Top Social Media Tools You Need to Use in 2021

Top Social Media Tools You Need to Use in 2021

Dec 23, 2020 | Social Media

You already know how important social media is to increase brand awareness, generate more leads, and ultimately score more conversions.

The world is on social media — 50% of it, at least — so if you want your product, service, and mission to reach the maximum amount of people, your business needs to be on social media, too.

However, social media can be extremely time-consuming. It also spans so many diverse tasks, ranging from data-based activities like tracking analytics, to creative jobs such as designing graphics.

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It can be difficult to find the skills and manpower needed to execute a good social media strategy — which is why you need social media tools to help you out.

Below, we’ll cover the top social media tools you should be using in 2021 to help you save time and increase conversions.

What makes for a good social media tool?

Although the term “social media tool” is very general and can apply to a wide range of services, there are a few key features that your top social media tools should have.

It saves you time.

The goal of a social media tool is to save you time while getting similar — or better — results than you could without it. Look for social media tools that automate a process, but make sure the process still happens correctly, since some shortcuts might be too fast and therefore won’t focus on quality.

It helps you increase brand awareness.

One of the biggest benefits of social media is its ability to increase your brand awareness, which is why each social media tool you select should perform its services with brand awareness in mind.

Maybe your tool of choice is an editing platform such as Lightroom, which can help you create images to match the rest of your feed. Or, maybe it’s an Instagram scheduler like Later so you can preview your profile before you post images. Whatever the case may be, social media tools should focus largely on brand awareness.

It’s easy to use.

Social media tools are only a time-saver if they’re easy and intuitive. Each tool you select should be super user-friendly so that, if needed, your accounting team could edit photos and your creative, right-brained writers could still use the analytics function to track daily social metrics.

Many social media tools provide tutorials on their websites. Others, such as Kicksta, have top-notch customer service so you can get immediate expert advice if you need help getting off the ground.

It’s affordable.

Social media tools should be affordable (and most of them are). Many high-quality social media tools are even free, such as the Unfold app, which is perfect for creating Instagram stories.

With social media tools, there’s no need for you to go back and forth with the accounting department trying to get your budget approved. Most social media tools are already budget-friendly so all you need to do is sign up.

It keeps you organized.

One of the ways social media tools save you time is by keeping you organized, so make sure the social media tools you decide to use are efficient and tidy.

For example, HubSpot’s Social Inbox tool helps you prioritize your social media interactions, and graphic design website Canva saves your designs so you can go back and edit them later.

Best Social Media Tools

  1. HubSpot’s Social Inbox Tool
  2. Kicksta
  3. Lightroom
  4. Canva
  5. Unfold
  6. LightAuditor
  7. Retouchup
  8. Marketing Video Builder

1. HubSpot’s Social Inbox Tool

Price: Starts at $800/month, included in the Marketing Hub Professional tier

HubSpot’s Social Inbox tool saves you valuable time while still optimizing your social efforts. Schedule your posts, integrate your social networks with your blog, and monitor messages and mentions so you can nurture new leads.

HubSpot also integrates all of your marketing with your CRM, so it’s easy to figure out how many leads and customers you’re receiving directly from social media. “HubSpot Marketing Hub … puts the potential of corporate marketing within everyone’s reach,” one customer says.

top social media tools hubspot social inbox

2. Kicksta

Price: Starts at $49/month for individual creatives

Kicksta is an Instagram growth service that helps you get more organic followers on your Instagram business account. Using your company account, the growth service “likes” around 30,000 photos a month on carefully-targeted accounts. Those users — real people, not spam bots or fake accounts — will begin to follow your account, increasing your brand awareness.

Kicksta is a good fit for any industry and provides a friendly, responsive, and helpful customer success team. “Kicksta helps introduce new audiences to our brand while providing consistent organic Instagram growth,” says Ryan Beltran, CEO of watch company Original Grain. “It’s great for social proof too!”

top social media tools kicksta

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3. Lightroom

Price: Starts at $9.99/month

Adobe’s Lightroom product is a tool that lets you organize and edit photos. Since social media is all about visuals, it’s critical your business’s social media accounts showcase vibrant, on-brand photos.

Sliders, filters, and many other features make Lightroom a user-friendly tool to create beautiful photos even if you don’t have much editing experience. Lightroom is available for both mobile and desktop, and best of all, changes made on one device immediately apply to all devices.

top social media tools lightroom

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4. Canva

Price: Free, or starts at $9.95/month

Canva is an easy-to-use graphic design website where you can create custom, on-brand graphics for your company’s social media accounts. The website has dozens of templates — everything from Facebook banners to Instagram stories to Twitter posts — so if starting from scratch to create social graphics seems intimidating, use a template instead.

One user said, “Canva has been a lifesaver to me and my business. No more hours sitting in front of the computer coming up with graphics for social media post[s] or Pinterest post[s].”

top social media tools canva

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5. Unfold

Price: Free

Described as “a toolkit for storytellers”, Unfold is an iOS and Android app that helps you create beautiful templates for Instagram stories. Bringing your creative visions to life is the driving idea behind Unfold.

It’s an ideal app for lifestyle brands who want to create stylish collages to keep their social media accounts on-brand and receive the maximum amount of engagement from followers.

top social media tools unfold

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6. HypeAuditor

Price: Starts at $200/month for 50 reports

You’ll never earn money from fake followers — they just make your engagement look bad (think millions of followers, but only a few hundred likes per photo) and ruin your reputation. That’s why HypeAuditor weeds out fake followers on your Instagram account to help you determine your organic reach.

Additionally, HypeAuditor analyzes your audience to figure out where they live, their age and gender, and which of your followers are ghosts.

top social media tools hypeauditor

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7. Retouchup

Price: Starts at $0.25 per image

The website Retouchup provides an easy way to edit photos for social media, from basic color correction to more advanced Photoshop-like features such as adding or removing people from a photo. With Retouchup, you don’t do the work yourself — instead, just submit a photo and the website’s experts will edit the photo for you within 24 hours.

“You’re making me look like an awesome photographer!” one user gushed. Retouchup can save you time during the editing stage, and make your images appear higher-quality and more compelling.

top social media tools retouchup

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8. Marketing Video Builder

Price: Free, or starts at $33/month.

Marketing Video Builder by Animoto helps you make professional-tier videos to engage with audiences. Videos can be created in minutes using the online video editor. The best part about the tool is that you don’t even need editing experience to get started.

You can increase brand awareness by making videos for your company, and share them across social channels to grow your audience. Additionally, if you’re a HubSpot customer, you can integrate that account with your Animoto account.

top social media tools marketing video builder

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When you create videos, you can use a pre-built storyboard template curated by either Animoto or HubSpot. Alternatively, you can make a video from scratch. When you’re done, you can export the video to your HubSpot file manager with one click and manage it from there.

Animoto also integrates with Getty Images, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, so you can have video tools for a good portion of social media platforms all in one place.

Social Media Campaign Tools

  1. Falcon
  2. Quuu
  3. Later
  4. Design Wizard

In addition to the HubSpot Social Inbox Tool, which is helpful while planning and executing campaigns, these social media campaign tools are also helpful to add to your tool belt.

1. Falcon

Price: $129/mo.

Falcon is a social media management platform that allows you to create posts for social networks on a collaborative content calendar.

It integrates with HubSpot, Microsoft, and Salesforce to help users streamline marketing tasks among teams. For a visual to see how Falcon integrates with other software, refer to the photo below:

top social media tools falcon

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HubSpot customers can use this integration to create audience segments. These segmentations will help you target your customers with social media posts, making sure your content is being seen by the right people. Any changes you make within HubSpot will automatically transfer to Falcon, so you don’t have to worry about manually updating content.

2. Quuu

Price: Free, or starts at $19/month.

Quuu is a platform that helps its users execute visually stunning social media content. It automates the time-consuming process of properly creating professional, engaging multimedia assets for campaigns.

When using Quuu, you can choose from over 500 interest categories, like marketing or real estate, and receive content suggestions based on those choices. You’ll receive a certain amount of content suggestions per day per profile based on your settings, ensuring you’ll always have relevant posts for your audience.

top social media tools quuu

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If you’re a HubSpot customer, you can integrate the two platforms. Quuu finds the best content for your social profiles, and HubSpot lets you control those suggestions. You can go to your draft folder via HubSpot and pick which content you want to upload if your Quuu account isn’t automated, which you can change.

Quuu looks for content so you don’t have to. The tool also integrates with Buffer, Hootsuite, and Socialbee.

3. Later

Price: Free, or starts at $7.50/month

Social media marketing platform Later lets you plan and schedule your Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest posts. The drag-and-drop calendar makes it easy for you to map out your upcoming posts and see at a glance how your feed will look.

You can also track your analytics, which will help you figure out the best time of day to post, and the best hashtags to use. Additionally, the Linkin.Bio feature for Instagram helps your posts become instantly shoppable.

“I love that you can either use it via the website or app on-the-go,” one user remarks. “It is one of those apps that I could not live without … Later is [a] super easy tool to set up.”

top social media tools later

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There are numerous choices out there for high-quality social media tools. Ultimately, it’s your job to decide which tool is the best fit for your needs, your budget, your campaigns, and your marketing goals.

4. Design Wizard

Price: Free, or starts at $9.99/month

This tool lets you create different types of content, like photos and videos, with no professional editing experience required. If you have a limited budget and time on your hands, this free visual content tool is ideal for you.

Design Wizard has a library of over a million multimedia graphics for inspiration and use. Plus, all images are licensed for commercial use, so if you use one from the site, you won’t run into copyright infringements.

top social media tools design wizard

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Over to You

Your beautiful, on-brand images will be able to integrate with HubSpot. You can manage all of the files you create with Design Wizard from your HubSpot account, which you can use for campaign posts.

Need a painless way to track your social interactions? Try HubSpot’s social inbox tool today.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

social media content calendar

7 Tips for Writing Facebook Ads that Convert (w/ Examples)

7 Tips for Writing Facebook Ads that Convert (w/ Examples)

Dec 23, 2020 | Social Media

Like many types of advertising, a Facebook ad is only as good as its copywriter.

You could be promoting a high-converting campaign from MaxBounty and have an endless budget to work with, but if your copy is weak, you can expert your conversions to be too.

Learning to write better Facebook ads requires you to learn both classic copywriting skills and a few new-age tips. We put together the seven that have the greatest chance of improving your ad writing skills in the shortest amount of time. We also threw in some examples of big brands using our suggestions in their own Facebook ads.

Let’s forget about targeting, split-testing, and ad platform features for a day and focus solely on writing great Facebook ad copy.

1. Spark some curiosity

Giving users a reason to click on your ad will make them more likely to click on your ad. Seems obvious enough.

The goal here is to create enough intrigue that the user feels like the story of your ad is incomplete. By clicking on your ad, they get to discover the ending.

However, there’s an importance balance to keep in mind.

If you go too far into blatant persuasion, you’ll enter the realm of click bait. This will make your ad come off as illegitimate and untrustworthy to most users. If Facebook notices, you could even face penalization.

Congratulations, you caught someone’s attention but unfortunately it was Facebook’s compliance team.  

Here’s how to do it the right way.

Example:

Notice the last bit of copy in the above Lulu Lemon ad: “gift ideas packed with possibilities”  

A line like that automatically makes the brain ask itself: “What gifts?” “What possibilities?”

It creates intrigue, and that’s one of the most powerful ways to get a user to your landing page.

Try to utilize the same approach by putting the “ending” of your message on your landing page. Just remember to lose the “You won’t believe what happens next!”.  

2. Use simple language

Eight seconds. That’s the average Facebook user’s attention span according to a recent study.

It’s time to avoid the thesaurus and forget your impressive vocabulary, you need to keep things simple.

The best approach is to write short sentences that clearly communicate your message. Every word should have a purpose.

When possible, you can also use numbers to communicate information efficiently.

Many users will not read every word in your copy. They’ll just skim through and process what they deem important. Numbers are almost guaranteed to be one of those things as they’re so easy for us to mentally consume.

Instead of saying “This product works twice as quick as its previous version.” you should say “This products works 100% quicker than its previous version.”  Your message of increased product speed will be understood sooner with the latter approach, and time is of the essence in digital avertising.

Example:

Although the copy is a little long. The above IKEA ad utilizes simple language and numbers to delivers its message.

The Question > Quick Answer > Stats > Call to Action structure has a natural flow when you read it, and each component makes sure not to overstay its welcome.   

3. Communicate urgency

Procrastination can plague us all. To loosen its grasp, we sometimes need a little extra motivation.

You want your ad to coax your audience into acting now rather than later. That’s accomplished through copy that conveys the need for urgency.

You want to hit the user with just the right amount of FOMO so that they feel the need to enter your sales funnel immediately.

Here’s a few ways you can do that:

  • Use words that create a tightened sense of time like “now”, “soon “, and “today”
  • Use a call to action with a limited life span like “sign up before time runs out”
  • Use lines that elicit a fear of missing out like “it’s your last chance” and “don’t miss out”

Example:

This ad from Sephora goes all in on the FOMO approach, even using the term directly in the copy. It’s short, to the point, and succeeds at creating a sense of urgency by directly telling the user not to miss out on brand new products.

Emojis

4. Ensure your ad is cohesive

Many Facebook ads fail because there’s a disconnection between the copy and ad image. This can confuse the user and mae them wonder what exactly is being advertised. That’s a conversion killer.

Fortunately, although a frequent and costly mistake, it’s one that’s easy to avoid.  

Here’s a simple exercise you can do to ensure your ad image and copy are always a match made in heaven:

Read over your copy and then write down the first five images that come to your mind when doing so. If possible, ask a friend to now do the same. If your image does not contain any components that immediately came to you and/or your friend’s mind, it’s likely that your ad lacks cohesion.

Example:

The copy in this La-Z-Boy ad makes you envision a festive, warm, and inviting living room with a comfy couch as its centerpiece. The image delivers exactly that. It then ups the ante by adding a dog and blanket. It’s the epitome of cozy.

It works because the two components perfectly connect. The messages being conveyed in each are synonymous with each other, avoiding any confusion about the ad’s trying to say.

5. Focus on the user

It’s understandable to think that users want to know why a product is great. If they’re aware of its cutting-edge technology or low price-point, then how can they not click buy, right?

Not exactly.

Promoting the features of a product or service simply doesn’t catch eyes. That’s because you’re not including the user in your message. They’re not a character in your story and that’s just not very exciting.

Instead, let them know what’s in it for them.

Focus on communicating the true value of what it is you’re promoting and the positive impact it can have on the user’s life.

Use “You”, “Your”, and “You’re” in your copy so that they see themselves as the main character of your story.

Example:

This ad from Fender Guitars does a great job of keeping the focus on the user.

It clearly communicates how they would benefit by whats being advertised, while lines like “find your perfect bass” and “fit your style and need” ensure the user feels accommodated.

The simplest way to remember this is benefits > features.

6. Use Emojis

Emojis are great at accomplishing two things that are important in any Facebook ad:

  • Drawing attention to your ad copy
  • Saving you space by communicating something quickly through an image

They can also personalize your ad, making the user feel like they’re receiving a message from a friend rather than an advertiser.

The only time we don’t recommend using them is if your ad deals with serious subject matter. It’s probably best to leave them out of your copy if you’re advertising a funeral service…

Example:

This Dunkin’ Donuts ad effectively uses emojis to communicate important elements of its message. The present emoji hits on the gift-giving angle while the coffee emoji reinforces the product that’s being advertised.

Try using emojis in a similar fashion in your next ad.

7. Use a single call-to-action.

You’re likely already aware that a strong CTA (call-to-action) is arguably the most important component of any ad. However, it is possible to over think this crucial element to the point where the user is confused about what you want from them.    

To avoid this mistake, determine a singular CTA and stick to it.

If the goal of of your ad is to get someone to sign up, ensure you use language that reinforces that request.

A good place to start is determining which Facebook button you will use at the bottom of your ad. You can then use that to guide your call-to-action in the actual copy.

Example:

It’s clear that the purpose of this Microsoft Store ad is to get users to register to their virtual winter camps. The word “register” is even used twice, both at the end of the body copy and in the call-to-action area at the bottom.

The “Learn More” button works well enough, but this ad could have potentially been approved by using the “Sign up” button. This would have fit better with the register-based CTA in the rest of the ad.

Try any or all of these strategies when writing your next Facebook ad to create persuasive, clear, ad copy that increases conversions.

5 Powerful Benefits of Facebook Marketing Services for Your Business

5 Powerful Benefits of Facebook Marketing Services for Your Business

Dec 23, 2020 | Social Media

Are you a small business owner? If you are, then you understand the challenges of reaching new customers and maximizing revenue.

That’s why you need all the help you can get.

It’s no secret that marketing isn’t easy. After all, the goal is to reach your target audience while keeping advertising costs as low as possible. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place for help.

This article takes a look at the benefits of Facebook marketing services. Keeping to get the inside scoop on how to take your social media marketing to the next level.

1. Robust Analytics

One of the primary benefits of using Facebook ads to market your business is access to incredibly powerful analytics. In fact, this is the type of digital feedback that you really can’t find anywhere else.

Facebook analytics are essentially limitless. They provide a wide variety of reports regarding your ad’s performance so that you’re never having to guess or make assumptions about who’s seeing them and how they are reacting.

You will be provided with metrics that tell you everything you need to know about your weekly reach, the number of pages like, post engagement, and even which ads are performing best.

2. Create Ads that Maximize Specific Objectives

Facebook marketing also provides a range of tools that enable you to create ads that cater to specific objectives. The Facebook ad platform walks you through a series of simple steps, letting you target your audience, set a timeframe that your ad will run, the size of your budget, and the type of ad you’re wanting to create.

It’s important to understand that ads are extremely customizable based on how you hope to accomplish. This allows you to create more effective ads so that you have a better chance of delivering the best results possible.

Here’s a resource that will help you take advantage of Facebook services.

3. The Ability to Micro-Target Your Audience

When it comes to effective marketing, few aspects are more important than targeting a specific audience. After all, targeting everyone in the world is inefficient and expensive. In other words, the only people you really need to make sure see your ads are the people who are likely interested in what you’re selling.

Facebook ads enable you to be incredibly specific, so that you’re limited exposure only to your target audience, thus increasing your rate of click-through.

4. Increase Clicks and Conversions While Keeping Costs Low

Facebook ads also help increase clicks while keeping marketing costs to a minimum. Keep in mind that you want your audience to see your ad, and then respond by clicking the CTA button. Facebook helps you keep costs low while at the same time maximizing your click-through rate. This allows you to squeeze the most value possible out of every dime of your marketing budget.

5. Take Advantage of the Power of Social Media

The simple fact is that people spend a lot of time on social media. Facebook ads put you in a position to take advantage of this by driving Facebook traffic to your website.

A Guide to the Benefits of Using Facebook Marketing Services

This is a great time to be a small business owner. Fortunately, Facebook marketing services can help make your next advertising campaign a big success without spending a fortune.

Keep scrolling to discover more cool business and lifestyle tips on this blog.