Admit it.

A small part of you has wondered (and perhaps secretly dreamed) what it would be like to be an influencer. 

The paid travel, glamorous hotels, free branded clothing, red carpet waltzes…

*sigh* 😌 

For most of us though, we’d be content if we could simply get our brand noticed across our social networks – maybe even generate a few leads through them.

Something that seems a lot easier said than done.  

The good news is there are a ton of social media management tools designed to increase your online presence and build an engaged community for your business. 

We’ve even gone to the trouble of sifting through the market to give you a definitive list (of what we consider) to be the best social media management software available right now, in 2021.

And here it is!

Social media analytics tools

The following list of social media analytics tools is going to help you with programming posts, ads, and most importantly measuring campaign performance across all your social channels.

Hootsuite

If you work in social media you’ve more than likely come across or at least heard of Hootsuite.

It’s the industry standard-bearer for managing various social networks and profiles simultaneously.

It’s incredibly intuitive, and one of the easiest to use platforms we’ll look at today. The tool’s strongest features include planning, publishing, and monitoring posts as well as the performance of advertising and digital marketing campaigns.

Price: Free AND Paid options
Accessibility: App and Desktop
Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, and YouTube

Sprout Social

An alternative to Hootsuite, Sprout Social is a little easier on the eyes and includes all the typical features of social media analytics tools: planning, scheduling, campaign analysis, aggregate post feed, etc.

Social Sprout also allows users to reply to incoming messages directly through the tool.

While it’s customizable reports are good, and certainly give you insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns, we feel Hootsuite has a slight edge when it comes to the depth of analysis.

Price: Free AND Paid
Accessibility: Mac, Windows, and mobile app
Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and Pinterest

Metricool

As its name would suggest, Metricool’s strong point is the depth and detail of its social network analytics. The platform’s granularity gives you a 360° vision of the performance of your social media campaigns in a visually uncomplicated dashboard.

Metricool includes all the usual KPIs for your paid campaigns with the option to tailor reports to your needs.

Another strong point is that it allows you to link to your website or advertising platforms, such as Facebook ads or Google ads, to give you that complete vision we mentioned earlier.

Price: Free AND Paid options (very affordable)
Accessibility: Mac, Windows, and mobile app
Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and Web

Buffer

Buffer is the king when it comes to social media management software usability. Its slickness and ease of use means community managers can pick it up and start scheduling immediately.

It also includes a really handy graphic creation tool (called Pablo if I remember correctly) that’s perfect for touching up posts before scheduling.

Of course, with all that focus on UX (user experience) it sacrifices a little in the analytics department. Although the tool’s come on a long way from its early years, it still a long way from the likes of Hootsuite and Metricool. 

Price: Free AND Paid options (again, very affordable)
Accessibility: Mac, Windows, and mobile app
Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Best social media platforms for advertising

The following social platforms for advertising are great for increasing your brand awareness, reaching new audiences, and specifically targeting potential customers with your products or services.

Facebook Ads

Facebook’s Ads Manager is a user-friendly tool that allows performance marketers to run both mobile and web campaigns on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Audience Network.

Users can also get extremely granular in their targeting (and retargeting) of a campaign’s audience – demographic, age, gender, location, interests, behaviors, etc.

The metrics and analysis sections within Ad Manager includes a campaign’s reach, likes, ad/post engagement, and which of your ads/posts are performing best.

There’s also a neat feature that allows performance marketers to analyze your Facebook and Instagram pages against a competitor. 

Price: Free AND Paid options
Accessibility: Mac, Windows, and mobile app
Social networks: Facebook and Instagram

LinkedIn Campaign Manager

LinkedIn ads are particularly effective for B2B companies looking to target, reach, and foster relationships with hard-to-reach C-Level executives.

Most executive-level professionals are active on the platform which allows you to filter profiles by job title, industry, education level, experience, and location.

It also includes a native advertising feature called Inmail which appears in a targeted user’s inbox just as a regular message to connect would. It’s a seamless, less intrusive approach in contacting potential customers.

Finally, LinkedIn offers native lead capturing forms that in exchange for a user’s profile information, can access gated content such as eBooks, white papers, or industry reports.

Price: Free AND Paid options
Accessibility: Mac, Windows, and mobile app
Social networks: LinkedIn

Best social media design tools

The following social media design tools will allow you to create unique images, designs, infographics, and other formats of visual content for your different social channels.

Canva

Canva has saved many a community manager’s life when a last-minute ad needs to be put together when the design team is snowed in with work.

The platform’s strength is without a doubt its ready-to-go templates. Community managers and performance marketers have access to Facebook banners, cover photos, Instagram story templates, ads, YouTube banners – almost any format conceivable. 

What’s more, these templates can be customized quickly and easily. It doesn’t require you to have years of experience operating Adobe suite to navigate the platform.

Price: Free AND Paid options
Accessibility: App and Desktop
Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, and YouTube

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is the easy-to-use, graphic, and video design platform brought to us by the creators of Photoshop, Indesign, and Illustrator.

Like Canva, it comes with ready-made templates for nearly all social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter cover photos, Instagram and Facebook ads, Pinterest boards, etc.

Spark also allows community managers to produce an image slideshow that renders into a short video. Once parameters are set out within the template, users are prompted to upload their images and layer voice and sound over the slideshow to create a short, interactive video.

Price: Free
Accessibility: App and Desktop
Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, and YouTube

Video editing software for social media 

According to social media today, 82% of all consumer internet traffic will come from online video content by 2022. If you’re not already producing video content across your social channels, take a look at some of the following video editing software for social media to help get you started:

Animoto

Animoto lets community managers create professional-looking videos quickly and easily.

It has a subcategory labeled “marketing” that’s extremely useful for companies, allowing marketers to easily create videos, image carousels, and slide shows, all with custom templates for different social channels.

There’s also an extensive library of both video and audio content that can be used to generate ideas for new posts or used directly within your content.

Videos are uploaded directly to your social media channels without having to be exported to your hard drive.

Price: Paid
Accessibility: App and Desktop
Social networks: Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube

Magisto

Magisto is simple to use and gives a high-quality finish to your video content. It’s important to keep in mind that its free version is slightly more limited than other social media management tools we’ve looked at.

One of the more interesting features of this video editing software is that it incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) technology to elicit the desired emotional response with your audience (depending on the video’s objective).

All users need to do is upload their video or photo, browse through Magisto’s library of soundtracks (or upload their own) select the desired editing style and press go. The AI engine then applies the finishing touches automatically.

Price: Free AND Paid (great value for money)
Accessibility: App and Desktop
Social networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest

Influencer marketing tools

We believe the following influencer marketing tool is perfect for managing campaigns and connecting with notable figures within your industry who can help publicize your brand.

Hype Auditor

Using an AI engine, HypeAuditor performs an in-depth analysis of thousands of influencers, classifying them by the engagement followers have with their content.

Influencers can be filtered by region and relevance to your industry/topic. Dynamic lists are also created and updated on a daily basis.

In addition, it provides you with information such as an influencer’s current ranking, username, the main topics covered in their content, the primary country of their audience, an estimate of their engagement, etc.

Price: Free AND Paid (plans vary depending on the number of reports created)
Accessibility: Desktop
Social networks: Instagram

We hope you find this list of social media management tools useful in helping you with your social networks create a growing community! 

For those of you with experience managing social media accounts, which of these would you recommend? Are there any missing from the list?

Let us know in the comments below