With over 2.3 billion active social media users, social media is extremely important for small businesses. Given its rapid use and popularity, every small business should have a presence on social media. It can be a very effective marketing channel for reaching new customers and increasing sales. Facebook is the most popular social network with over 1,590 million active users, but it shouldn’t be the only network where a small business is present. There are many different social media networks and each one can be utilized for a business in unique ways. Although it may seem daunting to manage a number of different social media accounts for your small business, it will be worth it in the long run. Luckily, there are a ton of tools available that make social media easier to manage and analyze. Here are 8 different social media tools that we think are the best:
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an awesome tool for small businesses. It is a one-stop platform for all of your social media channels. You can connect all of your social media networks in one place to plan and publish content across all of them. It has a ‘Smart Inbox’ that compiles your messages across all networks into one place. You can also use different analytics programs to measure and track the performance of your social media. It also helps with building and managing customer relationships. You can now have a better idea of your customers with a complete customer profile.
Price: Deluxe-$59/mo; Premium-$99/mo; Team-$500/mo
Buffer
Similar to Sprout Social, Buffer lets you combine all of your social accounts in one place. It drives post clicks and site traffic by helping you connect with your audience at the best times. This tool also allows you to schedule content across all connected social accounts. Like most of the other tools in this list, Buffer helps to save you time and makes social media management easier. It is a lot like Sprout Social but you can customize what you want with the ‘Business’ package so the pricing will vary. Pricing for this is lower which may be more ideal for small businesses trying to save money. Regardless, both tools are extremely useful.
Price: The Awesome Plan-$20/mo; Business-$99-399/mo
Crowdfire
This tool is great for engaging and growing your small business on social media. Crowdfire helps build your social media presence by connecting you to the most active and engaged users. Another useful feature of this tool is tracking. You can track who follows you back, who does not, and anyone who has unfollowed you. This helps you create a well-developed and engaged following. An added bonus is the ‘Auto DM’ feature. This feature gives you the opportunity to connect directly with anyone who follows you and promote your other social media networks.
Price: Free (with certain paid features)
LikeItWantIt
As of June 2016, Instagram reached 500 million monthly active users. Small businesses could benefit greatly from this network thanks to LikeItWantIt powered by ReadyPulse. Using this tool will help increase product sales and traffic by turning your profile into a ‘Shoppable Instagram’. If you feature a lot of your products in your Instagram posts then this is the perfect tool for your small business. It makes it easier for followers to purchase something that they like when they see your post. LikeItWantIt speeds up the customer journey to increase traffic, conversions, and revenue.
Price: Pricing plans per business
Tailwind
Tailwind is the perfect tool for any small business that is on Pinterest. This network is unique in its content and audience so not every small business needs to be on it. Yet, if you have the type of business that fits well into Pinterest, then this tool is something you should definitely be using. It allows you to use many shortcuts to save time like multi-board pinning and bulk uploading. You can also set up your pinning schedule around when your audience is most engaged to maximize your reach. It also helps you measure the success of your content so you know what works well and what doesn’t.
Pricing: Plus-$9.99/mo; Professional-$799.99/mo
SumAll
SumAll is a great tool for social media reports. You can connect you and your clients’ Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Analytics accounts. You can use it to create whatever kind of reports you would like. It does all of the analysis and calculations for you to help save time. It them compiles all of the information you need into an elegant social media report to help drive your social media success.
Pricing: $99/mo
Hashtagify
Hashtagify is especially useful for social media networks like Twitter where hashtags are used heavily. It helps you reach your audience more effectively with the most relevant hashtags. Just search for a certain topic and it will give you the all-time top hashtags related to it. You can see the popularity of each hashtag and its correlation percentage from the topic. In addition, you can see the top influencers and usage patterns for each topic. While it began mainly focused on Twitter hashtags, it now offers tracking for hashtags on Instagram for $59/month.
Pricing: Free
Crate
Crate is a tool that helps you find great content fast. The process is pretty straight forward. The first step is building your crate where you tell them the kind of content you’re looking for. Then they go out and search for the best content then deliver it back to you in a matter of minutes. At that point you can either choose to share the content right then or save it to share later. Crate lets you curate great content while also helping you save time.
Pricing: Crate Plus-$19/mo; Crate Pro-$39/mo