Social media is one of the leading platforms for competitive brand building and product marketing. The challenge is not the access to social media platforms and the tools. Instead, the problem is to become prominent in a deluge of new brands by outplaying the competition. Since social networking sites and social media channels are so easily accessible, almost every other brand is using social marketing as their prime marketing strategy. Survival in such a cutthroat world of marketing becomes more than a matter of wit and training.

Sometimes, marketers have all the talent and experience they need to help their companies. However, they need a little extra to egg them on their path to success. This “extra” can come in many forms. Here, it is in the form of some essential tools and websites that can help almost every company old and new, and every entrepreneur, big and small understand social media trends.

BuzzSumo

It is for all those CEOs, CIOs and marketing managers who love to crunch numbers. BuzzSumo helps entrepreneurs and marketing teams understand the particular data-driven approaches they need to perfect their social network profiles.

BuzzSumo is a unique tool that allows you to find out which influencers are best suited to represent your company on social media. This tool contributes to content research and is almost irreplaceable in social media marketing strategies.

This tool can help marketing teams understand what kind of content performs best in a target market. It can tell you which social media sites are the best for your company and how your current posts and promotions are performing on social media.

Edgar

Edgar is the best friend every content marketer and social media marketing amateur needs. It is the tool that allows you to put your content in a queue for scheduled posts. You can schedule months’ worth of content in a row and just forget about it. Edgar will take care of the posting, reposting, specific time selection for geographic locations and manual post scheduling.

Rival IQ

Sometimes you need to go by what the older generations have said – keep your friends close and your enemies closer. In this case, you need to keep your competition closer than ever, and Rival IQ is here to help you do so.

This unique, robust, yet sneaky app allows you to keep a keen eye on your direct competitors and their activities on social media channels. This tool can give you complete competitor analysis reports based on your competitor’s market performance, post and promotion performance.

You can modify your marketing strategies based on your competitor analysis. A 24 x 7 notification system usually sends the users alerts on unusual activities, sudden increase or decrease in activities on competitor pages.

Hootsuite Insights

Hootsuite Insights is a brilliant social media listening tool that has been helping thousands of brands across the globe find their true voice. It is very different from the other explorer tools and analysis websites you see around you. HootSuite provides a real-time analysis of all your social media accounts.

Hootsuite Insights can analyze your Facebook account, Twitter account, discussion forum performances and blog performances. It can perceive positive, negative and neutral performances of any brand. Without Hootsuite, social media marketing would have primarily been a mix of assumption and serendipity.

Nielsen Holdings N.V.

Nielsen Holdings is one of the most trusted names in advertising and market research. No matter what kind of consumer trends you are looking for, Nielsen reports are your one-stop solution. Since it is a global information provider, it has the latest updates on who is in the lead and which sector is about to see a quick expansion.

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights.html has all the facts and numbers you need to know about your competitors and your target market. It has headquarters in over 100 countries including the USA and Netherlands.

In fact, Nielsen reports usually cover all kinds of popular media including print, television and digital media. Therefore, finding all you need to know about specific sections of the market is not impossible at all when you have analytics fromNielsen.com guiding you.

Brand24

It is one of the leading software cum apps online that help marketers with the latest social media research. Be it competitor research or the company’s performance on a particular channel, Brand24 has it all ready for you. It shows the results of all current and past social media efforts of a company. It can help you find the best influencers for your product and your business. In fact, Brand24 offers sentiment analysis that helps brands understand what their followers and potential consumers are feeling about their products from social mentions.

Brand24 comes with a user-friendly dashboard and guidelines. You can find actionable data and analytics reports in graphical forms to help you and your marketing team visualize the results. This app gives you instant access to all your brand data across all possible social networks, social media platforms and influencer profiles online. It is one of the most wholesome software programmes that have been helping hundreds of entrepreneurs throughout the world.

Wrapping things up!

Some of these tools and website resources are free for all. Whether you are a dedicated social media marketer, leading entrepreneur or an emerging brand CEO looking for a break from the expensive social marketing services, these apps, tools, and websites will help you out.