19 Best Social Media Marketing Tools for 2025 by Functionality

You already have a social media strategy, right? Well, no matter how well-tuned your strategy is, it’s always critical for you to pivot that social media marketing strategy as time goes by. After all, social media is always evolving, your customers are always involved, and so are social media marketing tools. And since tools are an important part of strategy execution, the fact that these tools change is also important.

Here’s the bottom line: it’s always a good time for a social media marketer to regularly take a step back and see what is out there on the market that can help you in your publishing to and management of social media platforms. This is especially true at the end of the year when goals are being evaluated, and at the beginning of the year, when sales numbers become finalized.

With that in mind, let’s look at some social marketing tools you should consider.

What free social media marketing tools can I use to take my business to the next level?

Especially when companies are small or just starting out, it’s easy to ask about free tools. The truth is, in life, nothing comes for free. Think about it: if a company is going to give away a free tool, how will they make money to stay alive? Often, it’s through advertising or other means. But either way, you won’t get the best available product.

Free social media marketing tools, when they exist as part of a freemium model or on a very limited free trial, are very limited and should not be considered if you plan to grow your business across multiple social media platforms in a BIG way. A free trial is OK for trying out the tool, but only on a short-term basis. Consider simply exploring what it has to offer, without disconnecting your existing tool until you know you want to switch.

Here’s the bottom line: unless you are NOT aiming to build or run a 6 or 7-figure business or higher, it’s a smart move to invest $20 to $100 a month or higher for the time saved and more efficient marketing you can do with the tools on this list. At the end of the day, this is a small investment in your business’ future. Considering how important social media marketing is, you don’t want to miss out.

What are the social media tools for Facebook marketing?

Before I get started with third-party tools, the biggest social network provides a great example of how social media marketing tools can help you. In particular, Facebook has its own tools in its Creator Studio as well as Facebook Ads Manager to allow you to create, schedule, and even create and manage ad campaigns. YouTube has similar functionality in its creator studio, but it also only works within the network. Both networks let you respond to your fans and followers within the app.

However, you might want to do all of the above in a dashboard that allows you to manage all of your social networks more effectively. You can create better social media posts, and even leverage Facebook Ads tools that leverage AI to intelligently manage your ad spend perhaps better than Facebook can by using a 3rd party social media marketing tool like the ones I will present below. This often includes finding out how much your social media marketing drives traffic to your site. 

What are the tools used in social media marketing?

At a minimum, social media marketing tools involve the creation of content and scheduling them in one convenient dashboard across all of your social networks. This alone saves a lot of time since you don’t need to log in and out of different social networks. In addition, there’s less need to handle a bunch of applications. Many social media marketing tools even include unified content calendars that help you see what’s getting published where, and when. If you need to make changes, it’s much easier.

On top of these basic functions, tools used in social media marketing usually feature functionality that can help you create creative content, analyze your social media marketing and provide you unique insights, help you do social listening and follower/social media user engagement, generate reports, and even help create and manage ad campaigns. In other words, many of these tools are like a Swiss Army knife: just fold out another tool and use it. Then, put the knife away when finished. 

With all of this in mind, let’s dig in!

Further Reading: How to Create a Rock-Solid Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2025 in 9 Steps

Which Are the 19 Best Social Media Marketing Tools You Should Use?

Let’s now look at a list of my top recommendations, divided into general social media management tools that will generally speak have your back covered and then specialized social media marketing tools if you are looking for a more specific solution for specific social channels. For both kinds of tools, there are different levels of functionality. When choosing between them, think about what you need and what’s affordable for your business right now. Remember, you can change later.

General Social Media Management Tools

First, let’s look at the general social media marketing tools. These typically have broad functionalities across the more popular social networks. In addition, some tools will cover more niche or newer networks like TikTok. When your social media strategy includes one of these, you’ll want to consider this when choosing a general tool. Or, you can pair it with one of the specialized tools below.

Further Reading: The 20 Best Social Media Management Tools You Need to Know

1. SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a social media management platform. It’s easy to post the same piece of content across your social media profiles using this tool. Or schedule it as an evergreen post over time. You can even utilize bulk scheduling for minimum effort. Visualize your social media strategy with their calendar, and get content curation suggestions delivered to your inbox. With their social inbox, you can engage with followers in near real-time, and post Facebook ads. Finally, their analytics reports can be easily downloaded into a PDF.

Pricing: From $25.50 per month.

2. Social Bee

Social Bee allows you to manage several different social media platforms from one place. Like many of its contemporaries, all social media tools designed to make posting across different social media channels easier, Social Bee can be used to schedule social media posts, manage your overall social media calendar, create content, and communicate with your social team. Like Sprout Social and SocialPilot, Social Bee is a social media scheduling tool that also allows you to track analytics across different social platforms, to help inform your strategy on different social accounts, increasing your reach, your leads, and your performance, in one fell swoop. 

Pricing: 14-day free trial, then from $29 per month. 

3. Sprout Social

With SproutSocial, you get powerful planning capabilities in your social media marketing tools. Then, the social media marketing platform lets you compose content using a media library, storage integrations, and product links. For the latter, you can integrate Sprout with certain shopping programs to get those links automatically. Sprout helps automate posting, even assisting with the best times to post. Once you’ve posted, there are engagement tools for your staff, an excellent analytics engine, and even social listening. Finally, there’s an avenue for employee advocacy within the app.

Pricing: From $89 per month.

4. Sendible 

For agencies, Sendible is one of the best social media marketing tools. That’s because it’s set up with agencies in mind. To that end, they have all of the comprehensive social media management tools such as posting, composition, and monitoring. An agency-friendly feature is an in-app approval process, which lets clients have more control. Finally, Sendible supports more social networks and has more integrations than its competitors. These allow for Facebook ads, WordPress, Google My Business, and more.

Pricing: From $29 per month.

5. Buffer

Buffer is an official marketing partner for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. They’ll also help you manage a Twitter account. There’s a unified calendar for all networks, and there are collaboration tools for teams. You can compose posts and schedule them for publication, but you can’t do graphic design. Buffer offers comprehensive analytics tools for engagement, revenue, and audience insights. Finally, you can engage with followers in-app.

Pricing: $5 per month, per social channel. You can also pay for extra user seats through team packages.

Further Reading: How to Sell on Pinterest: A Complete Guide for Beginners

6. Hootsuite

Hootsuite lets you manage over twenty different social networks, including YouTube and Whatsapp. You get comprehensive post planning and posting tools. This includes the ability to do photo editing and preview posts as they will be seen, in addition to the ability to pause posting when necessary. They also have engagement tools to help you respond to followers, analytics for planning or results in monitoring, and advertising management tools. In other words, Hootsuite has a little bit of everything.

Pricing: From $49 per month.

Recommended Specialized Social Media Marketing Tools

Next on our list are the specialized social media marketing tools. These have a specific purpose, so you’d need other tools to go along with them. However, depending on your needs, and the features of your comprehensive marketing tool, you might find them useful. Finally, a few of them are valuable in more than one area of your business or across your marketing campaigns.

7. Brand24 for Social Listening

Social listening tools are just that: eyes and ears across social platforms. Using Brand24’s social listening tool, you can monitor not only your social media accounts for mentions of different brands, hashtags, and subjects, but also other social accounts for mentions of your company or products, and mentions of trending topics or products. Social listening is an important aspect of developing social media marketing campaigns, as it helps inform the message of those campaigns. If, for instance, mentions of your brand often involve some frustration with delivery times, you can use “improved delivery time” on your social media networks, and develop entire social media marketing campaigns around that particular insight. 

Pricing: From $99 per month. 

Further Reading: Top 13 Free Social Media Management Tools You Need to Know

8. Adobe Express for Visual Content Creation for Social Media

Adobe Express is a drag-and-drop graphics editing tool that allows you to make ideal posts for your social media accounts. You can make Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter graphics, in addition to thumbnails and other assets for YouTube. There are also folders where you can store brand assets and other social media graphics for future use, and team collaboration tools. Finally, this is a tool you can use for a variety of other assets, such as posters, banners for blog posts, flyers, and more. Overall, it is a highly versatile tool.

Pricing: Freemium. Premium plan is $9.99 per month.

9. Ocoya for AI Social Media Content Creation

Ocoya relies on artificial intelligence to help generate social content. Front to back, Ocoya can be used to manage your social posts. Although it and others like it are lauded as content creation tools, they can do more than that; provided that you are satisfied with the content being produced by the AI technology, you can use Ocoya to generate, schedule, and then publish social media content. This can help make sure that your social media presence remains consistent, and that you are posting with regularity. The intensity of your use of Ocoya can vary; some use it largely to generate ideas, while others use it as a comprehensive tool. 

Pricing: From $15 per month. 

Further Reading: 15 Best AI Caption Generators for Social Media to Check Out

10. Phantombuster for Scraping Social Media Data

Scraping is somewhat similar to social listening, but this social media analytics tool differs in a few important ways: Phantombuster scrapes over social posts and profiles in an effort to more effectively address and interest a target audience. This means that it is looking less for social mentions, and is more interested in gathering hard data, such as price points, perceived interest, and engagement rates. This can be a powerful tool to help you reach your business goals, because it can help direct your social campaigns to boost social media performance with your existing audience and potential new customers. 

Pricing: From $56 per month.

11. Tweet Hunter for Twitter / X Management

Tweet Hunter is a specialized tool to improve your social media performance on Twitter/X. Your presence on this particular social media marketing platform can be improved using Tweet Hunter because it functions as part social media monitoring tool (combing for relevant Tweets), part AI-driven content creation tool, and part scheduling tool. This means that using Tweet Hunter, you can create high-quality content quickly and easily, and schedule it on your Twitter/X account to remain top of mind and to continually show up in existing and prospective audience feeds. From slightly altering and reposting popular Tweets, to helping you find topics relevant to you, business owners and marketing teams alike can benefit from Tweet Hunter. 

Pricing: 7-day free trial, then starting at $49 per month. 

Further Reading: 15 Best LinkedIn Automation Tools for Lead Gen and More

12. TubeBuddy for YouTube SEO Optimization

TubeBuddy is an extension that helps your YouTube channel grow and improve. Like programs that help manage and improve your social profiles, TubeBuddy functions like most social media automation tools, in that it allows social media managers to develop content, optimize that content, schedule and upload videos, and test the performance of those videos to make sure social media marketing efforts are realizing their potential. TubeBuddy essentially combs for content ideas, helps bring those ideas to fruition through scheduling, and finally uses tools like those from Google Analytics to evaluate how your channel is performing, and what can be done to improve your performance and reach. 

Pricing: From $6 per month.

13. Tailwind for Visual Social Platforms and AI Content Creation

For Pinterest users, Tailwind is one of the best social media marketing tools. That’s because they’ll help build ideal Pinterest posts. You can craft the perfect design, then discover the right hashtags to maximize your chance of going viral. Finally, you can post through Tailwind or send it to your other social media scheduler. Tailwind has also added a generative “AI Ghostwriter,” where you can use it to help automatically generate content for your social media channels.

Pricing: From $9.99 per month.

14. Quuu for Social Media Content Curation (and Promotion)

Quuu is designed to help marketing and social media teams develop content, automate posting, and manage social media sites from a single dashboard. As a social media advertising tool, Quuu provides advanced features that help teams develop content that matches their tone and style, with a focus on types of content befitting their unique niche. Quuu does offer advanced features, but users can use AI as much or as little as they’d like. Some marketing teams prefer to use Quuu primarily for content mining, followed by in-house development and writing, while others use Quuu from start to finish to research, create, and post relevant content. 

Pricing: From $5 per month.

Further Reading: 13 Recommended Social Media Search Engines

15. BuzzSumo for Social Media Content Research

With BuzzSumo, it’s easy to find useful things to implement your social media strategy. First, the app combs the web for great content to curate or imitate. Second, they keep track of what’s trending on the Web, which goes beyond your other analytics by pulling in competitor knowledge. BuzzSumo’s social monitoring tool lets you see what people are saying about you and your competitors. And most importantly, this is a great app to use for finding influencers.

Pricing: From $79 per month.

16. MeetEdgar for Scheduling Evergreen Social Media Content

This is primarily a content curation tool that you can use to fill up gaps in your content calendar. The calendar can be kept on MeetEdgar, though it doesn’t have the advanced capabilities of the comprehensive tools. Post through Edgar, or feed the found content into your more comprehensive scheduler. Finally, you can A/B test different kinds of content to help hone your strategy.

Pricing: From $19 per month.

17. Bit.ly for Link Shortening

Bitly is a URL shortener, and arguably one of the oldest. However, it’s a bit more sophisticated than just shortening links. You can make branded short links with this, making for ideal social sharing tools. In addition, they have a link management function that lets you see which links get clicked on the most, and other valuable insights.

Pricing: Freemium. Paid $29 per month.

18. Inoreader for RSS Feed Management

RSS feed management is important, because it proves detailed analytics about your site and how it is currently performing. A competitive analysis and detailed analytics regarding your site’s content is important to make sure that you are bringing in the audience you are seeking, and continually showing up well in search results. From remaining top of mind for relevant influencers, to ranking highly in Google indexing, RSS feed management is important. Inoreader accomplishes RSS feed management with aplomb, helping marketing teams make sure they are offering evergreen content on a well-functioning site, with easy access to customer service, product pages, and more. 

Pricing: A free version is available, and paid plans start at $7.50 per month. 

19. IFTTT for Social Media Automation

Try this tool if you’d like to write automation applets for your devices and programs. These can help with a variety of social media tasks, such as automated posting. This way, you and your staff don’t have to think of everything.

Pricing: Freemium. Paid from $5 per month.

There’s little question that there are lots of tools out there for social media professionals. How you leverage these social media marketing tools to develop and manage your social media content and social media accounts will undoubtedly help you achieve your goals for social media campaigns and social media strategy in general. 

If you’re just starting, I suggest choosing tools that are simple enough for beginners yet leave room for you to grow. That way, you won’t feel held back by your social media marketing tools. Then, you can go on to more complex tools that can handle more complex organizations and operations. At the end of the day, the most important thing is to have the right tools for the right tasks, at the right time.

Further Reading: AI Social Media Tools: The Definitive 13 Apps You Should Know