If you run a small business, social media marketing tools can bring you remarkable success.
Whether you’re an educational services provider, a fashion designer, or a real estate agent, these tools can help you create targeted content, increase brand awareness, and reach potential customers.
But how do you know the right tools for your business?
That’s why we’re here but our focus today is on educational service providers!
Social media can be a great tool to market your school, learning platform, or institution. But using the right marketing tool sets you ahead of the competition.
We’ve curated a list of must-have tools that can help you market your services, keep constant communication with your audience, and attract new prospects.
Before we get into that, let’s break down the categories of social media marketing tools for you. Knowing these will help you pick the perfect ones for your business.
5 Essential Categories of Social Media Marketing Tools
Here are 5 essential categories of social media marketing tools every business owner and marketer should know:
1. Content Creation & Design Tools
A school can explore the creative power of its community and increase its digital presence through authentic and relatable content. Social media content creation tools make content creation efforts more successful for any business, including schools and learning centres. Using these tools helps create and organize content including graphics, images, and videos.
Looking to speed up your content creation workflow, including planning and scheduling? then you definitely need to have any of the tools under this category.
Examples we will discuss later in this article include Canva, Animoto, and Biteable.
2. Scheduling & Automation Tools
When you visit some schools and learning institution’s social media pages, you’d usually see a rarely updated page. We understand how institutions like yours can get quite busy. Social media scheduling and automation tools are powerful for managing a business’s overall social media management process.
For example, they can help you maintain a posting schedule without having to worry about manually doing so at the exact time it needs to go out. This can also streamline your marketing strategy regarding the time and date that your content appears and its frequency.
With this, you can choose the best time for maximum audience engagement and response. Generally, automation helps to reduce cost, increase productivity, availability, reliability, and optimize performance. The selected social media scheduling and automation tools we will discuss in this article are Hootsuite, MeetEdgar, Post Planner, and Sendible.
3. Listening Tools
If you want to know what students and people are saying about your school, learning platform, or institution, then you need a social listening tool. We live in an age where damage can easily be done to your business with just a simple post.
Social media listening tools collect data from social media channels to help businesses understand their current customer perception and brand experience. With these tools, you can listen to and analyze conversations about your brand, competitors, and industry trends across social media platforms.
For example, you can set up a search for mentions of your school, courses, or platform. If someone mentions you (whether it’s positive or negative), you can quickly respond to the mention to either resolve an issue or give corresponding feedback. The social media listening tools we will discuss later in this article are Brandwatch and Mention.
4. Engagement Tools
You don’t want to miss an inquiry from a prospect or even an honest suggestion for improvement. Social media engagement tools are best for handling large volumes of social messages. They help you see all your comments, stay on top of important conversations, and turn followers into brand ambassadors. If you want to reduce the time and effort you spend responding and engaging with your platform followers, then you should definitely consider engagement tools. The examples we have on our list today are Sprout Social and Zoho Social.
5. Analytics Tools
Social media analytics tools are platforms designed to track and evaluate the performance of social media content across multiple social media channels. These tools can help you measure campaign success and review quantifiable metrics for engagement. Some of these tools provide comprehensive analytics and reporting features to help you track and measure how your campaigns are performing on social media, all in one place. Our pick for social media marketing tools for education and learning platforms in this article are Hootsuite, Google Analytics and Social Blade.
Now that you are familiar with the categories of social media marketing tools, let’s go ahead and show you our top picks that can help you transform your school or learning platform to boost growth.
Top 12 Social Media Marketing Tools for Education Services Providers
1. Canva
Canva is a free online graphics design tool that can help both school administrators and teachers create logos, flyers, and learning materials, including videos, slideshows, posters and more. You can use it to put up beautiful designs to promote your school or learning centre on social media. Your team can also share these resources across different platforms, as well as print for students’ in-school and out of school projects.
Canva is doing exactly what it says: “Empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere.” Aside from using Canva to create content for your school’s social media marketing, you can create designs on printed school merchandise including books, stationeries, and public relations materials.
When it comes to free online graphics design for social media, Canva is the number one go-to-place for education and training centers.
Key Features
- Drag and drop
- Customizable templates
- Rich design tools and elements
- Photo editing
- Video editing
- Collaboration
- Brand kit
- Vast downloadable formats (png, jpeg, pdf, mp3, ppt, etc.)
- Media library
Pricing
- Free: $0
- Pro: $15/m or $120/yr
- Team: $30/m for 3 persons or $300/yr
2. Biteable
Biteable is an enterprise video editing software which helps businesses to create quick and easy videos. The software offers animations, stock footage, and images which you can use to create amazing educational videos on a unified platform. With Biteable, you can create short, professional videos for your school’s social media marketing efforts, download and distribute them on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
Key Features
- 3D video editing
- Audio tools
- Brand overlay
- Team collaboration and editing
- Media library
- Video resizer
- Downloadable in MP4 format
Pricing
- Free: $0
- Plus: $10/m
- Unlimited: $49/m
3. Animoto
Animoto is an online video editor that can help you create stunning videos that will captivate your audience. If you run a school for instance, you can use the tool to easily create and share videos with your class, parents, and social media audience.
Animoto allows you to download your videos from an account which you can upload on YouTube and on other social media platforms.
Even if you are not a video-creation expert and you do not have a large budget, you can sign up on Animoto and create something quick, easy, and attractive.
Feature
- Drag and drop
- Customizable branding
- Social media sharing and integration
- Media library
- Unlimited video creation
- Customizable templates
- Voice over/Audio
- Third party integrations
- Collaboration
Price
- Free plan: $0
- Professional: $65/m
- Team: $94/m
4. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management platform that helps businesses curate content, schedule posts, manage teams, and measure return on investment. A school or learning platform can use Hootsuite to attract, recruit, and retain students. The platform can help you deliver enhanced social media experiences to potential candidates at every stage of customer interaction. If you run a school and want to bring all your social media marketing in one place, get more free time, and post across all channels in one click, then Hootsuite is the tool you want to use.
Key features
- Schedule and publish messages to multiple accounts at once
- Manage paid ads and organic posts across social media
- Monitoring and listening streams
- Inbox for private and public messaging
- Auto-responder
- Saved replies
- Automated tagging and assignments
- Inbox analytics
Pricing
- Free: 30 days trial
- Professional: $99/m (10 social accounts)
- Team: $249/m (20 social accounts)
5. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is an AI-powered social media management tool that can help you create, schedule, publish, and automate daily social media content.
It allows you to connect to different social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Its pricing is comparatively modest and allows you to define your post categories, set a weekly recurring schedule, add new content, or import content.
Key features
- Easy to recycle options
- Best time to publish feature
- Multi-platform scheduling
- Auto-schedule posts
- AI-powered writer
- Content categorization
- Recurring weekly schedule
Price
- Free: 7 days trial
- Eddie Plan: $24.91/m
- Edgar Plan: $41.58/m
6. Post Planner
A school and learning center can be a very busy place. With lots of in-school obligations and parent-facing activities to handle, it might be quite overwhelming to constantly post on social media. There’s also the task of creating courses and prepping for class for those who run online platforms.
Post planner is another all-in-one social media marketing tool that can help your learning center manage and schedule content across different social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Google Business, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, and Linkedin. Post planner also allows you to measure and predict engagement of your social media activities, track results, and analyze your post performance.
Key features
- Activity/News Feed
- Automated Publishing
- Automated Scheduling
- Calendar Management
- Campaign Analytics
- Campaign Management
- Campaign Planning
- Categorization/Grouping
Price
Free: $0
Starter: Starting at $7 per month
Solo: Starting at $19 per month
Business: Starting at $39 per month
7. Sendible
Sendible is a social media scheduling platform that is used for scheduling content, engaging with audiences, and measuring post performance. It supports a variety of social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Business profile. Depending on your plan size, you can connect your institutions multiple social media accounts, schedule and create content, and monitor results.
Features
- Social Management
- Reports & Dashboards
- Social Analytics
- Content & Collaboration
- Data Management & Analysis.
Pricing
- Free: 14 days trial
- Creator: $25/m
- Traction: $76/m
- Scale: $170/m
- Advanced: $255/m
- Enterprise: $638/m
8. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is another social media marketing tool that a school, learning center, or online course provider can use to manage all content in one calendar including creating automated ad campaigns. The platform offers consumer intelligence and social media management to help businesses understand and engage with their customers at the speed of social. Their product however, is more suitable to medium to large enterprises. Depending on the size of your budget, Brandwatch is a social media marketing tool that you find really handy.
Features
- Market research
- Consumer research
- Social media analytics
- Social media monitoring
- Social media management
- Influencer marketing
Pricing
From $750
9. Mention
Mention is another social media and web monitoring tool that helps businesses track mentions of their brand, monitor keywords customers are using, as well as track brand awareness in real time. Its features help your school or learning platform track any topic on social media and the web and gain relevant insights. As a school owner or learning platform operator, you can use Mention to leverage media monitoring in order to increase awareness.
Features
- A/B Testing
- Activity Dashboard
- Automated Publishing
- Automated Scheduling
- Calendar Management
- Campaign Analytics
- Campaign Management
Pricing
- Solo: $41
- Pro: $83
- ProPlus: $149
10. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management platform that schools, online course providers, and learning institutions can use to plan, create, publish, and schedule social media content across a variety of social media platforms. Its features include project management and social listening which you can use to monitor and respond effectively to conversations around your brand.
Features
- Social Media Management
- Reports & Dashboards
- Social Analytics
- Content & Collaboration
- Monitoring and Listening
- Data Management & Analysis
Pricing
- Standard: $199/m
- Professional: $299/m
- Advanced: $399/m
11. Zoho Social
Zoho Social is one of the best social media management tools that helps schools to boost interest, increase enrollments, and streamline operations. The platform is designed to help institutions manage the complete admissions lifecircle, increase engagement, and convert more leads into students. It serves as an all-in-one tool to bring a businesses sales, marketing, and customer support activities together. With Zoho, you can bring together projects and the team for easy management.
Features
- Lead Capture
- Monitoring
- Multi-Account Management, Campaigns, Data Collection
- Performance Metrics
- Post Scheduling
- Real-Time Data, Monitoring, Notifications &, Reporting
- Reporting & Analytics
- Search/Filter
- Sentiment Analysis
- Social Media Integration
- Social Media Monitoring
Pricing
Free: 15 days trial
Starting at $10
12. Social Blade
Social Blade is a social media analytics platform used for tracking social media performance across different platforms including YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok. It allows businesses to have access to fast, timely updates on their online videos and social media as well as coverage of prominent trends and breaking news. With Social Blade, your school can compile data from YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram which can be used to make statistical graphs and charts that track progress and growth.
Features
- Content Management
- Multi-Account Management
- Automated Publishing
- Post Scheduling
- Reporting/Analytics
- Conversion Tracking
Pricing
- Bronze: $3.99/m
- Silver: 9.99/m
- Gold: 39.99/m
- Platinum: $99.99/m
Case Study: A Small Business Successfully Using Social Media Marketing Tools
Kobobrand
Back in 2020, the Lead Strategist at Kobobrand with an engineering background shared how he had been paying a decent amount of money to graphics designers to create flyers, posters, infographics and book covers for him. Amidst the COVID 19 pandemic, he discovered Canva and how easy it is to use. With it, he has been able to save money and create content which he shares across social media platforms.
In Closing
The best place to meet students and learning prospects is to connect with them on channels they use. From TikTok and Facebook to Instagram and YouTube, the benefits are numerous. To make this process seamless and more result-oriented, it is important to use the right social media marketing tools that can greatly enhance communication, engagement, and learning within your educational institution.
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