It was almost two decades ago when it all began. The introduction of the holy grail of Social Media to the lives of us commoners! In 1996, when Six Degrees hit the digital platform, it marked the beginning of a new digital era. Fast forward to 2024, social media is an undeniable part of our day-to-day lives. Social media marketing is the new-gen technique which will help you showcase your brand to the billions of user base that these social media platforms have accumulated.
Each of these Social Media platforms went beyond just personal networking and communication between individuals. Businesses started to use these platforms to reach out to their potential customers and further their cause of creating an extensive brand identity. What is better than finding billions of possible customers at your fingertips?
While you try and flourish your business over social media, there are certain tools, having which at your disposal will help you with your social media marketing efforts. Let us have a look at these tools and the ways they might be a right fit for your business or personal endeavours, whichever you want to use them for!
Hootsuite is one of the most widely used social media marketing tools by marketing professionals. This tool allows you to publish, manage, moderate and schedule your content to multiple social media streams from one platform. It typically facilitates you with all the features and usability that would aid your social media marketing efforts.
It helps you plan out your content and schedule it ahead of time. After your piece of content is posted, it also allows you to track its performance with proper analytics data that would help you understand which of your content stands out and which of your content underperforms.
Even though Hootsuite is one of the oldest social media management tools, there are also some limitations to its performance. One of the biggest drawbacks of Hootsuite is its pricing.
The Professional plan costs around INR 2600 / – per month
The Team Plan costs around INR 10,500 / – per month
The Enterprise Plan is a custom plan which is curated at your request and is the most expensive one!
Another drawback of Hootsuite is the user interface. The complex interface of the tool gives it a steep learning curve and makes it difficult for beginners to understand its functionality and process.
2. Buffer
Buffer is undeniably one of the most user-friendly social media marketing tools. Just like any other social media management tool, Buffer smoothens the process of posting, scheduling, managing and tracking from one platform. The clean, smooth and user-friendly appearance of the tool makes it one of the top-performers. The pricing of Buffer is yet another plus point that plays out in its favour.
Buffer has a free plan that allows you to schedule and publish posts/content.
The Essentials Plan comes at a price of 6 Dollars per month per channel.
The Team Plan comes at a price of 12 Dollars per month per channel
The Agency Plan comes at a price of 120 Dollars per month for 10 Channels
Buffer also helps with the analytics data of your posts/content and helps in benchmarking to help track your and your competitors’ performance.
One of the drawbacks that Buffer offers is that it supports a very limited number of Social media platforms. It supports mostly the mainstream platforms. Another major drawback that Buffer is suffering from is limited advanced features, which is hurting its cause with larger enterprises.
3. Meta Business Suite
One of the OG tools that social media marketers have used during the beginning of their careers and a lot of marketers still make use of this classic platform. Initially known as Facebook Creator Studio, Meta Business Suite is the classic social media marketing tool that is created and run by Meta itself.
This is one of the classic social media tools that helps in posting, scheduling, and managing content on your social media profiles. It also helps to track the analytics and engagement of you and your competitors. Meta Business Suite is also one of the prime choices for marketing specialists for performance marketing/ad campaigns.
Using Meta Business Suite is absolutely free, including all of its functionalities. However, there are some limitations to this social media tool. You can only use this tool to handle Facebook and Instagram accounts. The user interface for this tool is a bit complex, and it has a learning curve for marketers to be able to use its full potential. Another big drawback of Meta Business Suite is its customer support. According to a lot of users, getting a response from customer support is an extremely difficult task due to the unresponsiveness and rejection of petitions.
4. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another social media marketing tool that helps in posting, scheduling, and managing content on your social media profiles. The USP of this tool is that it helps you with Social listening and finding out what your target audience is talking about your brand. Sprout Social also gives you access to advanced analytics that will help you determine the demographics of your audience and strategise your marketing plans.
One of the biggest drawbacks of Sprout Social is its pricing.
The Standard Plan comes at a price of 249 dollars/seat per month
The Professional Plan comes at a price of 399 dollars/seat per month
The Advanced Plan comes at a price of 499 dollars/seat per month
The Enterprise Plan is a custom-built plan, which is much costlier than the above plans. The services here are tailored according to your requirements.
Another major drawback behind using these social management tools is customer response service. According to a number of social media managers, the customer response time is very slow and can get frustrating at times.
5. Semrush
The Semrush tool is an all-around marketing tool, which also has the option for social media marketing. The social media tool of Semrush is one of the best for marketers who are just beginning out with their marketing endeavours and do not have the budget for a paid tool. The social media tool provided by Semrush provides much more free services than any other social media marketing tool.
However, the drawback of Semrush is that the specifications and usability of this tool are limited. Being an all-around marketing tool, Semrush mostly concentrates on websites, and somehow, as a result, the functionality of the social media tool lags behind.
Social media is a vast expanse where finding and reaching out to your target audience can be a game changer for your business/brand. At Digital Ninja, we curate our services carefully to aid your business in its marketing efforts and broadcast your brand to the right audience at the right places.
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