Social media software is a critical component of a marketer’s toolbox. We asked marketers in our Future of Social report if they had seen ROI from their social media efforts. Perhaps surprisingly, those that used social media software were seeing ROI at almost double the response of those who did not.

Future of Social asked marketers to list their favorite software tool:

Social Media Software Graph

With this data in mind, Firebrand Group recognizes some of the social media software category’s top performers:

  • Most Popular Freemium Tools Available to Social Marketers: Hootsuite and Buffer. Both have massive awareness, strong marketing funnels, and growing feature-sets (free vs. paid, etc.)
  • Most Popular Paid Social Media Software Tool: Sprout Social. At 12.5 percent, this tool ranked the highest among tools that require a payment before use.
  • Most Popular Social Media Software Tool for Twitter: Tweetdeck, the platform for Twitter “superusers,” ranks fourth at 8.8 percent.
  • Most Popular Listening and Monitoring Social Media Software: Simply Measured, fifth overall with 7.7 percent, remains the software primarily focused on social listening and monitoring. This ranking is subject to change in the future, as more and more marketers are searching for social media software that can assist with listening and monitoring.
  • Most Popular All-in-One Software: Sprinklr comes in sixth overall with 4.5 percent as the do-it-all social software service company.
  • Most Popular Content-Focused Tool: HubSpot, with its main focus on content marketing, ranks seventh at 4.2 percent.
  • Honorable Mentions: Instagram/image-specific social media software tools like Iconosquare, Latergramme, Schdeugram, Gramfeed, Tailwind, Curalate. This is a testament to the importance of images in content marketing strategy.

To read the entire Future of Social report in partnership with Social Fresh and Simply Measured, click here.