Best Social Media Tools and Software of 2022

As of October 2021, there are 4.55 billion social media users in the world. Social media is a marketer’s bread-and-butter for putting their brand in front of its target audience.

But marketers have hats to wear. With a ton of areas to focus on, tools and software can make life much easier. The thing is, the internet is home to what looks like a gazillion social media tools. And finding one that works for you requires getting your hands dirty with the tool.

This article is aimed at helping marketers get their hands on exactly the right tools. The recommended tools include everything from designing tools to transcription tools.

6 Best Social Media Tools of 2022

So, you’re a marketer who’s got about a dozen balls to juggle. Social media tools go a long way in adding efficiencies to the workflow. The following social media tools will add ample power to your social media marketing toolkit.

1. Piktochart

Piktochart is a drag-and-drop designing tool that helps businesses and individuals create social media images, infographics, and report on data. Piktochart has a library of templates that allows marketers to create graphics on the go. 

If you’ve got some design elements that need to be added to all designs, Piktochart allows adding brand assets like fonts and colors to the graphics. This means you can instantly reuse branding elements on all graphics that you design.

A lot of businesses use Canva too. Though popular, it can be a little restrictive about access to assets like templates and photos. That’s precisely what makes Piktochart one of the best alternatives to Canva. Plus, there’s also an option that allows one-off purchases without having to commit to a monthly or yearly plan.

Canva is still a good option for individuals, but businesses will be able to derive a lot more utility from Piktochart, given how it’s geared towards them. When prepping infographics for managers, just compile the data, choose a template, populate the template with the data, and voilà—the infographic is ready!

Related reading; Canva vs Photoshop

2. UNUM

Piktochart is great for infographics, but what about social media images? That’s UNUM’s forte. UNUM is an all-inclusive social media graphics designing software that comes with a ton of features to make social media a breeze for marketers.

Let’s start with the first phase of the social media graphics design workflow. Say that there are multiple social media handles a marketer wants to post on. 

Good deal, but there’s a caveat. All platforms prescribe a different aspect ratio for images. So, there’s no single image that can be used across all social media platforms. At least not without it getting stretched or cropped.

UNUM has preset aspect ratios for all major social media platforms. When a marketer wants to put on their creative hat, they can focus on the design rather than worrying about the mechanics like the aspect ratio.

Marketers can also auto-schedule images to be posted after creating them, which removes another mechanic element of the workflow. But that only covers designing and publishing. There’s one more thing that needs to be addressed—analytics.

UNUM goes a step further and allows users to analyze the performance of the graphics created using its interface. This makes UNUM a comprehensive tool that offers end-to-end social media designing solutions.

This is just a broad overview though. UNUM’s a powerhouse that packs in a truckload of features. For those who are curious about how they can leverage UNUM to ace social media designs, learn more here about UNUM. Oh, and it also has a free plan for those who want to take it for a spin before buying the paid version.

Related Reading; Top 10 best websites for creating Infographics.

3. Happy Scribe

Subtitles not only make videos accessible, but they also help engage viewers more effectively. For example, a study by Ofcom reveals that 80% of the UK TV viewers that use closed captions did so for reasons other than hearing loss.

Intriguing, right? 

Well, the statistic could be used as a proxy for social media video viewers too. Subtitles provide a basketful of benefits. They provide clarity, improve comprehension, and most importantly, 85% of Facebook videos are watched on mute.

The problem with subtitles is that creating them looks like a laborious undertaking. While there’s always someone on the internet who will do it for a small fee, time and efficiency are critical factors as well.

Enter Happy Scribe.

Marketers can automatically generate subtitles with Happy Scribe with high accuracy and a low cost. It can translate videos in 62 languages, supports almost all video formats, and seamlessly integrates with apps like YouTube and Zapier.

Happy Scribe has a three-step process for creating subtitles. Upload a file (or enter a URL), let Happy Scribe work its magic, and publish the video. Yes, creating subtitles is that simple with a subtitle generating tool.

4. Hootsuite

Imagine a headquarter atop a mountain. From this point, the commander lets all teams know what’s to be done and when. This is what Hootsuite does.

It’s a social media management tool that allows integrating all major social media handles including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter into a single dashboard. From here, a user has the option to do pretty much everything from publishing to responding to comments, and everything in between.

Hootsuite entered the social media management scene around 2008 and was among the first ones in the space. Since then, it has evolved into a comprehensive tool and offers valuable assets like the Hootsuite Academy.

A Hootsuite subscription entitles users to a bunch of useful features like bulk scheduling. But unfortunately, it lacks the social inbox and influencer search features. Hootsuite is still an excellent starting point for marketers before they switch to another tool that better fits their niche needs.

5. Mention

Marketers typically have a full plate. Add one more ingredient and there’s a good chance that things could get overwhelming. Publishing and engagement leave marketers with very little time. 

Add responding to hundreds (or possibly thousands) of comments to the mix, and you’ve got a surefire way for a jam-packed schedule. But Mention can help.

Mention is a social media analytics tool that notifies marketers in real-time about mentions of a brand (or a competitor’s brand).

But that’s not all. Mention simplifies having conversations with the target audience. When marketers are notified about a brand mention, they can proactively engage with users. 

Mention allows responding to comments on social media handles from within its interface. Should the brand feel that influencer marketing could produce tangible marketing results, marketers can use Mention to find relevant influences.

Compared with similar tools, Mention maintains its edge with a clean interface, quick and easy setup, and pocket-friendliness. 

It still falls behind the heavyweights like Sprout Social though, but it’s perfect for someone who just wants social analytics sans the rest of the features.

6. IFTTT

IFTTT (If This, Then That) is one of the most versatile automation tools out there. It gives you a ton of flexibility and provides ample efficiency to minimize social media workflow lag. 

The tool allows setting action-based rules for social media marketing handles. The marketer may choose a trigger and set a rule for what action should be taken when the trigger occurs. 

For instance, say a marketer creates a rule that whenever the brand posts a new video on YouTube, the video is automatically shared on all of the brand’s social media handles. 

This means the marketer no longer has to go and manually post these videos on those handles, or even schedule them using a social media management tool for publishing. So, using IFTTT can translate to significant savings in time, streamlined workflow, and improved productivity for marketers.

Social media is just one of the many use cases of IFTTT though. The software has a much broader scope. It essentially connects services, apps, and devices from multiple developers and works on a trigger-based action mechanism.

With more than 650 products and 20 million users, IFTTT has risen to fame over the past couple of years. Evidently, marketers and individuals alike appreciate what the service can do for them. 

As a marketer, the value it can offer in terms of streamlining the social media marketing workflow provides tangible value that could potentially translate to improved ROI over the long term.

Social Media Made Easy

It’s easy for marketers to chew off more than they can bite. Fortunately, there’s a strong line-up of apps and services out there that can get marketers out of a fix, help them proactively strategize their marketing efforts, or minimize grunt work.

Too many options can often paralyze marketing decision-makers about the capability of service. The social media tools listed in this article are created and maintained by established brands that have been around for a while. 

Related reading; The best Social Media Tools for Marketers | Free & Paid