23 Best Social Media Marketing Tools In 2021

While in the past it may have been enough to simply post content and ads on the major social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, this is no longer the case.
Social media apps (not to be confused with social media platforms) have come a long way 💁🏾

Most offer two main benefits:
•    Allowing businesses better access to their ideal audience. Social media stories, reels, and shop page features are examples of ways companies can better market to potential customers.
•    Implementing functions to give marketers data into a user’s experience. For example, this data allows marketers to understand better if stories work better than reels.
Multiple mobile apps need to work in tandem to optimize your social media marketing campaigns.
We recommend utilizing 1-2 apps per category below for the ultimate success. You will notice that many of the apps featured have very similar functionalities – it is the interface changes.
Always sign up for your free trials and see which combination of apps works best for you, and then start to optimize your strategy from there.
Scheduling And Analytics Apps ⏰

The following apps allow businesses to schedule when their posts go live and provide analytics on how previous posts have performed on each social account.

1. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a social media management app that allows users to schedule posts and manage messages from users.
Agorapulse also offers reports that tell you how and why different posts are performing on each social app.
Their four main features are:
•    Unified Social Inbox: The platform has all of your business’s comments, mentions, private messages, and reviews are stored chronologically in one place.
•    Intuitive Publishing: This is the section of the platform where you can plan, schedule, and collaborate on all your future social media posts.
•    Social Listening: With this feature, you can listen to what users have to say about your brand, your competitors, and your industry. You can respond to conversations and take actions with likes, replies, and direct messages.
•    Insightful Analytics: Reports can be published to show your team what is working and what is not regarding your social media presence. The app also offers recommendations on when, where, and what to post based on behavior data.

2. Oktopost

Oktopost offers scheduled publishing and analytics to measure each post's effectiveness.
Oktopost also provides social listening, in which it monitors the conversation about your brand, competitors, and your industry to best inform you on what to post next.
The app also offers a bird’s eye view of your social editorial calendar to see upcoming channels.
Oktopost can help monetize your business by tracking users following and interacting with your brand.
You can see who these users are and continue to post on their feeds to increase traffic, conversions, and purchases.

3. Buffer

Buffer is another app that allows businesses to schedule and queue their posts on multiple accounts at once.
Users can schedule a post to be uploaded to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Pinterest, and LinkedIn with one click.
Buffer also analyzes the post’s success and reports this data back to the user.
Buffer’s eight major features are:
•    Stories Planner: Where you can plan your Instagram stories.
•    Shop Grid: On posts with shoppable products, you can link the URL on your site to this product so users can shop directly on the social media page.
•    First comment: When planning your Instagram, you can input a “first comment” on the page to spark engagement.
•    Hashtag Planner: Create and save your hashtags to reuse for future social media posts.
•    Instagram Tagging: Add your location and tag users as you post on Instagram.
•    Stories and Post Analytics: Measure the performance of posts, stories, and hashtags.
•    Custom Reports: Build reports to share with your team on your social media presence.
•    Answers: Buffer’s team can provide solutions to your most commonly asked social media questions.

4. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is another scheduling app that organizes posts weeks in advance. In addition to scheduling, MeetEdgar can automatically reshare your most popular posts over time to increase engagement.
MeetEdgar’s plan includes:
•    Library: All of your social posts are saved and sorted into a library where you can search for previous posts to repost or edit.
•    Automation Schedule: Posts stay consistent as they are added into a recurring timeslot to keep social feeds active.
•    Category-Based Scheduling: Posts are scheduled by category, so they are posted at relevant times to relevant accounts.
•    Suggested Social Posts: The app auto-generates similar previous social media posts to stay on brand and create more content.
•    Dashboard: Access to analytics, link tracking, and social listening all in one place.
•    Support: Live 24/7 support for the app to answer any questions you have on your account.

5. Hootsuite

Hootsuite allows users to create and schedule posts and helps users to engage with their audiences on every app.
Hootsuite provides a combined inbox from all social apps to efficiently and effectively respond to users’ questions following a post.
Their full suite of tools are as follows:
•    Engage: Address messages and reply in a timely fashion.
•    Monitor: Stay updated on conversations about your brand, industry, and competitors
•    Analyze: Analyzes your performance across all social channels and offer actionable insights to post the right things at the correct times.
•    Amplify: Teaches you how to boost and extend your social reach.
•    Insight: Offers an instant analysis of real-time conversations happening about your brand online.
•    Impact: Provides reports on how your social media channels are driving conversions, leads, and sales.
•    Ads: Combines your social and search advertising campaigns into one platform so you can manage your entire digital budget in one place.

6. Sked Social

This app is great for scheduling, particularly for Instagram, because it offers you a view of how each post will look on the actual platform, helping you master that all-important Instagram aesthetic.
Sked’s latest update allows users to help schedule and manage IGTV and Instagram Reels as well.

Image Editors 🖌
These mobile apps offer users the ability to create and edit images and graphics for each social media platform.
In an age where “social media aesthetic” in incredibly important, these apps are becoming commonplace among marketers.

7. Crello

Crello allows users to create graphics and images even if they have no design experience.
There are filters and templates for each social platform to create the perfect campaign. Within the platform, there is:
•    Photo editing
•    Object design
•    Animation
•    Audio  
The photo editing features include:
•    Background removal
•    Adding a frame to a photo
•    Adding speech bubbles or text
•    Flipping and rotating images
•    Resizing, blurring, and cropping images
The design objects feature allows you to add shapes, stickers, icons, badges, and labels to an image.
Animation allows you to trim videos and effects and logos to a video. Lastly, the audio function will enable you to add music to pictures or audio to a video.

8. WordSwag

Wordswag allows users to place customizable text over any image.
It helps marketers quickly add captions and logos over images.
Use your text or search from their free library of quotes, thoughts, and jokes.

9. Unsplash

Unsplash is a free app that provides users high-resolution stock images that anyone can download and use.
With thousands of images available by topic or collection, it is well suited for any business looking for the perfect photo.

10. Handy Photo

Handy Photo’s app allows users to edit images quickly and professionally.
It allows users to apply filters, move objects around in the image, and remove unwanted objects as well.
Other features include adding texture to photos, frame options, tonal, and color adjustments.

11. Photofox

This app offers layers, blending modes, tonal adjustments, and more to help you create a perfect visual for your brand.
While some of the apps on this list are more for photos you would take on your own, Photofox is great for those looking to create an artistic-looking aesthetic.

12. Canva

Canva is an easy-to-use graphic design platform in which users can use social media graphics.
Users can also upload their images and overlay them with Canva’s graphics and logo options for the perfect branded image.
Canva offers templates for each type of social media post and takes out all of the guesswork in correctly sizing an image for any of your accounts.

13. Afterlight

Afterlight is another image editing app that has preloaded filters and editing tools.
Afterlight offers dozens of filters that can be adjusted for the perfect look, so you don’t need to hire a fancy video editor or learn Adobe Lightroom to create something beautiful.

14. Vsco

VSCO is a photo editing app that allows users to capture photos within the app and edit them with provided tools and filters.
Users can also upload and edit previously taken images from their phones.
Lastly, Vsco has its discover feature to connect with users to explore photos, videos, and filters for inspiration.

Video Apps 📼

This last group of apps allows users to create videos uploaded directly to a business’s social media account.
It is a common misconception that video is expensive to produce and difficult for a small business.
Still, with 82% of all consumer web traffic coming in the form of video in 2021, it’s essential to find those easy-to-use apps and get started right away, regardless of your budget.

15. Write-on Video

With Write-on Video, you can create storyboards for your video content to help keep you organized during production. With the pods and video outlines feature, staying on top of your entire video content creation is is very easy.
You can also add animated stickers, include captions, and more to help you create videos like a professional YouTuber.
Other features include:
•    Use presets or custom video outlines
•    Add instruction to each scene you film
•    Import audio and other visuals
•    Create and add voiceovers
•    Change the speed and the size of your video
•    Export directly to your SM channels

16. Boosted

Boosted allows users to create videos with their photos or videos and has their own library to choose from.
Users typically use Boosted to make videos for YouTube, promotional videos, or social media videos for their brand.
Boosted offers professional quality templates and a free stock library.
You can use a video clip of your own or one from their library, view your video edits in real-time, overlay the video with music from the free library, and make the video fully customized for your brand.
Users can create videos or animated graphics within 3 minutes on the app.

17. Promo
Promo offers pre-made videos to help make it easy to post videos every day.
You can choose between thousands of different templates and utilize their video calendar.
The video calendar has a specific video template that can be used for any date. You also have the option to upload your photos and turn them into a video.
With 4.5 stars and a “free” price tag, this is a good one to check out.

18. Story Slicer

Story Slicer allows users to take long-form videos and cut them into shorter ones that can be posted on social media as a regular post or story.
Depending on the app you are posting it to or the type of video, the app offers recommended video lengths for every option.
Story Slicer costs $1.99.

19. Magisto

Magisto allows its users to upload photos and videos and then give Magisto the direction of what they want the video to end up looking like.
Magisto then selects the best parts of your uploads, add in your music and filters, and create the perfect video for your social channel.
It works in just three simple steps.
1.    Upload your business’s photos and videos.
2.    Choose a video editing style and audio soundtrack from Magisto’s library.
3.    The AI-powered video maker will analyze, edit, and export the final video product.

20. Animoto

Animoto is a video creation app that provides users with video templates, stock images, and customization tools to create the perfect video to upload to your social account.
Their toolbox includes seven major features:
•    Stock library: Getty images library has over 1 million photos and videos to choose from.
•    Photos and Video Clips: You can upload your content to the platform
•    Edit Anywhere: Login to your account from anywhere, and the Cloud-based platform will have all of your content saved
•    Music Library: With thousands of licensed music tracks, you can choose the perfect sound to overlay with the video.
•    Templates: Animoto has premade templates where you can input your content. There are specific templates for every social media platform.
•    Texts and Fonts: Offers over 40 professional fonts.
•    Unlimited Creation: No pre-video pricing. You can create as many videos as you want.

21. Hyperlapse

This app is all about the time-lapse, and what makes it so great is the app’s ability to help you stabilize your time-lapse (no need to worry about those literal bumps in the road!) and create beautiful videos without a tripod.
Content Editor Apps 💻
Once you have your photo perfected and scheduling set to go, you can’t forget about the content you’re going to include with your social post.
These apps help you get creative (and believe us, after daily posting, you’ll need some inspiration now and again!).

22. Captions for Instagram:

Captions for Instagram is exactly what you would expect, designed to create a caption for your social media post (mainly Instagram and Facebook).
It houses a library of captions and quotes on-trend with what users are searching for at a given time.
You can search by category, hashtags, gender, or emotion.
In short, Captions takes away the stress of creating those all-important captions for your posts daily.

23. Hashtag Expert

This is a fast way to find hashtags for your posts to increase your reach.
To use the app, you simply give the tool base hashtags you like, they will search their hashtag database to find ones proven to get likes, comments, and followers, and then you’re good to go.

Hashtag Expert also allows you to view in-depth analytics on the hashtags you are using to see how many posts and likes each one has.
The Takeaway 💁🏻♀️

Utilizing any of the apps mentioned earlier can give businesses a leg up on their social media channels to increase brand awareness, brand loyalty, and brand purchases.
Let us know if there is an app you prefer that isn’t mentioned in the comments below!