9 Beneficial Tools To Grow Your Social Media in 2020

If you’re looking for the best tools to grow your social media then look no further. In today’s article we’re going to delve into how you can find the tools that can help you grow your social media presence with the least amount of work possible (we like to be efficient).

And because social media is such a force to be reckoned with in today’s world when it comes to growing a personal brand or growing a business, there’s no shortage of tools that you can use that will help you not only grow your social media, but also automate a lot of the manual (boring) processes.

We’ll look into hashtag research tools, scheduler systems, apps that help you track user actions, content and creative platforms and much more.

So, if you're looking for the best social media growth tools then look no further.

Buckle up and let’s dive in!

Later

Later is a great tool to use if you want to grow your social media because it automates your content posting strategy.

Later gives you the ability to plan the content you want to post on your social media (specifically Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter) and then allows you to schedule AND analyze how those posts did.

We at Arie Marketing are huge fans of using scheduling tools like Later to grow your social media because when you create a solid content strategy along with posting consistency and frequency it’s a really great way to keep your current followers happy, but also reach a lot more.

How It Works:

With Later, you get a visual content calendar that gives you a proper user experience.  You can get up and running in minutes and start posting.

They also provide a drag and drop tool to help you preview your feed before you post which helps you create a better “Instagram wall”.

Another key benefit of Later when you’re looking to grow your social media is that they are Instagram partners which means it’s 100 percent safe to use without any fear of being banned from their platform (and that’s a huge benefit)

AgoraPulse

AgoraPulse is truly a cross platform tool that helps you grow your social media.

I like to think of it as an all in one platform because you can do practically anything and everything that a tool could do to help you grow your social media.

With features like engage, publish, listen, collaborate, measure / report, audience, and shared calendar along with integration on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn -- AgoraPulse is known as being one of the most popular social media tools that’s proven to grow your online presence.

How it Works:

Engagement: All about managing your messages in one specific location.

In other words, you can connect all your social media channels with the ability to respond to all messages in one place (which is super awesome and saves you a lot of time).

AgoraPulse also offers an automated inbox assistant which gives you the power to harness automatic moderation rules that feed messages to where they need to go (spam to spam, questions to the right team member).

Publishing: As with engagement, publish gives you the ability to schedule your social media posts all in one place.  So for the platforms we mentioned above, you can schedule your content for increased frequency and consistency which helps you grow your social media faster and on auto-pilot.

On top of those features, you have listen, collaborate, report, audience, and shared calendar.

Canva

Canva’s an awesome tool that will help you grow your social media based on creating awesome looking graphics.

It’s always free (paid options are available) and they pride themselves on helping anybody regardless of their design experience to create beautiful designs AND documents within the blink of an eye.

How it Works:

Before you can do anything you’ll need to create a free account.

Once you do, you can start designing things that will help your social media grow.

Canva offers templated designs that rival the best photoshop creators and gives you quick and easy to edits of logos, posters, business cards, flyers, resumes, infographics, album covers, banners, book covers, and much MUCH more.

One often overlooked aspect of getting more growth on your social media is creating good looking graphics.

Canva is a true to form photoshop alternative that anybody can use right now to plug and play their copy to post directly to their social media accounts.

This results in great looking graphics that can help brand you in a way that sets you apart from your competitors.

Like I mentioned earlier, Canva is fre forever, but they offer a paid package starging at $9.95 per user per month billed yearly.

They also offer the same plan on a monthly basis for $12.95.

Unsplash

As we just learned, good looking graphics and images are now a critical part of growing your social media.

Enter Unsplash.

Unsplash is one of the tools that provide creators with freely usable images.

It’s pretty cut and dry, but i’ll break it down a bit more.

How it Works: 

Unsplash gives you the ability to download any of their photos and use them for free.

Whether it’s for commercial or non-commercial use, it doesn’t matter.  You don’t need to provide any permission or attribution (although they mention it’s definitely appreciated).

What is NOT allowed, however, is that the photos cannot be sold or redistributed without significant modification.

I’ll leave what “significant modification” means up to you, but  in other words don’t sell the photos or use them for a website that is similar to Unsplash.

All that being said, Unsplash is a great way to find image content that you don’t have to create yourself.

Plus, it’s better than using stock photography because anybody with half a brain can tell that you purchased that basic image of a doctor smiling in your ad.

SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a simple and cost-effective tool designed to grow your social media platforms.

Geared toward small businesses, professionals, marketing agencies & teams, along with an enterprise edition, SocialPilot can help anybody grow their business using social media.

How it Works:

SocialPilot allows you growth tools that help you boost your social media presence.

They offer things like scheduling (similar to Later), a social media calendar, bulk scheduling, content curation, RSS feeds automation, and a browser extension.

On top of that they give you analytic insights that help build better strategies for your social media.

Another cool feature of SocialPilot is that you can manage your teams AND clients to boost your team’s effectiveness.

SocialPilot is a bit pricey if you’re just starting out with their base package at $30 per month.  That package allows your up to 25 social media accounts, 2 Facebook ad accounts, 3 team members.

That said though, it does not allow you white labeled reports, a social inbox, client management, OR a concierge setup.

So, if you can swing the small team package ($50 per month) we’d recommend that.

Whatever your case may be, SocialPilot does offer a 14 day free trial with no credit card required.

Hootsuite

One of my personal favorite tools for end to end social media management is Hootsuite.

Hootsuite has been around for a long time and they’ve had some big named clients such as GE, Marketo, SXSW, and Melia hotels to name a few.

Obviously, they know a thing or two about how to help you grow your social media.

As with the other platforms like Later, AgoraPulse, and SocialPilot -- Hootsuite offers a post scheduler where you can plan, create, and schedule your content all in one place.

This saves hours of time for you and your team which will help you grow your social media.

As with the others mentioned above, Hootsuite also houses an all-in-one inbox system that gives you the ability to engage with your users across all platforms inside one inbox.

Now, keep in mind that just because these features have been mentioned above doesn’t mean they are exactly the same.

I recommend testing out which one works best for you based on detailed features and pricing.

Lastly, Hootsuite offers a teams area that helps you manage your social organization with smart team management and permissions.

If you’re looking to give Hootsuite a test-drive, you can head over to their website and try their platform for 30 days absolutely free.

Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a popular Instagram and Facebook analytics platform that gives you in-depth statistics so that you can grow your social media presence.

Founded in 2011 under the name “Statigram”, Iconosquare is now a partner with Facebook and helps provide some of the biggest brands and businesses with detailed reporting of their social media platforms.

Iconosquare gives you two options when it comes to pricing.

You get to choose from a yearly or monthly option with their lowest plan being $39 per month ($29 per month if you choose an annual package)

With the base package you get a range of tools like 3 social profiles, 2 team members, 3 competitors per profile, 3 hashtags per profile, Facebook & Instagram analytics, industry benchmark, conversations, a post scheduler, and XLS reports.

While that’s awesome, you do miss out on a lot of other great features when you go subscribe to their basic plan.

You won’t be getting any PDF reporting, a custom dashboard, tags or mentions, white label reporting, or a customer success program.

As always, if you can swing the better packages, then I’d recommend starting at the “advanced” package.

They do however, offer a free trial that you can start without any credit card information.

Edgar

A very popular platform that’s gained a lot of traction in the past year is Edgar.

They pride themselves on helping you grow your social media by spending less time on managing your social accounts (yep, you heard that right), being strategic about what kind of content you’re posting and when you’re posting it (content type and content time), and simplifying and automating the process of your social media.

Their platform is made by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.

Some of Edgar’s features are auto variations, posts generated by using their browser extension, category based scheduling, continuous posting among others.

Edgar’s content library allows you unlimited upload space so that you can pull the content right from the library automatically.

You can create a library of updates which automatically upload to your social media from almost any source.

 And Edgar wouldn’t be complete without a seriously cool A/B test social messaging that gives you the ability to test variations to see which messages click or “connect” better with your audience.

One really cool feature about Edgar (HashtagsForLikes has this too), is that you get a real human support team.

You can talk to real people anytime Monday through Friday from 8-5pm via email.

CrowdFire

Crowdfire is a mobile based tool that helps you manage your social media all in one place.

Crowdfire gives you content, publish, analytics, and mentions abilities.

They really push for content curation while you focus on your overall content strategy which can help you post more frequently with their help  While their mobile first platform can be beneficial, I typically prefer to use desktop based applications when growing my social media channels.

But, for those of you who like the mobile first feel, Crowdfire is a great tool that you can use to spruce up your social media.

All you have to do to get the best content curated for your accounts is enter your topics.  There’s no necessity to browse across the web to try and cherry pick topics.

Crowdfire does it all for you right there.

It doesn’t matter if you have a blog, ecommerce store, or a b2b website because you can connect your shopify account OR your etsy account.

Crowdfire also gives you the ability to connect your WordPress or medium blog.

Conclusion

We hope that’s helped you find the best tools to grow your social media.

Out of these 11 tools, there are some real gems.  Like I mentioned above, I recommend researching them all and then choosing the right ones based on your specific needs.

While some of these do the same things, there are more than likely tools that are better suited to you which will, in the end, give you a better user experience while being more cost effective.

Our goal was to help you understand that there’s a ton of different tools that you can use that will undoubtedly help you grow your social media without breaking the bank.

We want to hear you!  Were there any tools on this list that you’ve used that helped you grow your social media?

What are you doing right now that is helping you grow your social media?

Lastly -- what did we miss?

Leave us a comment with your recommendations and feedback.