Social media marketing or, simply, SMM is indispensable in 2020. All businesses and personal brands that want to attract user attention should focus on social networks. Moreover, if you want to dominate Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other platform, you will need dedicated SMM tools. It’s totally okay to start without them. But any profile that aims at sustainable growth should consider marketing and management software.

In this guide, we will briefly cover the main categories of SMM systems. Due to a large number of available tools, we just can’t review all of them. That’s why the main section unveils five the most useful and powerful systems for SMM specialists in 2020.

Key Types of SMM Solutions

In the beginning, check the functions of social media tools. Depending on your goals and current business lifecycle stage, you may need different options. A company that begins its social journey would benefit from a simple scheduling solution with basic reports. At the same time, a large enterprise would be interested in automation and advanced engagement.

Primary types of SMM software are as follows:

Analytics. Tracks the performance of posts, likes, interactions, responses.
Automation. Creates IFTTT-like schemes that save the time of managers.
Management. Allows setting tasks, notifications, and history tracking.
Monitoring. Tracks messages, keywords, hashtags, mentions, trends, reactions.
Scheduling. Supports post planning for several networks at once.

Apart from these general types, there are platform-specific tools. For instance, Poprey Instagram offers instant and real-looking likes, followers, views, and comments for Instagram. There are more examples such as comprehensive Facebook dashboards, Twitter mention trackers, and LinkedIn ad solutions.

Further, we will look at a few top-rated general SMM tools in different categories.

The Best Tools for 2020

There’s a vast number of social management projects: for advertising, analytics, intelligence, engagement, payments, browsing, gaming, and more. If you don’t believe, just check the chart below.

Source: Business Insider

This diversity may overwhelm you but don’t worry now. You don’t have to use all of these tools, of course. What you really should do is to define your SMM goals and choose a few core software solutions to reach these goals. After the proper brainstorm, you will end up with up to ten tools, most likely.

The list below helps to reduce this number to five. We’ve chosen the most popular and useful SMM projects in five essential categories. Discover them right now!

1. Buffer – Good for Everything

Among all all-in-one SMM tools, Buffer is one of the most function-rich and balanced offers available. It supports scheduled publishing, deep analytics, team cooperation. It has a separate browser plugin and can connect to other SMM tools. Compared to other global solutions like Hootsuite or Sprout Social, Buffer is the least expensive – just $15 per month for a single user and up to eight profiles.

Supported media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter.
Pros: vast functionality, convenience, simple interface.
Cons: many extra paid features, no influencer collaboration.

2. BuzzSumo – Good for Analytics

This tool helps in social media environment monitoring and content creation. BuzzSumo allows users to search keywords or mentions, track the most popular content pieces, identify thought leaders. It’s one of the best options if you find it difficult to produce engaging content ideas. The tool starts from $79 per month so think twice if you really need such an advanced solution for your SMM campaigns.

Supported media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter.
Pros: advanced content curation, keyword research, influencer collaboration.
Cons: may be too expensive and feature-rich for small profiles.

3. IFTTT – Good for Automation

Well, this one isn’t a pure SMM tool but it’s priceless for managers, too. IFTTT stands for If This Then That. It enables rich automation based on conditional statements. Talking about social media usefulness, it automates various tasks. For instance, you can update your report each time a follower likes your Instagram photo or post to Twitter each time you post to Facebook. Use cases are infinite, literally.

Supported media: all major sites and tools.
Pros: free and powerful automation for everybody.
Cons: requires some knowledge of automation algorithms.

4. Meet Edgar – Good for Scheduling

Edgar or Meet Edgar is a social scheduling tool based on a few fresh ideas. The service divides your posts into several categories and then defines the best time for each. It also can fill each category with your content and start publishing. What’s cool, it supports content recycling so you can automatically repost core messages over time. The basic version is $19 per month but you can upgrade to a more powerful plan that costs $49 per month.

Supported media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter.
Pros: a fresh approach to content scheduling, post recycling, auto posting.
Cons: no social engagement, monitoring or client management features.

5. Mention – Good for Monitoring

Mention is one of the simplest yet powerful social listening/monitoring solutions. With it, you can research relevant topics, check discussions around them, and, of course, track your brand mentions in social media. The software also provides data-rich reports. The tool is free for one user who can manage up to three social accounts. This plan is limited to one alert and 250 mentions per month. Other plans start from $25 per month.

Supported media: all major sites and tools.
Pros: free basic features, combined listening, and analytics.
Cons: requires extra expenses for more functions.

The Road to Optimization

Despite social media marketing tools facilitate all your SMM efforts, they aren’t unique magic potions. The name says it all. Tools can help you to realize ideas, automate workflows, and get a bigger picture via reports. But they can’t design a strategy. That’s why you should start any SMM-related process with proper planning.

If you already have the strategy based on a clear vision of the audience and linked to SMART goals, feel free to use social media tools to bring this strategy to life. For even better results, monitor your efforts regularly. Check how different decisions and posts affect the response, measure core indicators.

In 2020, SMM remains an extremely powerful social engagement/retaining thing. Combine your own expertise with professional tools to reach new heights. Good luck!

Top 5 SMM Tools to Skyrocket Your Social Strategy