21 top Social Media Marketing Tools to manage your Startup

“Social Media Marketing is much more than typical Advertising. It is a two-way street, a set of tools that allow you to reach out to people and become the messenger of positive things and experiences. In turn, these people will not just support you; they will be there to help you increase your reach & audience thru Word-of-Mouth and other ways, which will turn your Startup into a highly successful business.” Peter/CXO Wiz4.biz

Social Media Marketing Topics: Why, Channels, Channel, Automation, Define your Goals, “must-have” Features, Research, YouTube, Capterra, Quora, 21 SMM Tools.

Why? 92% of marketers say Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a crucial part of their marketing strategy. This is because social media marketing gives businesses a level platform to help you scale your business, even if you’re just a relatively new startup. Many startups struggle with creating and implementing a SMM campaign as part of their marketing strategy.

SMM Channels. For starters, there are different SM channels you can use. Each has its own unique set of features and rules of engagement, so there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all Approach. What works well in one SM channel may be damaging in another.

Sandy Landscape. Another reason is the constantly shifting landscape of each social media channel. Facebook has dramatically changed the layout for personal profiles & business pages several times in the past couple of years. They also continually update their algorithms, making it harder for organic posts uploaded by brands in their respective Facebook pages to show up on news feeds.

The Biggest Challenge when doing SMM is effectively engaging with your Target Audience. Part of what makes this goal extremely challenging is the fact that time & $$$ are finite sources – especially among startups. The steps you need to do, to launch an effective SMM campaign plus doing other Marketing strategies, and actually focusing on the core business processes, can be overwhelming for a startup with limited financial & human resources.

SMM Automation is the process of using SW to automate various tasks & processes involved in launching an effective SMM campaign. These include scheduling posts at specific days and times, curating quality content to share, and even kickstart their buyer’s journey.

Benefits of Automating SM and other marketing tasks. Perhaps the most significant is its ability to free up time. One study shows that 20% of marketers spend half of their time at work publishing posts and engaging with your business’ audience on SM. Automating specific processes within your SMM campaign can decrease the time you & your team spend there, and more time to focus on the critical core processes of your business.

Automating repetitive & low-priority Tasks play an integral part in your startup’s ability to scale. It’s not surprising to find many tools & platforms you can use. In fact, finding the right tools to automate & manage your social media marketing campaigns can be an over-whelming task in on itself. Here are three things that you need to consider to help you find the right SMM tool for your startup.

#1 Define your Goals

Review the goals you & your team initially set for your SMM campaign. Doing this will help you decide which tasks you can automate, and give you a clearer idea of what kind of automation software you’ll need to achieve this goal.

#2 Write down the “must-have” Features

Nothing can be more frustrating than buying a Tool – only to find that it doesn’t do the tasks you consider to be the most critical. To make sure that you choose the Automation Tool or App that best matches your needs, make sure to ask the following questions:

What tasks take a lot of time, yet hardly gives you any ROI?
Which social networks will you be using?
How in-depth do you want your analytics to be?
Will you be using sponsored posts in your SMM campaigns?
How easy is it going to be to add new team members, manage workflows, Approve posts, & even communicate with them
Does it integrate with other Tools & Apps? If so, what Apps do they integrate with?

#3 Do your Research

Once you have your list down, you can now begin searching for Tools & Apps you can use for your startup. Here are three of the best places to explore your options.

a) YouTube. Many of the reviews you’ll find here feature a walk-through of the entire platform or App, giving you a feel for the platform or App, and see if it’s an excellent fit for your startup. At the same time, you can check for tutorials & trouble-making (no, shooting) videos. Not only would these be helpful in the future, but also give you an insight into the full potential the platform or App provides.

b) Capterra is where you can read thru honest reviews written by actual users of the automation SW you’re considering. You also can find here in-depth details about the SW – some of which are not readily available on their website, like their approximate $$$.

c) Quora is a Q&A forum site where you can ask the community for suggestions & recommendations for automation SW based on your needs.

Of course, even with all these options, finding the right SMM tool can still be tedious. That’s why I’ve put together this list of 25 __ different social media management tools ranked in no particular order. I chose these based on recommendations made by highly successful entrepreneurs, social media marketing influencers, and my own personal experience.

21 top Social Media

1.Agora Pulse is a comprehensive SMM management platform that does a great job in helping you increase engagement within your Facebook, Instagram & Twitter accounts. Its dashboard efficiently picks up every comment left on each of your accounts and displays them in your inbox, especially those from angry customers & clients. That way, you can quickly engage with your followers & visitors, then remedy the situation.
Buffer is a platform that lets you schedule your SM posts in advance across diff channels. It has its own browser extension that you can use to collect and curate content on the web.
BuzzSumo provides quality content is one of the critical pillars of a successful SMM campaign. It is a helpful research tool where you can find which types of content that are resonating the most with your target audience.
Bynder With many startups working with teams scattered in different parts of the world, it can be quite tedious to get everyone on the same page. Bynder significantly streamlines time-intensive tasks by automating different workflows within your content process. At the same time, it provides both a storage and editing hub for all your content. That way, you and your team can easily access these to either upload on your website or share on your different social media accounts.
CoSchedule‘s dashboard allows you to create a unified workflow within a collaborative, cross-functional calendar. That way, you can create a social schedule that ties into your entire inbound marketing strategy nicely. You can also create a pre-defined social sharing plan that you can use over and over again, so you don’t have to keep filling your queue manually.
Crowdfireis a mobile App that serves as a handy guide to help you reach your SMM goals. It gives suggestions for posts and tasks that you can do each day based on your set goal. That way, you eliminate the guess-work as to what type of content will resonate best with your Target Audience.
eClincher is the SMM platform is often used for startups. One of the things people really like about this Tool is – that it not only allows you to curate posts online with its Chrome extension & Pocket, but it also gives suggestions on what pieces of content are trending across the web & SM channels for you niche.
Feedlyis a simple, yet beneficial, content curation tool that helps you stay updated on the latest posts from highly reputable sites within your niche so that you can share these on your SM accounts.
HootSuiteis a dashboard that lets you schedule SM posts in batches to different SM channels quickly by uploading the information in CSV format. You can also choose view sections of each SM account (called “streams”) that you want to monitor closely, whether it’s comments left on your timeline or private messages sent by your target audience.
HubSpot Social Media Toolsis a great adjunct to the HubSpot CRM. It efficiently lets you schedule your SM posts about your newest content even if it’s not yet live. That way, you’re able to share your latest Blog post or article with your followers the minute it goes live.
IFTTTworks very much like Zapier in that it gets the different platforms, tools, and Apps you’re using for your business to talk to each other by creating tasks called recipes. The difference between the two is that IFTTT is that you’re not limited to a web-based interface. IFTTT has its own App that allows you to automate various tasks on your mobile device.
MeetEdgaris another tool I use for social media marketing automation and content marketing. It helps extend the reach and value of your content by automatically resharing your content in intervals.
Oktopostis a marketing platform that features a host of tools you can use to automate and manage your SMM campaigns. It also helps you discover trending content online that your followers will appreciate, and keep track of what they are saying about your brand & products across the web.
Post Planneris simple, yet robust, SM platform that lets you optimize and schedule posts for each of your SM accounts, recycle previously published evergreen content so as to maximize reach & engagement + find high-quality content to curate & share with your audience.
PromoRepublic platform is a smart-posting tool which emphasizes an automated SM posting calendar. You can try it using the post idea library with 100,000+ visuals & hand-crafted templates which are very often updated.
Scoop.itis both a “content creating” & curating platform to help you produce hi-Q content for your site’s Blog & SM accounts. At the same time, it’s a research tool that helps you quickly discover high performing content & predictive insights based on your chosen keywords. It even recommends keywords for you to consider using based on your specific niche.
SocialOomphstarted out as a scheduling tool exclusively for Twitter. Although it’s free version still focuses on giving you an efficient way to schedule tweet to go out at optimum days and times, its premium version now includes scheduling features for Facebook and LinkedIn. It also allows you to remove outdated and unrelated posts from both Twitter and Facebook.
Spredfastis a robust SMM SW that provides you with in-depth social data & analytics that will help you make better decisions when creating your campaigns. The dashboard gives your Team a central hub where you can plan, develop, implement, & monitor your SM campaign to provide your Target Audience with valuable content & build relationships with them.
Sprout Social’s social media management platform that comes with a diverse range of tools that will help you and your team in every stage of your social media marketing campaign, from planning all the way to analyzing its performance.
Statusbrew offers a SMM platform that enables individuals & organizations of all sizes to grow, and engage with audiences through its multiple features such as analytics, automated publishing, contact management, post scheduling etc. It enables you to collaborate with your team in order to manage all your social media accounts through a single dashboard.
Sumois a comprehensive SW platform that provides a suite of tools to help you launch & implement your inbound Marketing campaign. You can create pop-up opt-ins & landing pages that you can integrate with most Email Marketing providers.

Comments: Do you know any other Social Media Marketing/Management Tools that you found useful?

from Kevin-eliminate-Payne Blog 11/19 edited by Peter/CXO Wiz4.biz

For more Info, click on Social Media Marketing.