Social Media Software: 18 Highest Rated Social Media Tools

The right social media software can really change your life!

I have used them all and am testing different options constantly. Mostly, I do this because I want to be able to make the right recommendations to employees and students in my class at the University of California San Diego.

Today, I’ll share some of my favorite social media marketing tools that you can use to boost your business.

Let’s get started!

Social Studio

This Salesforce social media tool is designed to provide a comprehensive platform for collaborative social media management. It offers a suite for publishing and scheduling, customer engagement tools, third-party service integration, and in-depth analytics. A particular strength of this social media software is its ability to insert industry-specific trending information from third-party sources. It’s also got great customizable analytics and strong customer response tools.

AgoraPulse

The AgoraPulse social media software app allows you to run analytics, competitions, moderation, publishing, and other aspects of your business’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter game including social media mentions with a single social inbox. Instead of the dashboard approach, you see in some other social media management software and app tools for social media management you get to use a menu to choose items to act on and then the app archives mentions you’ve acted on.

Hootsuite

HootSuite is one of the best social media tools because it allows you to manage and schedule your Facebook, Foursquare, Google+ pages, LinkedIn, Mixi, Twitter, and WordPress accounts with one dashboard. It also has an apps feature that allows you to include Evernote, Flickr, Gmail, Instagram, MailChimp, Reddit, Statigram, Tumblr, YouTube, and other social media in your streams. Hootsuite even offers extensions for Firefox and Chrome that allow you to post without even having the dashboard open.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social organizes your information into six categories that are easy to digest: discovery, feeds, messages, publishing, reports, and tasks. Discovery is a useful feature that sets this tool apart, giving you a list of followers, people who mention you in tweets, and people you interact with. You can see their profiles and determine whether you should follow up and pursue them as a lead. “Feeds” allow you to identify useful content for your posts and monitor your business and competitors based on keywords. “Messages” connects your profiles in a single “smart inbox.”

Sendible

The most useful feature of Sendible is its bulk scheduling tool. It allows you to schedule posts for Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook in bulk, and you can also use smart queues with pre-set time slots or even use whatever Sendible calculates as “optimal” time slots. You can also follow, retweet, send messages, and unfollow automatically, and find new followers using sentiment analysis, geo-targeting, and keywords. 

Tracx

Tracx is a good choice for a unified measurement and publishing social media option. It also pulls information from a broad array of sources, from basic social media sources like Facebook and Twitter, but also from other online sources. It can do this as it is a user-defined sentiment engine, and as such, you can set your own parameters and use tags to find information on all of your monitored channels.

Oktopost

Oktopost allows you to manage and measure across several social media channels and is specifically focused on the B2B space. It automatically adds code to your campaigns so you can see them in your Google Analytics, and the Oktopost social sharing plugin lets you share content easily through Firefox or Chrome. Oktopost also integrates well with Bit.ly, GoToWebinar, Marketo, and Salesforce.

This is a great social media software option thanks to its use of automatic code insertions; you can use Oktopost to track and capture leads with code, and you can also set up content monitoring streams. Monitor responses to your shared content with your social inbox, and use message assets to pre-define your content, use your pre-defined content as a template, or queue up your content. You can also use Oktopost’s reporting features to assess your comments, content sharing, likes, leads generated, and retweets.

Buffer

Full disclosure, I have been using a lot of Buffer lately and it is awesome.

One of the most useful Buffer features is the Feedly/Buffer combo. This gives you an excellent source for RSS feeds for staying current and allows you to catch up on the hottest news and trends daily using your Buffer without opening a browser window or app; it also lets you grab the URL and other details of everything you read fast.

You can also use Followerwonk with Buffer to post with optimal timing, especially on Twitter. This combination lets you know exactly when your followers, followers of influencers in your industry, and followers of your competitors are online and active so you can maximize your posts. It also makes it easy to set up an optimized schedule.

Stackla

Stackla is a social media software that helps you promote user-generated content. It’s more than that, though. It’s also an asset manager that stores all your media in one place. Best of all: Stackla enables you to publish directly from the platform. Send emails, push content to the web, and post a social media update from a single admin console.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is cloud-based social media software that helps you find the hottest content online. Why would you want to do that? So that you can create similar content. The tool shows you which online blog posts and articles have the most shares on popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit. It also lets you spy on competitors.

TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy stands out among social media tools. That’s because it’s a one-stop shop for many of your YouTube marketing needs. With TubeBuddy, you get advanced video embedding, card templates, a comment filter, end screen templates, notification commenting, and direct publishing to Facebook. Oh, and you get it all with a Chrome extension. In other words, the tool becomes part of your browser.

IFTTT

IFTTT stands for “If This, Then That.” It’s a marketing automation and social media tool. If you like to use social media software in your digital marketing efforts, you’ll find IFTTT helps you get more done in less time. It does that by allowing you to set up rules that automate tasks. For example: “If somebody tweets me, send me an email.” There are countless similar rules you can set up with IFTTT.

Onalytica

Are you into influencer marketing? If so, then Onalytica is the social media software you’ve been looking for. In a nutshell, Onalytica finds leaders on social media who have the ability to influence people in your target market. Then, you can reach out to those influencers so that they’ll help promote your brand.

MeetEdgar

How would you like to put your social strategy on autopilot? If so, then check out MeetEdgar. It’s social media software that lets you produce great posts without writing anything. You just enter a link to a blog post and the tool will scan it and offer several variations of content that you can share. As the website says: MeetEdgar takes the time-suck out of social media management.

Audiense

Audiense, formerly SocialBro, offers useful filters for identifying relevant Twitter followers based on bio keywords, Kred score, follower/following count, and other factors. This social media software also suggests your maximum engagement times and supports Buffer so you can use those times wisely. It also allows you to compare your performance against those in your industry and track your interactions with others through Audiense for future use.

Sprinklr

Sprinklr’s full suite of social media software gives you analytics, lets you measure engagement easily and accurately, and allows you to analyze, track, and maintain multiple social networks simply. Its Social Intent Revelation Engine (SIREn) platform lets your business engage with your customers at scale and keep your brand voice consistent across social media platforms.

Mention

Mention is a social media management software tool that offers a variety of handy features. The “listen” feature allows users to monitor important conversations across different social media channels. With the monitor feature, you can analyze competitors’ social media strategies and interact with the most important influencers in your niche.

Tailwind

This scheduling app has become popular among Pinterest and more recently, Instagram users. It recommends the best times to post so you can get the highest engagement. It also makes Instagrammers’ lives much easier by letting them schedule their posts in minutes. On Pinterest, you can also bulk upload and schedule posts easily with the drag-and-drop calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are social media marketing tools?

Social media marketing tools can be used to help you analyze and streamline social media activities across multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

2. What are the main types of social media marketing software?

You can divide social media marketing tools into four main categories:

• Content curation tools
• Social media scheduling apps
• Content creation tools
• Social media analytics tools

3. What are the benefits of social media marketing?

When running multiple social media advertising campaigns, you might want to consider using social media software to schedule content and automate processes. With social media management software, you can ensure the content you create will reach your target audience on the right channels at the right time.

4. Which metrics should I measure on social media?

The metrics your brand uses to measure success largely depend on your business goals. Here are the most common ways for marketers to evaluate social media marketing performance:

• Impressions
• Engagement
• Mentions
• Social referral traffic
• Followers

5. How do I choose the best social media management software?

First, you must evaluate the tasks you want to accomplish on a daily basis. Then, look at the capabilities you would like it to have. Here are a few considerations to help you brainstorm:

• Social networks
• Scheduling posts
• Custom posting times
• Team collaboration
• Brand monitoring
• Paid social campaigns
• Analytics
• Integrations

Wrapping Up

Few marketers have the bandwidth to monitor their social media channels all day. Therefore, it’s more efficient to be more mindful about how we dedicate time to social media. Use this article to review the top 18 social media management tools to help you streamline your online marketing efforts.