As a social media manager, you’ve got a lot on your plate. From increasing your follower count to spiking engagement, there’s a range of responsibilities that fall on your shoulders, which is why it’s so important to make the most of every minute. Fortunately, there’s a plethora of social media tools that can help you optimize your everyday tasks, saving you both time and stress.
From marketing to SEO and social monitoring software, these are our essential social media optimization tools to work faster in 2022 and beyond.
Social media marketing tools
Comprehensive social media marketing software programs are excellent “all-rounder” tools for those on a mission toward social media optimization. Below are a few fantastic options that will help you get there.
Sociality.io
Sociality.io is an all-in-one social media management tool that facilitates several tasks for digital marketers, comprised of five core modules:
- Publishing – This function allows you to quickly and easily plan, post, and schedule content across social media platforms. With drag-and-drop workflows, team logs, and intuitive social media calendars, you’ll be better able to meet your brand’s social media marketing goals.
🥁 Bonus: Social media holiday calendar
- Analytics – Assess your brand’s performance analytics across various platforms and generate centralized reports in XLSX, PPT, and PDF formats before having them automatically and directly delivered to stakeholders’ inboxes.
- Engagement – Foster better conversations for better conversions. With the Engagement module, you can promptly interact with users by setting up automated replies, assigning conversations to specific team members, and creating internal notes to highlight relevant details.
- Competitor analysis – Keep an eye on your competition with the help of functions like automated copying and pasting of competitors’ historical data, identifying competitors’ top-performing content, and setting appropriate benchmarks.
- Social listening – Examine and maintain your brand’s online health by monitoring mentions, categorizing them based on sentiment, and exporting them into digestible reports.
Buffer
Buffer is a self-described “all-you-need” social media tool that helps businesses streamline their marketing initiatives and grow their followings with ease. Not only does Buffer allow you to publish and schedule social media posts across a range of platforms, but it even makes suggestions of when and what to publish (including relevant hashtags) to spike engagement levels. You can also assess your content’s performance with the Analytics tool, which showcases boosted post insights, audience demographics, and story metrics.
Sprout Social
Another powerful all-in-one social media tool is Sprout Social, which provides data-driven social media solutions to managers, marketers, analysts, and strategists alike. One of Sprout Social’s most unique features is the Employee Advocacy module; here, you can house all your approved shareable content, making it easy for employees to quickly share it with their own networks. By empowering your employees and amplifying their voices, brands can expand their reach, drive sales, and create industry leaders with minimal effort.
While both Buffer and Sprout Social offer an array of social media management tools, it’s important to be aware of the hidden costs associated with these platforms.
Search engine optimization (SEO) tools
A core component of social media marketing is search engine optimization (SEO). By increasing your brand’s visibility on search engines, you’ll heighten brand awareness, foster loyalty, and generate leads. Below are some of the best SEO software platforms to optimize your social media management practices.
Google Search Console & Google Analytics
When it comes to SEO, Google Search Console and Google Analytics are two of the most powerful platforms in the Google suite. As a result, they should undoubtedly be part of your arsenal as a social media marketer.
Using Google Search Console, you can:
- Conduct keyword research
- Check your average position on Google for specific search queries
- Assess your backlink profile
- Identify negative keywords and lower your bounce rate
- Identify and address crawl errors
From there, you can use Google Analytics to assess your content’s performance from an SEO perspective. Here, you can track the demographics and interests of users, analyze landing page traffic, and even set SEO-related goals and create SEO dashboards. As the name suggests, these dashboards compile your analytics data into easy-to-digest graphics, images, and tables – ideal if you’re visual-minded.
Semrush
Semrush is a comprehensive SEO platform offering an extensive range of features, including keyword research, on-page SEO, link-building, and local SEO. With these tools, social media marketers can:
- Find the best keywords (i.e., those with high search volume and low competition) to drive traffic to your site
- Gain new insights into your site’s health and its current SEO performance
- Uncover unique opportunities to strengthen your backlink profile
Semrush is also an invaluable tool in competitor benchmarking. The platform’s mission is to “make online competition fair and transparent, with equal opportunities for everyone.” With tools like competitor analysis and competitor PR monitoring, you can track your competitors’ strategies and reputations.
Social monitoring tools
Going hand-in-hand with SEO, social monitoring tools are vital to a brand’s social media success. Fortunately, the following tools significantly optimize the social monitoring process, helping you save time.
Brand24
Brand24 is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions and news relevant to your brand across socials, blogs, podcasts, forums, and so much more. Protecting your online reputation has never been easier, thanks to the platform’s automated sentiment analysis, which categorizes mentions into positive, neutral, and negative. You can even set up notifications for negative mentions, meaning you’ll be able to assess the situation and engage in damage control right away if needed.
Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a fantastic social monitoring tool that can integrate seamlessly into the Zoho CRM system. Here you can keep track of your customer’s social media interactions (including any interactions they’ve had with your brand) and add leads from social media to your CRM. Plus, you can measure the sentiment about your brand with the help of mentions and keyword searches.
Photo and video editing tools
Your social media feed is a reflection of your brand – and you only get one first impression. That’s why it’s vital to ensure it’s a good one. All images and videos used on your social media accounts must be high-quality and well-edited. Here are some of the top social media tools that can help you meet these standards.
Adobe Lightroom
In its own words, Adobe Lightroom is “powerful photo editing made for everyone.” Accessible and intuitive, you don’t need to be an expert in image editing to make the most of this social media tool.
With Lightroom, you can quickly and seamlessly edit your photos using existing presets to give your feed a cohesive feel. You can also create your own custom presets for a completely personalized aesthetic. Plus, simple yet effective tools like AI masking allow you to select specific elements of your photograph and edit only these areas.
Lightroom even features photography tips, tutorials, and posts from experts and educators to help you improve your photography skills. Some of these include tips on composition, presentation, and styling, as well as techniques for mastering food photography.
InShot
Video content is an integral component of any social media strategy, particularly with the boom in short-form video content on platforms like TikTok. To streamline this aspect of social media optimization, you’ll want to leverage a simple yet powerful video editing tool.
InShot is an excellent option, as it allows you to easily import video footage from your phone’s camera roll and edit the clips (including functions like trimming and merging). You can even add filters, stickers, music, and effects to make your content more engaging. Available for both iPhone and Android, this is one social media marketing tool you can’t skip out on.
Graphic design tools
Creating eye-catching visuals is often one of the most time-consuming parts of social media marketing. With the help of the following social media tool, you can simplify the process and save time.
Canva
With easy-to-use templates for various types of social media content – such as Instagram posts, carousels, and reels; YouTube thumbnails; TikTok videos; and Facebook ads – Canva is a graphic design made easy.
In addition to its extensive selection of templates, Canva also offers an impressive suite of editing features, including color and font customization, as well as stock imagery and footage. Social media marketers will also benefit massively from Canva’s team folders, real-time collaboration, and built-in comment functions. Canva Pro even offers a Brand Kit feature, which allows you to set specific colors and fonts to include across all posts.
Copywriting tools
From LinkedIn posts to Instagram captions, a copy is a crucial component of any social media marketing suite. It’s what you use to describe your products and/or services, entice (and convert) your followers, and encourage engagement. However, copywriting is only effective when it’s well-executed – these are the social media tools that can help you ensure yours is top-tier.
Grammarly
When it comes to developing copy that converts, impeccable grammar and spelling are a top priority. Flawless copy conveys credibility, which, in turn, fosters confidence among your followers and preserves your brand’s reputation.
One social media tool that helps you achieve error-free copy every time is Grammarly, an online platform that identifies and flags spelling, grammatical, punctuation, tone, and delivery mistakes in texts.
There are two main ways to use Grammarly:
- You can download it as a browser extension. That way, as you type, Grammarly will automatically detect errors and make suggestions for how to fix them in real-time.
- You can copy and paste your text directly into the text box on the Grammarly website and address all errors in one sitting.
With Grammarly Business, you can even create a company-wide style guide to ensure a uniform tone and voice in all brand copy.
Hemingway
Usually, simplicity is key – and more often than not, this is the case for copywriting. If you struggle to write social media copy that is clear and easy to digest, Hemingway is an ideal tool for you. Copy and paste your text into this online app, and it will automatically flag which words and phrases are overly complicated. Hemingway provides a legend on the right-hand side so you can easily understand its feedback, whether it’s the excessive use of adverbs or hard-to-read sentences. The app will even assign your text a readability grade, allowing you to easily identify if it’s too complex.
