By: LeVi Pham
Whether you are a small business or an enterprise company, you are probably spending a lot of time and resources on social media to reach your customers, clients, and readers. With an ever increasing demand to stay current and present on many platforms at once, how do you stay on top of all your social media marketing tasks? Are you effectively monitoring and optimizing your content’s performance? It can easily get overwhelming without the right tools, so we have compiled a list of the top 10 most popular social media management apps right now that you can use to save time and streamline your marketing efforts!
Before we start, we should mention that all major social networks offer analytic tools, including:
- Facebook Analytics
- Instagram Insights
- Twitter Analytics
- Pinterest Analytics
- LinkedIn Analytics
- YouTube Analytics
- Sprout Social
- Hootsuite
- Snaplytics
- Tailwind
- Quintly
- Audiense
- Keyhole
- Buffer
- BuzzSumo
- Iconosquare
Sprout Social is one of the most popular social media management tools for businesses and agencies of all sizes. It aims to be a single hub for social media publishing, analytics, and engagement across many social profiles. The platform allows you to draft, store, and queue all your social media posts and see them organized in a calendar. The dashboard helps you monitor the performance of your posts, with features such as deep media listening (tracking hashtags and keywords), a unified social inbox, trend analysis, and more. All of these are wrapped in a clean, modern user interface that is easy to set up and master.
Hootsuite is probably the biggest and most well-known social media management tool, with more than 17 million customers over its 10-year run. On the platform, you will be able to schedule posts from multiple profiles across multiple social media sites, as well as filter through existing social media to find brand mentions, insights, and demographic information. Hootsuite’s analytics feature allows you to track and measure performance against KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Furthermore, their education program, Hootsuite Academy, will teach you how to use the platform as well as enhance your social media skills.
Snaplytics is one of the few available tools that provide insights into Snapchat content, besides Snapchat’s own. The Copenhagen-based tool was launched in 2015, offering key metrics on Snapchat stories such as open rates, views, the average number of screenshots per story, and completion rate. It can also provide the same insights on Instagram Stories. You can use Snaplytics’ library of previously created content to view past efforts, see how well users engage with them, and republish. The tool also allows story scheduling for more complex marketing campaigns. The only criticism of the platform is that pricing is not available upfront on the website. You must contact Snaplytics team for a quote after the 14-day trial is over.
Tailwind is a tool catered especially for Pinterest and Instagram, which is especially useful for e-commerce businesses in the fashion or jewelry sectors. Besides basic features such as schedule posts, monitor conversations, and measure results, Tailwind also provides platform-specific features such as Pinterest content promotion and Instagram user-generated content (UGC) management. The platform also allows you to upload images in bulk using a drag-and-drop calendar to save time.
Quintly is an analytics tool that allows you to benchmark all your social media management against each other and against your competitors to gain comparative insight. It offers more than 350 metrics relating to social media activities that you can use right away or customize to suit your business’ goals. The data can then be compiled into flexible, shareable dashboards and exported in a variety of formats including CSV, PDF, and PPTX.
Audiense provides one of the most comprehensive insights into your Twitter audience. It analyzes social data such as affinities and demographics to help you understand your audience and compare the results with your competitors. The platform offers many filter options when you create a report, which you can mix and match to ensure you are analyzing precisely the segment of your audience that most interests you. Another cool feature is the ability to create your chatbot and engage with customers via Twitter DMs.
Keyhole is a 2-in-1 tool that allows you to automate your posts and track keywords or hashtags across Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. It also allows you to monitor brand mentions across blogs and news sites. It can predict your campaign’s performance with machine learning and make changes accordingly, as well as analyze people’s sentiments when they engage with your posts. This allows for an easier, smoother experience when managing multiple social media accounts and helps to provide a deeper insight into your audience.
Buffer is perhaps the most convenient tool for posting and scheduling posts across multiple social media platforms, further enhanced by its mobile application and an extension for your web browser. The Buffer app allows you to easily schedule posts on the go with its simple drag-and-drop interface, while the browser extension lets you queue content from any website to be shared on your feeds with just one click. If you are an entrepreneur running your business solo, you can get Buffer’s free account which allows up to 3 social accounts and 10 scheduled posts.
BuzzSumo is unique on this list because of its ability to analyze social media profiles and connect you to influencers to promote your brand. Micro-influencers are one of the top social media marketing trends to follow in 2019. BuzzSumo is a great starting point if you want to add influencers to your marketing strategy. You can also use the tool to gain a better understanding of your impact on social media through a comprehensive overview of posts shared on different platforms.
Iconosquare is one of the most useful platforms to use if your business mainly runs on Instagram Business and Facebook Pages. The app helps you monitor, publish, and analyze visual content on the social web. You can schedule content in advance and preview what you feed will look like, which is particularly handy if your brand adheres to a particular aesthetic. Iconosquare’s Listening feature allows you to monitor up to 50 Instagram users or Facebook pages in a single feed, which is useful for tracking new trends or competitions.
The Final Verdict
There are hundreds of social media management tools out there for you to choose from, but the most important thing to consider is whether they are right for the job. If all you need is a tool to manage your Facebook and Instagram channels, then it may not be worth it to subscribe to a pricey product with too many features that you won’t use. Consider the features we have listed above and make good use of the trial period to find out which tool suits you best.If you have more questions about social media management, speak to an UpOnline representative today!