7 Best Small Business Tools For Social Media

Social media took the world by storm in the mid-2000s and hasn’t stopped growing. While social media began as a tool for people to connect and interact, the business community realized its value and turned it into a primary marketing tool. Now, small businesses can use social media sites to better design their website and social media channels. The tools provide an expensive way to produce an effective solution.

If you look up tools for social media marketing, you’ll find thousands of tools available. It would be impossible to go through them all. How does a small business owner decide without throwing life away while searching, downloading and testing? We have great suggestions of tools for social media that we’d like to recommend.

What are the 7 social media marketing tools that every small business should use?

Not all social media tools are good for the task of designing websites and social media channels. Seven tools in this category stand out as useful and effective. Intelligent small business owners and marketing professionals should know about these tools and should consider using them to improve their sites and channels.

Buffer

For easy content distribution to your social media platforms, consider Buffer. It’s the right tool for small businesses and start-up operations. Whether you schedule and manage social media posts or assign several people to the task, Buffer allows you to get the job done from one site. Not only does Buffer enable efficient post scheduling, it includes a content library for your posts. Considering that Buffer also has robust analytics for SEO, its value goes far. Buffer offers a free trial and paid plans.

Hootsuite

To a new business owner thinking about social media posting, it may seem that the process doesn’t take much time. An effective social media campaign that produces results take time to plan, schedule, manage, and monitor. Hootsuite helps you to accomplish these tasks with relative ease. The free version is for beginners and very limited. In the paid versions, you can add features such as advanced analytics and the ability to monitor mentions, on social media, of your brand. Premium versions allow you to recognize hashtags as well as key influencers related to your brand.

AgoraPulse

Do you use Facebook for social media posts? Specialty tool Agorapulse targets Facebook engagement. You can monitor and schedule posts. The engagement piece makes Agorapulse an effective Facebook customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

Bitly

Your website and social media may contain many links. It’s important to organize, edit and analyze your links. You also want control over all your links that are shared to assess engagement. Link management is Bitly’s purpose, and you may find it an invaluable tool. There’s a lot of value in the free version, plus Bitly has priced plans for branded links and an enterprise account.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social combines a CRM tool with tools for collaboration, scheduling, and engagement monitoring. It’s expensive, and many small business won’t need a tool this robust. If you do need a tool like Sprout, it’s great to have an all-in-one platform.

Oktopost

Without leads, no sales can follow. Generate leads through social media with Oktopost. Other social media tools help small businesses to schedule and manage social media posts. Oktopost actually makes money for you through lead generation.

DrumUp

Planning for a full schedule of the right content for your brand can prove challenging. You can create content, or can hire someone to create it for you, on the topics that work for your audience. Filling your content needs with posts and articles created by others in your topical areas means you’re curating content. DrumUp helps you to schedule and to curate content. The software also makes hashtag suggestions for expanding your reach and promoting engagement.

Making connections between your website and social media platforms occurs through social media buttons, also referred to as widgets. You often find buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest on professional websites. Buffer offers the social sharing buttons to help you to enable this important connection for your customers.

The 7 social media tools save time by automating tasks. They assist with data collection that you may not be able to do otherwise. They keep your marketing plans organized and execute the social media piece of the plan. The use of social media marketing tools varies from business to business, but most small businesses will find one or more of them valuable.

Which of the 7 social media tools should I choose?

Our list is rather short, but it’s a good representative of some quality tools to get the job done for you. First, identify your needs. What do you need the tool to do? Make sure you get that function from the tool you buy. Next, identify your budget. Can you afford the tool? Certainly, the tools listed and many others found online have a relatively low cost for the return on investment they can produce, but you may have a very small budget.

 Who will learn and use the tool? Is it you? Do you have time to manage this? No one wants to buy software and never use it, so have a plan for its use. You want it to produce results as quickly as possible.

Pick the one or a few that do what you need, without. Get other informed opinions online or from your professional network. Do some testing during a free trial. Once you make a final decision to purchase a software plan or to use a free tool, make the most of its features and functions for the most social media scheduling, managing, and monitoring success. It will help to make your job easier, especially if you don’t have in-house marketing staff or enough money to hire a marketing agency.  As part of a good marketing plan, social media tools can make your company more successful.

Looking for help or ideas with your social media? We can help. If you’re looking for fresh content that increases engagement and creates brand awareness, Digital Envy can help. Contact us today for your free strategy session.