Social marketing tools are what emerging startups need so badly to propagate their business and establish their brand in the consciousness of the people. Social media following, engagement, likes can be earned only if the message is captivating and can generate an instant interest in the minds of social media followers. That’s when new startups can use free social media marketing tools like the ones shown below. These free social media marketing tools do more than just collect info and can analyze the impact of a post or message. They save time and resources when used correctly. These are 10 of the best free social media marketing tools that startups can use to gain insight into their social marketing campaigns.
1. AdsReport
Facebook Ads is great at analytics about ad campaigns run on Facebook, and startups can get detailed analyses and charts about how their ads performed. But managing many Facebook Ads accounts makes it a tedious and time-consuming task. That’s when AdsReport comes in. It streamlines Facebook Ads data into easily manageable displays and gives insights in seconds.
It’s like a one-stop solution to manage Facebook Ads. Whether the startup runs a paid Facebook Ad for selling your product, or increasing awareness about a particular brand, AdsReport is a social marketing tool that you will surely need. It shows data about click-through rate (CTR). Cost Per Click (CPC), clicks, total impressions, revenue earned, and spends on the very top of its panel.
AdsReport is one of the best marketing tools that startups can use for running and managing their Facebook Ads revenue. It gathers data about ad campaigns run on Facebook, gives stats, post engagement views, landing page views, and page likes. Stats and insights about CPC, CTR, clicks, impressions, and other such criteria are also displayed clearly. Startups can also view insights into specific Facebook Ads campaigns in AdsReport. It tracks results and gathers all info in an easy-to-see panel, without too many complex details about analysis and graphs.
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2. Bitly
URLs are generally too long and impossible to remember. URLs are so unmanageable especially when startups want to use them in their social media posts. They may also want to know stats and gain insights into website tracking and data. That’s when a lengthy URL poses a major problem. Bitly makes the work easier by shortening the URL so that it becomes easier to manage.
Bitly is a very popular tool that is used by social media marketing teams for keeping the length of the URL short. It is a free tool that startup companies can use to make a custom URL short and easy to store in their database. A typical URL that is used by Bitly may look something like bit.ly/my-personal-blog. If the startup is running a campaign, they can include the original URL and tag it so that they can track the data about these URLs later.
But Bitly is more than just a URL shortening tool. On the face of it, it may seem to be just a service that shortens any lengthy website URL, but underneath it is an analytics tool as well. It gathers specific data about URL performance and monitors the number of clicks it has generated. It allows startups to track each link and gather basic analysis about the URL. Also, it generates a QR code for your Bitly link, so that followers and customers can directly connect with the company. Social media marketers can see which campaigns – email, social media, or SMS, – were able to generate more CTC (click-through rates). Paid features give a little more edge to social media campaigns as startups can make custom domains and branded URLs. It gives more credibility to their campaign and customers can rely more on it.
3. Canva
If you are a startup that relies heavily on images for promoting your brand on social media platforms, then it is wise that you use a free or paid graphic design platform to make your graphics stand out. You may want your in-house team to do all the graphic design work and design images that are a fit for Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest. But that means investing so much time in graphic designing and retouching images on Photoshop, creating headers, web graphics, and a whole lot of work. Canva makes it so easy. Whether you want to make an Instagram post, a web presentation, infographic, or web-collage, you can rely on Canva to make it for you within minutes.
Canva is a social media tool that startups can use to make stunning images, graphics, and other visual marketing content. There are so many ready-to-use templates in Canva, with pre-set image sizes that you can use to make your images. All you have to do is to customize the photo and logo with your very own. You can even download royalty-free images or use Canva’s image library. With Canva, creating your graphic is easy. If you want even more customization, then use the paid version of Canva. Here you can include your brand colors, GIF animation, and resize the preset template to your specified page dimensions.
4. Easelly
Startups that need to convey useful bits of information through infographics can use the social media tools like Easelly to create eye-catching infographics that are not just good to look at, they also convey info in an attractive visual way. Infographics are useful for social media too, and their visual appeal is far more attractive than textual information and content. That’s why startups need tools like Easelly.
It is so easy to use Easelly. With the free version, you need to just use a template from so many of them. Add your text and data, create charts, diagrams or insert GIF animation into the template. You can also put royalty-free images into your presentation. And your infographic is ready within seconds. The great thing about designing an infographic or presentation in Easelly is that you can have so many sharing options. You can share your presentation directly on Facebook or Twitter. In the paid version, you can have much more to do like choose from millions of icons and photos.
5. Instagram Hashtag Generator
If you are worried that your startup is using banned hashtags in their Instagram posts, then using social media marketing tools like Instagram Hashtag Generator may be just the answer. This tool generates instant hashtags for your Instagram posts and generates the most appropriate hashtags.
Instagram Hashtag Generator helps startups to come up with creative hashtag ideas. Behind the tool is an algorithm that lets startups generate many hashtags that are ideally suited for their brand. Startups can copy hashtags from Instagram Hashtag Generator and paste these hashtags without having to generate them again. The hashtags can be organized into groups also can regroup and delete anytime.
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6. Easy Advocacy
Often Startups have an annoying time finding out that not everybody in the organization knows about the latest blog post, or that a useful bit of company news has not reached them yet. With Easy Advocacy, it becomes easy for everybody in the organization to know about the latest news. Co-workers and stakeholders get emails about important messages and they can share it also on social media channels.
Startups can try the free version of Easy Advocacy and all they have to do is add emails to a distribution list. Insert the URL of the content that they want all to know. Everybody in the distribution list will receive an email, which they can forward to others through social platforms. You can then track which content received the most clicks, engagement rates, who were the best people on the list who maximized the distribution of content, and so on.
7. Feedly
Startups need to be constantly aware of the latest industry trends, news, and technology. They need to constantly update themselves with the latest goings-on in their respective field. Visiting blogs, websites and news channels takes time, and it’s this that is often the most time-consuming. Feedly is a one-stop social media tool that gathers all news in one place so that startups don’t have to visit every website and blog to read about it.
With Feedly, startups teams can set up their news feed and decide which topics they want to follow, and what topics they want to leave. With a few clicks, they can get all news and feeds, and also save articles and blog posts for later viewing.
8. Headline Analyzer
Headlines are critical in showcasing your blog on social media, and for coming up with the best headlines, startup companies can take the help of online social media tools such as Headline Analyzer.
Headline Analyzer uses its in-built technology to find out words that add a balance to your headline. It identifies power words, optimum use of characters in your headline, words that can be replaced, keywords in your headline. A green score indicates that your headline is good, but orange and red scores are indications that the headline needs to be improved upon for posting it on social media.
9. Loom
With the instant messaging platform such as Loom, startups can create a quick video and share it through social media. Loom lets users share their desktops and mobile screens and make shareable content within minutes.
Loom is great also as an audio message tool where you can just record and send your audio message to users on social media. It allows users to directly post the message to Facebook and Twitter, and even copy the link to post it on other social media platforms.
10. Facebook Barometer
While planning your Facebook Ad campaign, startups might overlook some things, which are just as crucial for their social media following. Startups may plan out their content strategy, and place Facebook Ads on specific landing pages and achieve a great result. But they may have overlooked how their competitors have fared on Facebook. After all, they also are trying to capture a similar market share.
Facebook Barometer is a social media marketing tool that comes in handy in these types of situations. Just connect a Facebook page to this free social media tool, and it becomes so much easy to go through tons of data in some seconds. Startups can now have a tool that lets them compare their Facebook page with competitors.
Facebook Barometer keeps the last 50 posts as a basis for its page analytics. They can set different criteria for your results, such as age group, gender, etc. and Facebook Barometer will display graphical results about impressions, clicks, and other criteria. With Facebook Barometer startups can compare their Facebook page averages with other industry averages for the last 30, 90, or 120 days. It gives a detailed analysis of Engagement rate, Organic reach, Paid reach, CTR, Fans’ reach, negative feedback, and other such criteria.
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Final Words
These free tools will eventually help startups to make inroads in their social media marketing campaigns and generate leads or make more followers. They can make optimum use of analytics and data and make their content more appealing and captivating. Startups can also get paid versions of these free social media marketing tools and get a better edge over their competitors.
