Social Media Marketing Software

With 53% of the global population present on social media, your business must have a social media marketing strategy to interact with your customers and keep them engaged with your brand. Different social media channels require you to cater to different audiences in different ways, repurposing your content and adjusting your strategy across platforms.

Social media marketing tools can help you execute a social media marketing strategy, analyze your performance on different platforms, and realize benefits such as brand awareness, increased engagement, and sales.

To help you select the right tool for your business, we built this guide covering the typical features of social media marketing software, important considerations when choosing a tool, how much social media marketing software costs, how small and midsize businesses (SMBs) use these tools, and related FAQs. 

Here's what we'll cover:

• What is social media marketing software?

• What are the typical features of social media marketing software?

• Important considerations when choosing social media marketing software

• How much does social media marketing software cost?

• How do small and midsize businesses use social media marketing software?

What is social media marketing software?

Social media marketing software automates the creation and scheduling of social media posts, allowing users to post and share content across social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. These tools can help you monitor your marketing efforts, measure your return on investment (ROI), and run social media ads.

Social media marketing tools allow you to link multiple social accounts and manage them from within one platform. You can also use these tools to engage with customers and inform them about your brand and offerings.

What are the typical features of social media marketing software?

• Content management: Create and update social media content and ensure brand consistency.

• Post scheduling: Assign specific times and dates for your content/posts to publish on social media.

• Reporting/analytics: Gain insight into your audiences' preferences and demographics, and evaluate your social media marketing campaign performance.

• Automated publishing: Establish rules to automatically publish social media posts across one or more channels.

• Conversion tracking: Monitor the actions your customers or visitors take against established goals (e.g., downloading content, signing up for newsletters/emails, making a purchase, etc.).

• Customer segmentation: Group and organize your customers based on demographic, geographic, and behavior information.

• Multi-account management: Manage multiple social media accounts across platforms.

• Contact management: Store, organize, and track contact information for customers and leads.

• Keyword filtering: Filter data by mention, source, influencer, demographic, social inbox, and content type.

Important considerations when choosing social media marketing software

To make sure that your social media management tool meets your business needs, it's important to consider your unique audience requirements, necessary features, and budget.

• Understand your audience: It’s great to build a presence on multiple social media platforms, but each channel requires an investment of time and money. Most importantly, you need to be where your audience is. If they are more active on one social platform over another or not present on one channel at all, your strategy should adjust. Before selecting software, analyze where your audience is present and active. Knowing which platforms are best for your business brings you one step closer to choosing the right social media management software (one that works with all desired/necessary platforms).

• Make a list of required features: This list should tie into your social media goals. If you have a list of marketing campaign goals, you can then make a list of features needed to reach those goals as well as some good-to-have features that aren't required but could help execute your strategy. Then, as you evaluate software, prioritize tools that include all required features before evaluating those nice-to-haves.

• Pricing: Look for social media management software that aligns with your goals but also fits into your budget. Most social media software providers offer multiple pricing plans/tiers that offer different features per level. Be sure to also ask about hidden charges or additional fees related to integrations, customization, or specific hardware requirements.

How much does social media marketing software cost?

Most social media software on the market is priced on a per user, per month basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on its starting price.

Price ranges:

• $1.9 - $14

• $15 - $77

• $78+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering that was found on vendor websites on April 5, 2022. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products. 

The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium version of a social media tool that is priced higher may include additional features such as multitargeting, budget spend, and ad performance analysis.

How do small and midsize businesses use social media marketing software?

Social networking is crucial for SMBs, as customers are more likely to do business with brands they have interacted with on social media. As social media marketers at small and midsize businesses wear many hats at once, they need develop a robust strategy that allows them to publish social media content and engage with their audience. 

Here are a few ways SMBs can use social media marketing software to execute and manage their marketing strategy:

• Brand promotion: Since SMBs often lack large budgets to spend on traditional advertising and online paid ads, they often rely on social media and word of mouth. Social media marketing tools can play a major role in brand promotion for SMBs; regular publishing of relevant and unique content allows them to reach their target audience and build brand awareness.

• Customer engagement: Customers who have encountered your brand and received a positive response/interaction are more likely to do business with you. Social media marketing software can help you engage both new and existing customers, provide support, and maintain communication to keep them coming back.

• Live videos: Live streaming on social media facilitates more interaction than static posts or videos. Live videos allow SMBs to answer customer questions in real time, share product offerings, and explain your business and services.

What are some benefits of and use cases for social media marketing software?

• Scheduling: Reach your audience at the right time with the right content by creating and using a content calendar.

• Brand awareness: These tools allow you to post content on different social media channels at peak publishing times, increasing the chances of your social profiles and overall brand reaching your target audience.

• Audience insight: Learning about your audiences' preferences and demographic information helps you target them more effectively. Social media management tools can provide insights about your customers, bridging the gap between your brand and its audience. 

• Reputation management: As you start building a social media network and customers engage with your brand, you're bound to encounter some hiccups along the way. A reputation management plan can help you address these situations when they occur, and social media marketing software facilitates responses to negative comments before they reach a wider audience. You can monitor, engage, and take note of negative customer experiences to improve your services.

• Customer support: Your social media handles also work as channels for your audience to reach out for help. Instead of email or a call queue, customers can directly contact your brand on social media via comments or direct messages. Social media marketing software can help you respond quickly to answer questions, provide support, and boost customer satisfaction rates. 

What are different platforms for social media marketing?

There are many social media platforms that cater to different audience and content types, such as short-form text, images, and videos. Here are some popular social media platforms for your social media and content marketing efforts: 

• Facebook: With nearly 2.91 billion users on Facebook, it is the most widely used social platform in the world. If your business caters to all age groups, Facebook can be beneficial to building your social network and expanding your reach. It supports videos, news updates and posts, long and short-form text, and images/graphics. Facebook offers specific features for small businesses, such as an online shop where you can sell products.

• Twitter: While Twitter has less users than Facebook, its users do check the platform frequently and engage with other users and brands. Twitter users generally check what’s happening worldwide and follow trending topics.

• LinkedIn: This social media platform caters to working professionals and allows businesses to showcase aspects of their organization such as employees, workplace culture, and their mission. LinkedIn facilitates B2B marketing, lead generation, and building brand awareness.

• Instagram: Instagram has become one of the most popular social media tools, especially among young adults and teens. The main drivers of Instagram's success are bloggers, influencers, small-business owners, and general users. Its image and short video-based content allow business owners to keep followers engaged and establish an online presence.

How to measure the impact of a social media marketing campaign

Marketing campaigns go hand in hand with a particular metric or metrics to determine success.

Social media marketing tools can facilitate campaign analysis, so you can tell what is working, what isn't, and adjust accordingly.  

Measuring the following factors can show where your social media marketing campaign is hitting the mark or requires fine-tuning: 

• Reach: The reach of your campaigns shows how many people you have reached with your content. Depending on the platform, this can take the form of followers, connections, subscribers, views, or visitors.

• Engagement: This shows the number of people who have interacted with your posts across platforms. You can measure engagement through clicks, shares, comments, reshares, etc.

• Conversions: These actionable insights show how many people took action after viewing your content. Conversion can be calculated by registrations, downloads, sales, form completion, subscriptions, etc.

What are the four main types of social media tools?

Some social media management software is created with a focused objective, such as social media analytics, content creation, social media management, or scheduling, among others. Other tools fulfill multiple purposes. 

Here are some examples of social media software that can aid your marketing efforts:

• Social media analytics tools: These tools help analyze your ongoing campaign performance by measuring factors such as likes, follows, engagement, conversions, and more.

• Content marketing tools: You can build your inbound marketing strategy with the right content. Content marketing tools help you publish and update unique content to reach your target audience.

• Social advertising: It isn't always easy to reach your audience through the noise of available digital content. To decrease the chance of your content getting lost in the shuffle, you can use social advertising tools to give your posts a wider reach. 

• Social commerce tools: Your social accounts can also work as online shops that sell your products using social commerce tools. As customers spend time on social media, it becomes easier for them to make in-app purchases when they encounter products.

Back to social media marketing software directory

*Note: The applications selected in this article are examples to show a feature in context, and are not intended as endorsements or recommendations; these are obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.