15 Tools to Take Your Social Media Game to the Next Level

With so many companies using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and even TikTok, getting noticed and keeping up with the time-consuming demands of a social media marketing strategy means taking your social media game to the next level.

Whether it’s saving your team time on the back end or streamlining your content creation efforts, there are a multitude of ways you can improve your current strategy. Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council experts recommends the top software for leveling up your social media.

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1. Iconosquare

I recommend Iconosquare. It’s a simple and inexpensive way to track all the key metrics of your social channels, automate publishing and gain visibility into your competitors. It’s an amazing tool! — Jeff Cayley, Worldwide Cyclery

2. StreamYard

With StreamYard, you can easily broadcast professional live streams on multiple social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube at the same time. It’s a super user-friendly live streaming studio in your browser where you can go live by yourself, interview guests and even brand your broadcast to make it look cool and engage with the audience. — Devesh Dwivedi, Idea2Inception

3. Lumen5

Lumen5 has been an excellent tool for generating simple and easy video content that you can spread across multiple websites. The software is a browser-based video editing program that quickly generates easy-to-edit, public-domain content over the scripts you feed it and lets you export the results directly to the top social media sites. I’ve saved hours on content marketing with this program. — Salvador Ordorica, The Spanish Group LLC

4. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is the go-to social media manager that has everything. It’s easy to use, the analytics are fantastic and it allows effortless social media planning. The last thing businesses have time for is navigating FAQs to troubleshoot. Sprout Social has live customer support on board to help you when you’re stuck. — Jared Weitz, United Capital Source Inc.

5. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an app that lets me write one post that it publishes on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. It saves me time and helps with visibility even if it doesn’t post on Google My Business or Yelp. — Givelle Lamano, Lamano Law Office

6. Google Trends

To take your social media strategy to the next level, check out Google Trends. It keeps you informed on the latest trends in your industry so you’re ahead of the game and can create relevant content faster than your competitors. — Jared Atchison, WPForms

7. GRIN

Influencer marketing apps are highly relevant to your marketing efforts in today’s world of social media. Platforms like GRIN allow brands to connect and collaborate with influencers at scale for sponsored posts and more. These campaigns can scale quickly and appear more authentic to the end user than traditional ads. — Andy Karuza, Teracube

8. AnswerThePublic

Social and search listening has become increasingly important to connect with your consumers and their evolving needs. A free tool that I recommend is AnswerThePublic. This tool listens to autocomplete data from search engines like Google and maps every useful phrase and question asked around the keyword. This can help you create content that resonates with your consumers more effectively. — Candice Georgiadis, Digital Day

9. Canva

Every business, regardless of type or industry, can use Canva in some way. This app allows you to level up every social media platform you have by creating everything from YouTube thumbnails to flyers, Instagram posts, Instagram Stories, wallpapers, invitations, newsletters, business cards and logos and so much more. The best part is you can set up an account for free. — Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

10. Crowdfire

Crowdfire allows you to schedule and automate your posts across all social media platforms with minimal effort. One of the more interesting features it brings to the table is that you can also use it for TikTok. Moreover, it comes with an easy-to-use interface that makes handling your multiple accounts a piece of cake. Lastly, the price point is also suitable for every organization. — Alexandru Stan, Tekpon

11. Buffer

Buffer is one of the standard tools used for scheduling social media posts. It can work for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Both the free and premium options look to optimize scheduling as well as user interaction with posts. Having the posts scheduled can make a difference in boosting content or creating awareness of a new product or service. You will save time and energy. — Duran Inci, Optimum7

12. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar allows you to easily automate your social media posts so that they get published whenever you’d like them to. You can set up specific times and schedules for your content to go live so you don’t have to worry about manually posting every so often. This sets you up for success so you can focus on other things. — Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

13. Tailwind

I like to use Tailwind for scheduling content on Pinterest and Instagram. Not only is it affordable, but the platform also enables you to save a significant amount of time on scheduling posts and reviewing all of the analytics. —Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC

14. Linktree

One of my favorite apps for leveling up on social media is Linktree. This simple app enables me to display multiple links in customizable tabs from the single link in your bio that Instagram allows. Visitors can click on the link in your bio and be shown tabs for your homepage, featured products, blog posts or even a link to a lead magnet landing page. —Richard Fong, Senior Strong

15. ContentCal

We have really enjoyed ContentCal for social media management. Easily spreading your posts across multiple platforms saves you precious time. Batching your content and repurposing it to fit every platform will increase your reach without increasing your hours. —Mary Harcourt, CosmoGlo