Social media marketing professionals create strategies to generate more engagement, land more followers, and ultimately create more financial gain. Those in the field use social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok to connect with a target audience to help drive website traffic, build a widely-known brand, and gain revenue. While the internet and online commerce continue to grow incredibly fast, social media marketing is critical for global visibility and is a powerful way to quickly reach a large number of people. The good news is, you don’t have to do all that on your own. Using the right tools can help you crush your social media marketing strategy and get the results you want.

Why Use Social Media Marketing Tools?

Social media marketing tools can save you time (freeing you to dream up new content!) and provide valuable information. Analytic tools can help determine your target audience and gather information, planning tools can help determine the right time to post and

push your content across multiple platforms at once, social listening tools help keep you engaged with users, and AI tools in the form of chatbots that can help you deliver prompt responses 24/7. Let’s take a look at some of the social media marketing tools that can help you get and stay on track with your goals. 

Analytics

Getting to know your target audience on social media is the most important element when working to grow your business or brand. Analytics makes it easier for you to do just that. 

Social media analytics involve collecting, tracking, and analyzing user data on your social media accounts so you can figure out how it’s working for you—and where you’re falling short. You’ll glean crucial information on engagement such as your campaign’s reach, what kinds of positive (and negative) mentions you’re getting online, how many people are seeing your posts and if they’re being shared, if your brand’s hashtag is performing well, and other details to help improve or change your strategy. Having access to this data allows you to better focus on future marketing efforts, ultimately saving you time and money. 

Many channels have tools designed especially for their platform, such as LinkedIn Analytics and Facebook’s Business Suite Insights, which are great ways to dig deeper within each platform. Since many social media marketers are working across platforms, it can save time and streamline your strategy to use a social media analytics tool that works across them all. The most well-known and widely-used of these is Google Analytics (or GA). GA collects and tracks user data, compiles it into useful reports, and provides valuable insights to improve performance.

No matter which analytics tool you choose, the valuable information provided shows how your brand, product, or business is performing from a social media perspective. Additionally, analytics tools can generate reports to share with your team, investors, and others involved in your brand’s success.

Planning & Publishing 

Creating and sharing content is integral to your company’s success, whether you’re a small business just starting or a large company working to attract new followers. Once you’ve figured out the types of content you want to create to help build brand awareness and boost sales within your target audience, you can decide on the best places to share it. But it’s not as simple as sharing spontaneously—use those analytics to determine which days of the week and times of the day people are visiting your social media platforms to plan the optimal time and how often to post to reach the most people. And of course, there are planning and publishing tools available to help you schedule when to post your content. 

Making a content marketing calendar and planning to share content when you know your subscribers will be most likely to engage with it will help with brand awareness and boost conversions. Understanding your audience, knowing when and what to publish or send, and being consistent will help keep your followers engaged and drive more traffic your way. To save time and to ensure you’re maintaining your brand voice and aesthetic, you can even create a calendar for posting content to help you stay on top of your content marketing strategy. Planning posts ahead of time eliminates the stress of coming up with new content on the fly.

Listening & Engagement 

How connected you are with your community helps determine your success. And as a company or brand grows, keeping up with all the messages, mentions, and shares can be hard. That’s when social media listening and engagement tools come in. These tools can help you stay on top of the conversation even when you’re not directly communicating with your followers or customers. You can see what you’re doing right, as well as quickly resolve any problems or issues that arise, identify chances for growth, and even keep an eye on the competition. Listening and engagement tools provide a unique opportunity to receive feedback and make changes. These tools will condense all messages and mentions of your business, product, brand, and/or targeted keywords and hashtags into one place so you can keep a pulse on how your brand is being received. Social listening also provides a way to stay on top of ever-changing social media trends, can help identify new revenue streams, and get important industry tips.

Chatbots

Speaking of staying connected, as we roll into 2022, one of the hottest trends in social media is AI. Whether you realize it or not, you’re likely interacting with some form of Artificial Intelligence or machine learning (ML) every single day, whether it’s clicking on a Netflix recommendation or messaging with a company online.

As consumers, we like to feel seen and heard. As business owners, being available to current and potential customers is a savvy business decision. And while you may be able to keep up with some of the communication on your own, you can’t spend all day and night responding to questions from followers. Enter chatbots. 

Chatbots are automated response tools available 24/7. Chatbots use AI to greet interested customers, make appointments, answer basic questions, and perform tasks. Best of all, you can program your bot to help you in the ways you need—so you are more available to apply the human touch to other areas of your business. 

Speaking of the human touch: while all these tools are necessary to help collect, track, and measure data, synthesize information, and provide notifications, the human connection is still at the root of any company or brand’s success. Interacting live online through a Q&A session, responding thoughtfully to a customer’s problem, promptly answering a follower’s question, or simply engaging on a human level is as (if not more!) crucial to growing and maintaining your brand as the tools that help you build business. 

Learn Social Media Marketing 

Want to learn about the tools of the social media marketing trade? Enroll in Noble Desktop’s 30-hour Social Media Marketing Certificate. The curriculum gives participants a comprehensive overview of the industry. Hands-on training over five distinct units allows students to master various elements of social media marketing. Certificate program participants will learn how to determine the right social media platform for their goals, develop a successful social media strategy, and create content that increases engagement and drives sales. Expert instructors teach participants how to gain a following and underscore the importance of market positioning and using social media analytics to improve results. Noble even offers students a chance to retake the class for free within a year to drill down on challenging concepts or refresh their skills. 

If you want to take a shorter course or focus on a specific platform, look into Noble’s wide variety of social media marketing classes. Individuals can attend in-person classes at Noble Desktop’s New York City location or attend live online social media marketing courses from anywhere in the world. 

Noble’s Facebook Marketing class provides an in-depth look at creating targeted ads, leveraging Facebook groups, and creating business pages within the platform. The Instagram Marketing class helps students learn about advertising on Instagram as well as how to build a following by creating resonant content. The course delves into the Instagram algorithm and how to use it to develop content and posting strategies as well as increase engagement. The course’s expert instructors go over best practices and tools like Instagram Stories, marketing, and advertising. 

With Noble’s LinkedIn Marketing class, you’ll learn how to craft a marketing strategy for LinkedIn, create dynamic content, and advertise on the platform. The course also covers prospecting with LinkedIn search as well as how to use LinkedIn analytics to your advantage. Finally, Social Media Video Marketing: TikTok & YouTube teaches how to use the platforms for video-based campaigns and techniques for creating content. Students will also learn how to monitor video trends, and identify and engage their target audience.

You can also find local and live online social media marketing courses, bootcamps, and certificate programs in your area using Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me tool.

Other social media marketing resources offered by Noble Desktop include its blog which has detailed articles about various social media marketing topics, and the Intro to Social Media Marketing seminar on YouTube, which gives in-depth descriptions about various social media platforms and strategies.