actionable items.

6. Google Alerts

This one is pretty simple and completely free to use. Add a brand or a name and receive e-mail alerts whenever it’s mentioned anywhere on the Web.

You can use it to monitor your own brand, your competitors, certain keywords or even yourself.

7. Canva

This is a tool that will turn even the most graphics-challenged person (I do believe I am reigning queen here) into a superb designer. It’s easy to use, mostly free and perfect for social media images, especially the motivational ones.

What about you? What are your favorite social media tools? What have I left out?