These days a social media strategy is a vital concern for most businesses, particularly agencies. Despite popular belief, implementing a successful social media strategy can be a lot harder than it seems, as it involves a lot of steps that have to be repeated on a daily basis. Many agencies choose to utilize specific tools to get the job done.
There are social media tools for engagement, scheduling, design and analysis—but which have proven most useful to knowledgeable professionals? To help sort through the options, we asked 15 members of Forbes Agency Council to share their favorite social media tools and why they work so well.
Members of Forbes Agency Council share their favorite social media tools for engagement, scheduling, design or analysis.Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Airtable
Airtable is a dream when it comes to managing and scheduling. The abilities to set a schedule in a program that can house not only the copy, but also the creative assets, and to share with our internal as well as our client teams have changed the way we work on social media. We’re able to create content banks, map out rough ideas and secure approvals all in one place. – Katie Schibler Conn, KSA Marketing + Partnerships
2. Buffer
While my agency uses tools like Sprout Social and Hootsuite for our clients, I’ve been a long-time user of Buffer for my own personal brand and marketing. It’s really easy to use and makes it easy to stay on top of social media while juggling other priorities. – Greg Kihlström, Yes& Agency
3. Hashtag Tools
A few of my favorite nonnative hashtag tools we use include Hashtagify, RiteTag, Trendsmap, Tagboard and Keyhole. These enable us to boost engagement and monitor trends for our clients. – Evangeline Sutton, Regenerative Marketing LLC
4. Hootsuite
At my agency, we use Hootsuite for scheduling posts. I feel it’s important to use different content for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, rather than sharing the same content across all platforms. Hootsuite allows you to customize and schedule content that is specifically targeted for the audience of each platform, because each one is unique. – Nancy Marshall, Marshall Communications
5. HubSpot
While there are many tools for social media, we prefer holistic marketing automation platforms, such as HubSpot, that integrate many aspects of social media management. They allow for easy scheduling and posting across all of your social accounts. More importantly, they integrate the social interactions with lead-nurturing activities and sales, drawing a clear path to track return on investment. – Keri Witman, Cleriti
6. Oktopost
Oktopost has allowed us to dramatically increase engagement from social channels without our clients having to lift a finger. Best of all, it integrates with our marketing automation platform to deliver analytics on what’s working well. It’s simple, powerful and insightful. It delivers all of the benefits of an active social presence with none of the encumbrances for busy clients. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
7. Planoly
There is power in a carefully planned and curated Instagram feed. Therefore, Planoly is a preferred platform as it allows you to manage, plan and schedule your Instagram content, with a birds-eye view of your Instagram feed before any imagery goes live. You can manage one or multiple Instagram accounts, making it a valuable tool for agencies as well as individuals. – Lauren Shirreffs, 2Social | The Social Media Agency
8. Quuu
We primarily use our social media channels to share industry news, and Quuu helps keep feeds interesting by providing relevant content our followers care about. Plus, we create a lot of original content, and the Quuu Promote feature is like a mini press release at our fingertips. It pushes our content into other people’s Quuu feeds so our content has a broader reach than it would otherwise. – Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
9. Raven
There is more to the digital marketing mix than social media. I like Raven because it offers site audits, keyword research, backlink analysis, rank tracking, SEO reporting, pay-per-click reporting and social media reporting under a single platform. Generating reports that allow you to see comprehensive data side-by-side leads to better information and better decisions. – Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
10. Sprout Social And Canva
We use Sprout Social as our primary scheduling tool for all social platforms. We find that Sprout keeps up with all the latest application program interface changes across the board and is constantly updating its features. Our social team uses Canva as their preferred design software. On Canva, they are able to create fun infographics, stylish newsletters and branded social media graphics. – Darian Kovacs, Jelly Digital Marketing & PR
11. Supermetrics
Working across social platforms creates challenges in understanding how your efforts are working across channels. We use Supermetrics to grab data from different platforms and pull them into Google sheets for analysis. Seeing the numbers in the same place gives us actionable insight into the quality of our social media efforts. We use that data to make decisions and adjust strategy accordingly. – Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai
12. TubeBuddy
We’ve found TubeBuddy very helpful for creating strong, search-optimized video descriptions on YouTube. It integrates directly with YouTube and instantly shows you whether a video is following best practices. Their keyword research tool also helps find keywords with the right balance of being both often-searched and low-competition. – Elissa Liu, Influential Executive
13. Zapier And IFTTT
I like Zapier because it unifies the process so a lot of people can contribute content. Zapier enables us to build an input process so brand advocates and people involved can contribute content, but it funnels everything through a single platform so the content can be managed and ensured to communicate a larger strategy rather than just appearing as random posts. IFTTT is another good one. – Dan Golden, Be Found Online
