41 Killer Social Media Tools You Should Know (including AI Tools)

Social media has become a huge force in modern marketing. This is unsurprising when you consider that the average American spends significant time on social media networks each day, making social media a more important forum than ever. In fact, social media is rapidly turning into a kind of central market for ideas and product discussions. Brands are finding that it’s more critical than ever that they participate in these virtual forums.

Unfortunately, because social media is such a vast arena even within one network, it can be hard to keep up with everything. Especially if your brand has an audience from around the world, or if you have a small staff that works several networks, social media management quickly becomes a very large job.

That’s where social media tools come in. Using the right tools, social media marketing staff can manage multiple accounts, even multiple clients, more easily. Not only do these tools save time, but they can also increase the quality of your campaigns. With that in mind, let’s look at the 41 best tools that I’ve identified.

General Social Media Dashboards

Social media dashboards are suites of tools that perform many different functions in one package. For instance, most of them have a post-scheduling tool, some analytics, and social monitoring. In addition, most social media dashboards don’t cover all social networks: TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest are harder to find coverage for, though this is changing.

1. SocialPilot

While SocialPilot can handle any business size from freelancer to enterprise, it’s especially good for freelancers and SMBs. One reason for this is that you can “right-size” your subscription so you both pay less and get only what you need. In addition, there are a lot of tools for content curation, creation, analytics, and scheduling. Finally, everyone gets a social inbox with powerful social listening and monitoring tools. Agencies can get white label service for their clients.

2. Sendible

Sendible’s claim to fame is that they have more social media integrations and support than any of the other social media tools. With that said, they cover Google My Business and Facebook ads (they’re a Meta marketing partner) but not TikTok. Sendible also has a lot of storage and data integrations, like Dropbox and Google analytics. You can even take Sendible with you through the mobile app and Chrome extension. Best of all, you’ll need fewer tools to manage your online presence generally.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout is another good all-around social media dashboard. It has more diverse tools, like social listening and employee advocacy, that help you control the narrative about your brand. However, Sprout is famous for its all-in-one inbox, which includes your notifications for the major networks including TikTok without leaving the page.

4. Buffer

With Buffer, you can get the basics for free or at a low price, which makes it a great choice for SMBs and nonprofits. At the lowest price, you’ll get social media scheduling, analytics, and content creation tools. For an upcharge, you can get collaboration tools, which you might want as your team grows.

5. Hootsuite

For an all-purpose social media dashboard, Hootsuite is a good option. They have a full suite of content creation, collaboration, and analytics tools. In addition, you get social media scheduling and listening tools. As a bonus, Hootsuite has integrations for WhatsApp and TikTok.

6. AgoraPulse

Small business owners and freelancers should love Agorapulse because it has everything in one place and is easy to use. For instance, you’ll not only get the social media content creation and scheduling features, but also extensive analytics. Everyone gets a great social media inbox that includes all your alerts and scheduled content. Then, with social listening features, you’ll get a clear view of what people are saying about your company. Finally, AgoraPulse helps you see the ROI of each campaign so you don’t have to calculate it yourself.

7. Crowdfire

If you have a small social media team, this is a good option. That’s because Crowdfire has strong social media curation capabilities, including both images and text. You can schedule content across all your social media networks. Then, you’ll get analytics and social monitoring.

Further Reading: The 19 Most Powerful Social Media Dashboards You Should Know

Visual Social Media Dashboards

Visual social media dashboards are social media tools that are focused on visual content. In particular, they specialize in Instagram, Pinterest, or both. However, some of them also have functionalities for other social networks. Of course, you can often use the images developed with these dashboards for other purposes.

8. Later

Later works on five networks: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Perhaps their most important feature is something called linkin.bio, which lets you create a landing page full of links for your bio on Instagram or Pinterest. This feature is also useful for LinkedIn and, to a lesser extent, Facebook and TikTok. That’s because Instagram and Pinterest are famous for not letting you post a lot of links. By using linkin.bio, you can direct people to your portfolio, CV, other social networks, and more. Done right, this feature can help drive web traffic from social media.

9. Tailwind

Tailwind was originally developed for Instagram and Pinterest, and that was all they did. Now, the app has expanded to Facebook and email support, but you must sign up with an Instagram or Pinterest account. This free tool lets you create new content, schedule it for posting, and repurpose content for email. Then, you get some analytics data to help you target your audience more accurately and improve campaigns over time. 

10. MavSocial

MavSocial specializes in visual content, but it operates on an extremely wide range of social media networks and advertising platforms. For instance, you can use MavSocial for Google My Business, Telegram, and WhatsApp in addition to the traditional networks. One of the biggest draws of this service is that, unlike most other social media tools, MavSocial has a built-in digital asset management system. You can curate content or upload it into the program, and your digital assets get stored in the cloud. Then, you just have to schedule and wait for analytics data to come in.

11. Iconosquare

Iconosquare also covers five networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. So, if you’re a hipster freelancer this may be one of the best social media tools. With that said, you can only get industry insights on Meta products. For everyone else, you get an assortment of scheduling and analytics tools that can help your business grow.

Arguably, the biggest drawback of Iconosquare is its limited coverage for LinkedIn and TikTok. One reason for this on LinkedIn is that there’s a lot less visual content. And for TikTok, programmers are still building out their applications. Nonetheless, Iconosquare is one to watch.

B2B Social Media Dashboards

Most dashboards and other social media tools concentrate on B2C brands, or else they don’t differentiate between B2B and B2C. On the other hand, a few dashboards do specialize in B2B marketing. Here is one in particular that I recommend you check out if you are in a B2B company:

12. Oktopost

Sure, Oktopost has the standard social media tools like scheduling and analytics. But what sets it apart is the combination of a customer database and enterprise-level data security that lets you stay compliant even if you’re in a sensitive industry. Besides this feature, there’s a significant employee advocacy and lead nurturing component. Especially if you’re in their target industries like manufacturing or healthcare, you should check out this specialized tool.

Social Media Scheduling Tools

Not all social media tools are focused on elaborate campaign optimization. Some of them are primarily focused on saving you time through content scheduling. In addition, you can use these tools to post at the best time for audience engagement.

13. SocialBee

Twitter users, this one is for you. That’s because SocialBee not only lets you schedule posts far in advance, but it also helps you alter evergreen Tweets more easily so you stay in compliance with Twitter rules. At the same time, SocialBee helps with content curation and does most of the post scheduling automatically. Then, you’ll only need to intervene occasionally.

14. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a social media automation tool that helps with content curation, composition, planning, and more. This is one of the social media tools where you can pay for what you need and a little more. In addition, CoSchedule is great as a collaboration tool, including the combined social calendar, workflows, and approval process. Finally, you can store all your brand assets inside this program to make them easier to track.

15. MeetEdgar

This tool is curation and evergreen content like you’ve never seen it. With MeetEdgar, you can add custom content to your library. Then, MeetEdgar curates evergreen content from other places and adds them to the library. Over time, everything gets posted according to category – For instance, influencer marketing on Monday, tools on Wednesday, and strategy Friday. However, content from each category is chosen semi-randomly each day, before MeetEdgar starts over from the beginning. This way, your content is always fresh and intuitively posted.

16. SmarterQueue

Sometimes it’s nice to get social media management automation AND the intensive analytics and strategy you see in more comprehensive social media tools. SmarterQueue does this: you get basic analytics, competitor research, and even a social inbox. But you don’t have to schedule posts unless you want to. Instead, you can add to the queue or do some manual scheduling. You can also do a lot of planning ahead inside the app, so you might not need another dashboard.

17. RecurPost

Similar to other posting-only social media tools, RecurPost automates the process of posting on social media. You can add your own content to the library and ask RecurPost to curate more. However, you can also add content you love to the queue through a browser extension. This way, you can get in on the fun or let RecurPost do most of the work. Or both.

18. Planable

Planable helps automate social media posts by functioning as a planner and scheduler in one, with plans to include analytics as part of their offerings to improve social media strategy and make sure your social media channels are going in the direction your marketing team has designed. Planable allows users to develop content for their social media platforms in a single place, wherein team members can be tagged and addressed, to ensure that all of the steps of planning and posting are completed in good time, and without seeing anything fall through the cracks. There are different ways to customize this social media management tool, including the manner in which your social media calendar appears, from a calendar view, to a list view, and more.

Further Reading: The 15 Best Social Media Scheduling Tools

Social Media Analytics Tools

No matter what social media tools you use, analytics are critical for success. When we talk about analytics tools in particular, we mean the apps that only or mostly handle analytics. Ideally, you’ll use a tool that covers more than one of your social media accounts because it’s more efficient overall.

19. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo tries to see what the “buzz” is all about. It does this with significant analytics capabilities, along with extensive social monitoring. These features let you deal with a PR blunder before it turns into a major crisis. Perform content curation on the go with their browser extension, and collaborate with influencers right there in the app. Then, when you need something original that your team created, BuzzSumo has a place for that also.

20. Keyhole

This is one of the social media tools geared toward enterprise businesses. Keyhole purports to save time by automatically pulling your analytics data from all social media sources and combining it in a dashboard. You can also make a report automatically so the boss or client can see your results. And, because Keyhole helps you get on top of the social media game, you also get competitive analysis and other advanced functions.

21. Brand24

Managing your online reputation can be difficult, but Brand24 makes it much easier. For instance, they collect all mentions of your brand they can find online, whether it’s social media, third-party websites, or even news organizations. Need more than reputation management? Brand24 also has analytics tools for influencer marketing, hashtag monitoring/research, and PR management.

22. SEMrush

SEMrush is a tool that helps you with all aspects of digital marketing, hence the name. In that capacity, SEMrush will give you analytics on every part of your online presence, including social media. Using this information, you can capitalize on your successes and correct your weaknesses.

Perhaps the biggest strength of SEMrush is that it takes a holistic approach. Therefore, you can use this tool for everything from monitoring your website or blog all the way to influencer marketing. And at the same time, you only need to learn one program until your business grows beyond using only a few social media tools.

23. Social Insider

Again, Social Insider focuses on competitive analysis. And, if you use TikTok, it’s one of the most valuable social media tools because they support this network. With that said, Social Insider doesn’t just give you a bunch of numbers. Instead, they monitor how well you’re meeting predetermined KPIs. At the same time, they’ll compare your numbers with top industry competitors so you know what it takes to surpass them.

Finally, you won’t get thrown some numbers and a “good luck!” with Social Insider. Instead, they’ll make content suggestions, including what to create and where you can curate. You even get insights on what’s trending so you can be on top of the conversation in real-time.

24. BrandMentions

BrandMentions is a useful way to boost your social media strategy, as it allows you to track mentions across social media platforms and other corners of the internet that may be talking about your brand, your products, or even your niche. By combing through social media channels with BrandMentions, you can get ahead of any issues that might be tied to your social media profile, brand, or products, and determine how best to level up your mentions across the platforms and sites. Using a tool like BrandMentions can help social media marketers considerably, as it can show areas of interest (or lack) that can be improved upon.

25. Mention

Like some of the other social media tools in this section, Mention does a lot more than just advanced analytics. In particular, they do a lot of competitive analysis. You can also get custom alerts for certain keywords you’re targeting, which is one of their more valuable features because it helps cut down on the noise. Otherwise, you’ll get an alert for everything, a common complaint among social media managers.

Further Reading: 17 Best Social Media Analytics Tools to Empower Your Marketing in 2024

Social Media Visual Content Creation Tools

Let’s face it, social media content doesn’t come out of thin air. Instead, you need to create it somehow. When you’re making visual content, it’s more difficult than writing because you need to incorporate design elements, and because content often needs to meet certain specifications for each channel. These social media tools will help you make the perfect visual content.

26. Adobe Express

Adobe Express is a nice photo editing and graphics design application. You can use it to superimpose your logo over photos, create infographics, or add special effects. In addition, Adobe Express gives you access to a large stock photo library and many different templates. Besides social media posts, you can use Adobe Express to design posters, flyers, company merchandise, video introductions, and a lot of other creations.

27. Snappa

Snappa is a simple tool to create graphics and images for your social platforms. Social media platforms are largely visual, with few exceptions, and creating visually appealing or compelling content is an absolute must for effective social media marketing efforts. Snappa helps cultivate striking images for your social profiles by offering free templates, images, and graphics in order to make your social channel pop. Background removal options sets this option apart from similar programs for your social channel, and can be the best option for people looking for a single dashboard from which to develop visual content.

28. Visme

Another of the more versatile social media tools for graphics is Visme. With Visme, you can do both photos and videos, but also presentations, infographics, and much more. In other words, this tool does a lot more than just social media. Rather, it’s an all-around tool for business graphics. You even get robust collaboration and interaction tools. That way, you can have the entire team using Visme and, at the same time, provide for your audience to interact with your content.

Further Reading: The 17 Best Infographic Maker and Graphics Tools

Social Media Content Curation Tool

Whether you’re looking for more evergreen content or just the next conversation starter, content curation social media tools help you get it done. While each of these tools finds and posts new content differently, they all help fill your profile with compelling messages that are relevant to your audience.

29. Inoreader

Inoreader’s goal is to help you avoid social media feed fatigue by serving you only the most relevant information. They source content from different social networks, the Web, and RSS feeds. Then, the content gets added to a feed where you decide what to read and share. Keep in mind, though, that you need to do any social sharing through a scheduler or manual posting. Of course, if you don’t curate that often then this is fine.

30. ContentStudio

ContentStudio is a software designed to improve your social media performance by improving consistency, and developing compelling content on all of your social posts. Part content development product, and part scheduler, ContentStudio helps improve your social accounts through planning and carrying out your social media campaign within a single platform. ContentStudio is designed to increase your social media activity by providing a scheduling tool, and an AI-powered content development tool. Its key features include caption templates, AI-generated images, content calendars, built-in analytics, and a means of managing your social platform messages. It is a social media management platform that aims to reduce the need for additional tools. 

31. Quuu

Quuu curates content based on your affinity and interests. Simply program their AI assistant that’s backed by 6 years of manual data. Quuu will then source and recommend content to you, whether it’s articles, blog posts, visual content, and more. Then, you can read the content inside of your feed. If you want to also post directly onto social media, Quuu has a social media scheduling tool. Or, connect Quuu to other social media tools that have scheduling capabilities. Using the flexibility of Quuu, there are many possibilities.

Further Reading: The Top 23 Content Curation Tools to Use in 2024

AI Social Media Tools

Whether you are a social media influencer, or the marketer in charge of a company’s social media campaigns, AI social media tools can likely remove some of the grunt work and help you reach your target audience with greater efficiency and efficacy. AI social media tools vary widely in their key features and approaches; from post planners to social listening tools, AI can go a long way in helping you boost your content strategy and improve your content schedule. 

32. Tweet Hunter

Tweet Hunter is designed to be something of a one-stop shop to make sure you are engaging your target audience, posting relevant content on a regular basis, and boosting your Tweets as much and as effectively as possible. Part post planner, part scheduler, and part social engagement expert, Tweet Hunter helps elevate social campaigns by reducing the amount of time spent on social media efforts, and increasing the amount of followers you have through producing consistent, relevant content that falls in line with your marketing strategy, growth goals, and overall intention for your business. Tweet Hunter also offers automatic messaging as part of its social media marketing tools, to further automate your social media efforts and improve audience engagement.  

33. Madgicx

Madgicx is among the most useful AI-based social media marketing tools designed for use with Meta products, including Facebook and Instagram. Intended to make publishing content easy with an eye on maximizing ROI, Madgicx covers a large portion of the content production and publishing cycle, allowing companies to publish all types of content in order to further their marketing goals and increase audience clicks and subsequent purchases. Madgicx delivers detailed analytics to help pivot if a campaign is not delivering rapid or consistent results, and can be a powerful tool for marketers looking to improve their performance across Meta platforms. 

34. Jasper

Jasper is an enterprise level tool that allows users to develop, publish, and analyze content across social media sites. Marketed as a comprehensive social media management software that allows teams to work cohesively, develop content consistently, and develop campaigns that further goals while increasing ROI, Jasper is considered among the more in-depth AI tools available for enterprise clients. Its advanced features allow potential customers to develop detailed reports and turn around and use those reports to develop evergreen content, repackage or repurpose existing content, and ultimately improve social metrics. 

35. Ocoya

Ocoya’s approach to AI social media management goes beyond simply scheduling posts. Instead, Ocoya delivers a host of solutions in a single platform, in order to increase engagement rate and improve function across social media. Ocoya offers solutions for content, scheduling, copywriting, ecommerce, and automation, all with the assistance of AI. It is an all-in-one social media tool, and allows users to develop consistent, high-quality content across their social media marketing platform of choice. Ocoya is compatible with 30 different platforms, and allows users to limit the attention and effort dedicated to repetitive tasks, opting instead for true automation. 

36. Flick

A smaller, but no less useful tool, Flick helps social media marketers focus on social media conversations, including hashtags, analytics, and scheduling. While there are certainly more intense all-in-one social media tool kits, Flick is useful for people looking to focus on hashtag generation and storage, scheduling, and analytics regarding the performance of their social media platforms. Performance analytics allow users to develop different content strategies to better suit their needs, and work toward changing or increasing the social media conversations being had about a brand or product. 

Other Social Media Tools Worth Mentioning

Although we’ve covered plenty of tools so far, there are some additional social media software tools that offer different social analytics, reporting features, and more. We’ve identified some of the more important options currently available for use across different social media platforms. 

37. IFTTT

IFTTT is a social listening tool and scheduling tool wrapped into one, with a range of features to support total automation. IFTTT is designed less as a source of analytics, and more as a means of maintaining consistent publishing schedules and content posting across different platforms. With solutions intending to maintain the same face across different platforms, IFTTT allows users to change personal information and pictures on one site, and have it reflected on other social platforms without having to lift a finger. Less a total management platform, and more a time management resource, IFTTT can be useful for any content marketer. 

38. Rebrandly

Rebrandly allows users to shorten links and create a more easily accessible series of links to post across social platforms. Although it does not have a robust analytics feature as part of its link reduction, it does offer some basic information regarding the links that are generated using the software, including when links are being used, where they are used, and more. Far more than a simple social media tool, Rebrandly allows redirecting options, deep linking, link routing, and more, in order to streamline the process of creating and delivering links. 

39. Unsplash

Unsplash is an excellent resource for the marketer, graphic designer, and general team member alike, as it can help implement social strategy by offering high-quality images that can be used for promotional materials, social campaigns, and more. Unsplash images are searchable according to your topic preferences, and can be used across your social media profiles for free. Unlike some competitors, Unsplash images do not have to be tagged in perpetuity, though they can be tagged to direct people to Unsplash’s sizable library. Images can be downloaded in different sizes and resolutions according to the needs of the user, and can be used in virtually any private or commercial post without fear of retribution or licensing issues. 

40. TubeBuddy

As its name might suggest, TubeBuddy is specifically geared toward YouTube, in order to properly optimize a YouTube channel. TubeBuddy is marketed as a tool specific to the visual platform, with features able to help improve the reach of a YouTube channel. Also an AI-powered tool, TubeBuddy functions as an editor, an SEO optimization engineer, a translator, a tags and analytics source, and even bulk processing. TubeBuddy can help limit the social media tasks required of people using YouTube by delivering SEO suggestions, translation services, and suggested shorts. Altogether these can be used to deliver consistent, high-quality videos on YouTube, boosting your reach and reliability. 

41. Phantombuster

Phantombuster is a sourcing tool that allows businesses to improve their reach through extracting leads. Phantombuster is so named for its ability to help locate, track, and successfully contact leads, including developing outreach emails. Phantombuster has numerous solutions available on its platform, including applications for LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and Facebook. The applications offered through Phantombuster can help find followers, extract emails, and scrape companies. Although the goals of using Phantombuster do not always align with some approaches to social media management, scraping tools can be useful to help gather adequate information to complete and deliver social media campaigns.

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

Conclusion

Managing social media accounts for businesses is a lot of work. After all, most of us have several accounts on different platforms. In addition, a lot of companies have multiple brands, each with its own accounts. Fortunately, using these social media tools it’s easier than ever to build and maintain your brand’s social media presence. Then, you can focus on other things, like running your business.