Welcome to 2020! Although you can’t be sure what the new year will bring, you should respond to predicted trends – and definitely look for the golden mean between task automation and proper personalization.
It does mean, however, that social media managers face a challenge nowadays. How can you keep up with the changes in the ecosystem of social platforms, carry out activities in line with business goals, and create attractive content at the same time? These are not the easiest tasks, especially when your responsible for many profiles and don’t have a large team at our disposal.
Luckily, this is when proper social media management tools come in useful. First of all, in the era of a million tasks and challenges waiting around the corner, performing them independently and manually becomes impossible. Therefore, the right tools can definitely support your social efforts and make many tasks easier, faster and simply better done.
In fact, using tools and automating tedious tasks allows social media managers to focus on more creative and long-term activities, such as boosting engagement, interacting with fans & followers, building a community around the brand, and even exploring new discoveries in the social media realm in the meantime. That’s precisely why it’s useful to get familiar with such social media apps.
What social media tools should be used in 2020?
It is worth building a toolbox that will help you in everyday tasks, but it should not be seen as a replacement for the entire strategy. There’s a misconception that the use of several tools is enough to conduct successful social media activities. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tools are meant to support your efforts, not replace experienced and knowledgeable social media specialists. And rightly so.
Here’s the thing: finding tools is not difficult. Finding good social media marketing tools, on the other hand, is a completely different story. What tools are worth testing out in 2020, then?
Social media content creation tools
How to create attractive content for social media purposes? While almost every “social media ninja” knows Canva, there are many tools on the market that are equally successful. Take Crello, as an example, which allows you to design images and animated posts in just a few clicks. Other online graphic wizards that are worth mentioning are definitely Stencil and FotoJet. For those looking for great templates for their Instagram Stories: Easil and Kapwing will be more useful (talking about the Story Templates option, but you can also use many others). For more advanced infographics, though, Venngage will be a better choice.
If you’re looking for an even more sophisticated infographics solution that doesn’t require a professional designer to use (even though our design team loves it!), look no further than Visme.
Visme’s drag-and-drop editor and 100’s of premade templates empowers users to create and present compelling and engaging infographics. It’s especially neat if you plan to update your infographics because, let’s face it, numbers change over time. You can swiftly insert new blocks anywhere in your previous design to add more content.
Based on our assessment, Visme and Venngage both have their strengths but when it comes to infographics specifically, Visme wins. Here’s a great full comparison of these two infographic designers.
What else can be used for graphic design? If you have no access to branded photos or premium photo banks, it is good to rely on proven free sources. You can find interesting and frequently updated photo databases on Rawpixel or Kaboompics. SmartMockups will allow us to create your own mockup, while thanks to Coolors, you’re able to choose the right colours for all visuals. Remove.bg will be useful for quickly removing the background from images, though.
A valuable source of new illustrations to use or tools to test out is also… Product Hunt. Within the platform, you can easily learn about new products and deals, especially if you check it regularly.
Interestingly, Blog Ideas Generator from HubSpot or Answer The Public can be useful for social media copy creation as well. By checking what topics are popular in search results and what people would actually like to know about a given industry, brand or product, you can craft social media content better. Even though Blog Ideas Generator, as the name suggests, primarily helps in the selection of interesting titles – it can also inspire you to create certain social media posts.
What about videos, though? There’s no doubt that they rock the social media world. In fact, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. To create one yourself, you can use Promo.com. It has a lot of powerful features that can easily get you started.
Social media content publishing tools
Although social networks offer some native, built-in functionalities (e.g. Creator Studio), they might not be enough when you manage multiple profiles across networks.
When working in a social media agency, there’s a high probability that you’ll be working with at least a few people in the process of creating content, and posting on many social media platforms as a result. It’s also likely that some of these posts will require client approval, which may slow down the publication if not managed properly.
That is why having a proven solution for posting is so important and can save a lot of time and effort. A proper social media management tool to plan, schedule and publish content is definitely Kontentino. Apart from the ability to publish posts on all social platforms with ease, you can also collaborate on them with the whole team (by assigning tasks and keeping an eye on everyone’s performance, for example), and send posts for approval – both internally and to your clients.
Bonus tools: if you’re looking for a really simple social media scheduler that offers content ideas, Postfity is the most affordable choice. It has a built-in database of news from different industries you can share, as well as engaging post suggestions for every day of the week. Plus, it’s super user-friendly.
SmarterQueue, dubbed “the smarter social media management tool,” is just that. It’s easy to set up and integrates seamlessly with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Pinterest Marketing Partner.
Where SmarterQueue really is ‘smarter’ is in it’s of content scheduling feature. Every category that you set has an individual queue and posting plan—it’s completely automated. Say goodbye to that nasty Excel or Google spreadsheet.
Social media analytics tools
Amid work, communication, and refining every detail in between, many marketers seem to forget about tracking the effectiveness of their efforts. And yet, the numbers speak for themselves. To put it simply: analyzing your performance is crucial not just to the success of your social media strategy, but your entire marketing campaign, SEO included. It is not always a breeze, though.
Many publishing tools have their own reporting systems available – in separate tabs, you can view the results and even download the report in PDF format. This saves time and often money that would have to be spent on a separate reporting tool. If you’re looking for some more advanced analytics, though, a dedicated tool might be necessary. To track your activities, especially if you cooperate with influencers, tools such as HypeAuditor or Social Blade will be invaluable.
Now, if you’re looking for a tool that will help track and find social media influencers, Brand24 is extremely useful. We’ve all heard the buzzword. But influencer marketing is the real deal and can sky-rocket an unkown company into the stratosphere—especially if the influencer is popular within the sponsors niche. Verifying the influencers’ score will help you identify exactly who you should be reaching out to and how you both can benefit.
On the other hand, if you run a group on Facebook, Grytics will be a better choice. Although Facebook itself provides quite a lot of statistics about the community – Grytics definitely extends this scope, allowing you to analyze the community even better.
What’s also important at this stage is brand monitoring. Basically, finding relevant mentions about your business can help you assess the brand awareness and prevent any social media crisis – while looking for related discussions can help you promote it naturally. You can use BrandMentions to do so.
Social media managers must be up to date with the latest news from the social media world, which is why it’s always worth joining Facebook groups where discussions take place and insights are exchanged. Check out Pro Tips & Tricks for Social Media Managers.
Let the right tools help you leverage social media
As can be seen, there are plenty of tools at our disposal – but it’s important to remember that these tools will not replace social media managers and carefully crafted strategies in any way. They can automate our tasks or facilitate certain processes, speed up work and increase productivity, but the last word in the field of communication will always belong to you – and even the new year is not going to change that!
Here are the above-mentioned tools in a nutshell, along with a couple of other honourable mentions:
Graphic design tools | Crello | https://crello.com |
Stencil | https://getstencil.com | |
FotoJet | https://www.fotojet.com | |
VSCO | https://vsco.co | |
Easil | https://about.easil.com | |
Kapwing | https://www.kapwing.com | |
Venngage | https://venngage.com | |
Smartmockups | https://smartmockups.com | |
Coolors | https://coolors.co | |
Remove.bg | https://www.remove.bg | |
Quality stock photos | Rawpixel | https://www.rawpixel.com |
Kaboompics | https://kaboompics.com | |
Videos | Promo.com | http://promo.com |
ClipChamp | https://clipchamp.com | |
Social media management | Kontentino | https://www.kontentino.com |
Social media analytics | HypeAuditor | https://hypeauditor.com |
Social Blade | https://socialblade.com | |
Grytics | https://grytics.com | |
Social media monitoring | BrandMentions | https://brandmentions.com |
Social media ads | Adzooma | https://www.adzooma.com |
RocketLink | https://rocketlink.io | |
Social media hashtags | TopTager | https://toptager.com |