Value your time online? Of course you do!

And getting your time back is more important than ever.

If you’re on social media (and I assume you are because you’re reading this) — you know that keeping up can be exhausting.

The good news? Having the right social media tools can make your life easier.

Fortunately, there are dozens of cool tools, and most are aimed at earning time back in your day.

Below are 21 of my favorite social media tools that every smart marketer needs. To make it easy on you, I’ve listed them in alphabetical order.

And don’t forget to grab the full Infographic at the end of the post!

21 Social Media Tools for Smart Marketers

  1. AgoraPulse

Agorapulse is a social media management tool that can make your life infinitely easier.

With integration into Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, AgoraPulse helps you create contests, monitor your results, and customize your reporting.

  2. Buffer

Buffer is an oldie, but a goodie. (everyone has heard of this tool by now)

Since its inception, Buffer has been saving marketers oodles of time. Although many tools have followed in their footsteps, Buffer retains its popularity and remains a favorite among social media marketers worldwide.

At its core, Buffer is a publishing platform. With it, users can schedule content to publish across various social media platforms.

Thanks to Buffer, marketers no longer need to login several times a day to post content – instead you can simply create a posting schedule for each social network and queue posts to be shared at an optimal time. This becomes super powerful when you pair it with Followerwonk.

With Buffer, you can choose what posts to share and when to do it. And the best thing about it? It gives you back your time! Create a schedule for weeks and even months ahead, posting your evergreen content without lifting a finger.

Plus, their built-in analytics help you see what is working and what is not so you can quickly (and easily) adjust your course of action.

  3. Buzzsumo

Great content is key to great social media marketing, and Buzzsumo is just the tool for that.

It helps you find the most popular content and stay updated on what’s happening in your industry. It can be used as a source of fantastic content.

Simply type in a keyword or phrase and look for popular content that’s already performed well or type in the domain name of your competition and look at the most popular content they’ve shared.

Buzzsumo searches through different types of content including infographics, blog articles, and videos, and shows you the popularity of each piece of content in each social media network.

It’s a daily go-to tool for me as I’m researching a specific topic or looking for additional content to link to from a blog post like this one.

Any way you use it, it’s a goldmine of insight into your target markets likes/dislikes. Use that info to better tailor your marketing strategy to the needs and tastes of your audience.

  4. Commun.It

With Commun.it, you will never need to worry about missing a mention or important conversation again. Commun.it is an easy way to monitor your Twitter activity and respond in real time.

You can also find and engage your top supporters to create reciprocal and meaningful relationships.

  5. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Headlines can make or break a post, and that’s why you want to make sure that yours is a winner.

Co-Schedule has created a headline analyzer that measures the effectiveness of your headline. In other words, how well will it perform?

I use this tool daily to Co-Schedule test out as many variations of a headline as I can come up with. Each one is scored based on their algorithm, giving me an idea of how my audience will respond to it.

  6. Droplr

I couldn’t live online without this handy tool. And if you work within the design space or manage a team, this will simplify your life tenfold.

With Droplr, you remove the friction and frustration of sharing files, shortened URLs, screen recordings and even gifs from your busy life.

  7. Heyo

Want to easily create Facebook contests, sweepstakes & mobile- optimized landing pages? With Heyo you can!

Heyo makes its simple to design beautiful and fully optimized pages that help you get more fans, leads and sales.

  8. Inkybee

There is a reason why social media has the word “social” in it – it is all about communication and building relationships.

Any successful social media marketing strategy needs to involve relationships with successful influencers, content creators, and bloggers. They can link to your page, increase brand awareness, improve reach, and so much more.

However, in order to establish a relationship with this group and get them to share your stuff, you need to find and connect first. That’s where Inkybee comes in!

Inkybee is a tool that lets you look for top bloggers, websites, and influencers in a specific niche.

All you need to do is enter a phrase or keyword and the tool will show you relevant results. There are also ways to narrow down the search by applying criteria such as a specific domain, country, or social media engagement.

  9. KingSumo

Because a great headline is that important, I’ve included two options. KingSumo is a WordPress plugin that tests out blog headlines against each other and then determines which one will attract more traffic. Pretty cool right? It gets better!

KingSumo lets you test 2-10 headlines at the same time which are then rotated and randomly shown to visitors. The tool monitors the impressions that each headline receives, displays it as a percentage and then shares the potential each has to perform.

  10. Likeable Local

Likeable Local is a powerful social media platform that offers small businesses a simple solution for managing a social media presence.

As Neal Schaffer from Maximize Social Business says, “it’s a scalable tool solution to small businesses who are looking for an easy-to-understand and easier-to-implement complete social media solution.”

  11. LikeAlyzer

Are you randomly posting to your Facebook Page with no clear strategy? Would you like to know what you can do to better optimize your Page?

Look no further than LikeAlyzer!

With LikeAlyzer you get a comprehensive review along with tips to help you improve your interaction with current and potential fans and customers.

  12. Mention

If you are looking for a tool that will help you monitor your brand’s presence across social media and the web, then Mention is a real life (and time) saver.

Mention, a real-time monitoring tool, detects any reference to your brand or keywords you’re monitoring on all forums, social networks, blogs, and sites.

It also offers the option of responding to the mentions and sharing them making it a quick and easy engagement solution.

  13. OverVideo

Video is hot, hot, hot. What better way to show off your product or display your latest feature than a video? Now take that video and amplify the message with an animated text overlay!

With OverVideo, you can take an average video and make it a real stand out.

  14. Pocket

One of the most important tools in a marketer’s tool belt is knowledge. But who has time to cull through the hundreds of thousands of articles written daily?

That’s where Pocket comes in. Stay up-to-date on the latest trends and industry news by saving content to read later. I use the Chrome extension and the iPhone app to sync my content as I save on the go.

  15. Post Planner

I can’t talk about my favorite tools without mentioning Post Planner. Full disclosure, I’m the brand ambassador for Post Planner, but my love of the tool goes well beyond that. I’ve used Post Planner for years for a couple of reasons.

Not only is it one of the top tools for social media marketing, but one that can help you save time through proven content, creating predictable results. And who doesn’t want that?

For those who are not familiar with Post Planner, it’s an app that helps you manage and enhance your marketing strategy. In other words, it does all the heavy lifting so you can focus on what matters – building relationships, driving traffic and making sales.

But what really makes Post Planner stand out is that it also helps marketers find the perfect content to post. It gives you access to the most viral posts on Facebook and provides a huge list of status ideas.

With Post Planner, it’s incredibly easy to find content that is currently trending in your niche, so you never have to hunt for popular content to post.

The tool also provides a real-time analysis of the posts, helping you see what posts will help your engagement soar!

  16. Quill Engage

There is no denying the importance of quality analytics. Unfortunately, not all analytics tools are able to provide data analysis that is clear, detailed, and easy to understand.

Most are complicated with too many options and data that is difficult to filter through. That’s where Quill Engage stands out.

This is a fantastic social media tool that connects to Google Analytics, scans it, and puts the data into a detailed report. It focuses on the most important information you need and reports any significant changes, whether good or bad.

The review Quill Engage sends you has a summary of your site’s traffic changes, as well as information about which post got the most or least traffic, and where the majority of the traffic came from.

All of that information is sent to you in simple language that paints a clear picture of what is really going on.

  17. Relay

Any social media marketer knows about the importance of visual marketing. It’s also no secret that a significant portion of your visual content must be original if you expect to get great results. But how can you create visually appealing content and do so over and over?

Relay is the answer. Relay is new to the scene, but quickly has become my go-to for creating attention-grabbing graphics in a matter of minutes.

Relay has pre-designed templates with appropriate dimensions for an Instagram post, Facebook post or cover, presentation, and many more.

The layouts, fonts, sizes, and others factors Relay lets you choose from make it possible to create professional looking content that will get noticed and shared.

  18. Social Quant

Want to make better Twitter connections and increase your followers fast? With Social Quant, you can find relevant people to connect with that are interested in engaging with your brand.

No more random acts of following. Get clear, get specific – get focused on your target market!

  19. Sprout Social

Another superb, all-in-one, management tool is Sprout Social. I’ve used Sprout Social since their beta days and couldn’t live without it.

The Sprout Social publishing system lets you schedule content on all of your accounts, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn.

It also lets you easily monitor any mentions across the major social networks and reply to them right away. There is even a mobile app available that makes messaging a piece of cake.

One of Sprout Social’s coolest new features is their Instagram integration. More Instagram makes me happy!

  20. Tailwind

My go-to tool for content scheduling and detailed Pinterest data is Tailwind.

Want to make content curation, scheduling and analysis super easy?

This is the tool for you!

  21. Dashlane

Last but not least is Dashlane. With Dashlane, you can get your logins and passwords in order.

Stop trying to keep track of your passwords, and instead let Dashlane do the work for you.

And the beauty in this tool? You can get your passwords wherever and whenever you need them!

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there’s a wealth of social media tools to choose from.

The key is finding the one (or two) that simplifies and improves your current process.

All of them are business-friendly — including features that will help boost engagement, reach, traffic, and sales.

So, what’s your favorite tool? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

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This post was originally written by Rebekah Radice and posted on Post Planner.