Top 5 tools to automate your social media

In the fast-paced, technologically advancing world, digital channels, including social media platforms, have become the primary way brands communicate with their existing and potential customers. More than 50 million businesses are using Facebook to interact with their target audience, identify sales prospects, and conduct comprehensive competitor analysis, among other things.

Depending on your operation-model (B2B or B2C), customer persona and marketing requirements, you can take a paid or organic approach to strengthen your online presence on multiple social media networks. According to a recent survey by The Manifest, almost 85% of large-sized (more than 51 employees) and 92% of small businesses are planning to invest in social media this year, out of which 46% opting for paid advertising being over traditional marketing tactics.

Handling multiple social media accounts can be overwhelming, especially if you lack the basic technical know-how and don’t have dedicated resources to help you out. As a result, marketing automation tools for social media have gained immense popularity in the last few years, especially with companies reporting a 3.1% increase in the annual revenue growth rate and 53%  jump in conversions post-implementation.

If you’re looking for an efficient way to manage your social media, then consider opting for one of the following tools:

Buzzsumo

Combining powerful content insights, influencer amplification and competitor alerts, Buzzsumo helps you discover most shared-shared, tending or ‘viral’ content online, find industry-recommended influencers, set content alerts for your preferred keywords, and monitor your competitor’s performance. You can easily understand the content-type that resonates the most with your audience with their advanced social search engine and get automated notifications every time your brand (or a competitor) is mentioned anywhere online (in links, domains or articles).

When you have comprehensive industry data available at your fingertips, you’d be able to accurately gauge not just the type of content that you should post and the appropriate length, but also determine which social media platforms are best suited for advertising your brand.

Pricing: Buzzsumo does offer a free plan that includes basic features (unlimited content analysis, 5,000 mentions and 5 alerts) for users looking to get a feel for the product. You can always upgrade to the $79/month, $139/month, $239/month or $499/month plans to get access to more advanced features.

Sprout Social

Designed to help you deliver more effective, collaborative and efficient campaigns, Sprout Social optimizes your social media efforts with time-saving workflow, powerful publishing functionalities and detailed content management. The intuitive, user-friendly interface makes it easy for you to edit, store, publish and schedule text or multimedia content across multiple platforms with just one click. Nifty, right? You don’t have to individually log into each of your accounts to share posts with your audience, anymore. Visualize your publishing calendar and campaigns tags all under the same roof.

If your team consists of several members, Sprout Social ensures everyone is on the same page with organized user-based publishing permissions and varying access levels based on the employee’s designation. You can also apply organic post targeting and optimal post times to maximize engagement and make informed content management decisions. With their detailed reporting and custom link tracking, you will be able to quickly identify content that works, monitor campaigns, analyze referral traffic and understand organic vs paid performance.

Pricing: Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial for their premium ($99/user/month), corporate ($149/user/month) and enterprise ($249/user/month) plans, after which you are supposed to pay for the one that best fulfils your requirements to continue using their services.

Adespresso

Perfect for small to medium businesses looking to dabble in Facebook paid advertising, Adespresso helps you create, manage, optimize and analyze campaigns that sell more products, increase engagement and grow your fan base. Facebook Ad Manager interface and creation process can be confusing for a lot of people, making it difficult for an average person to run a successful campaign. Automatically store and categorize your advertising assets based on campaign, persona or objective, when you creating multiple audience groups.

With Adespresso, you don’t have to manually process and upload your customer database, anymore, as it lets you connect your CRM or any other email marketing tool directly with your Facebook Ad account, so that your audience groups, contacts and leads are always, automatically in sync. You can also choose the metrics you want to track and get a consolidated performance report delivered straight to your inbox on a weekly, monthly or daily basis.

If you’re looking to elevate your advertising strategy, Adespresso offers expert advice from a team of marketers to ensure that you get the most out of your Facebook ad campaigns.

Pricing: The basic plan for Adespresso starts at $49/month that includes unlimited ad accounts, essential features, automatic optimization and an ads spending up to $3,000/month. You can choose to upgrade to the $149/month, $299/month or $499/month plan depending on your advertising requirements.

Buffer:

Similar to Sprout Social, Buffer lets you manage multiple social media profiles in one place by easily scheduling and publishing posts automatically, depending on your content calendar. Trusted by 8000+ enterprises, agencies, brands and individuals, the platform offers powerful analytics, fast video/GIF uploader, Pablo Image Creator, automated scheduling tools and world-class customer support to ensure consistent presence on your social media.

You can upload posts (image, text or videos) in a ‘queue’ whenever you’re free, choose your preferred date/time and Buffer auto-publishes everything as per your schedule. Came across relevant, shareable content while browsing the web? Use the Buffer browser extension or Android/iOS apps to directly add it to the ‘queue’ to save time and get more work done.

Buffer also lets you track the engagement, interactions and overall performance of your content across multiple social accounts, using streamlined analytics interface that gives you an option to export all your data for offline viewing.

Pricing: With the free plan, you can shorten/track links, add 10 posts to the ‘queue’, manage 3 social media profiles, upload gifs/videos and create attention-grabbing images. In order to access the complete list of features, upgrade to one of the paid plans, ranging from $15 to $399.

Zoho Social

From scheduling content across multiple social media accounts to creating actionable, insightful reports for performance analysis, Zoho Social equips you with all the necessary tools and functionalities required for building a strong online presence. Apart from creating and publishing posts, you can use the platform to easily brainstorm and collaborate with your team about your long-term strategy.

Similar to Buzzsumo, Zoho Social notifies you every time your brand is mentioned anywhere on the internet, so you can join the conversation and engage with potential customers for your business. What sets Zoho apart is that it provides you with a unified view of all your messages inside the ‘brand inbox’ to help you close-loop important discussions. With Zoho Social, you can choose to take a cursory glance at all the basic insights or dive deeper to get an in-depth understanding of your brand’s performance.

Pricing: The Zoho Social free plan allows 1 brand, 1 team member, a browser extension and a URL shortener. For advanced features like CRM integration, sentiment analysis, personalized client invite, custom reports, bulk scheduler and more, you can upgrade to Standard ($10/month), Professional ($50/month), Agency ($83.33/year) and Agency Plus ($125/year) plans.

When you combine marketing automation with stunning visuals, a compelling brand narrative, timely monitoring and actionable analytics, you’d be able to compete with brands of all sizes for customer loyalty and awareness. Remember, finding the right automation tool can be a challenging process, so try your hands at a few before deciding on the one that elevates your overall content strategy and does justice to your brand voice.

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