Mar 1, 2024

27 Social Media Tools Every Content Creator Needs

Marketers and brands know there’s a lot more to creating great content for social media and the tools you use can make all the difference. 

Fortunately, there are lots of social media tools to choose from that can make your content creation journey easier, including AI-powered ones. These tools can help inspire new content, create graphics, images and videos, and even optimize scheduling and planning. A recent LinkedIn poll we ran asked which AI tool marketers used most in their content marketing. A resounding 86% said ChatGPT!

So which social media tools are marketers using and what are they using them for? 

In this article, we’ll look at some of the most popular and effective tools that can boost your content creation for social media.   

Social Media Calendar 2024

Tools to create images and graphics

1. Canva

One of the most popular tools for creating social media graphics, Canva allows users to create high-quality images quickly using layouts, templates, and design elements. Check out our Canva walkthrough to get started! 

2. PicMonkey

PicMonkey provides a photo editor, and design and touch up tools. You can also create images for social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, ads, and logos using templates.

3. Unsplash

If you’re looking for quality photos, Unsplash is the place to go. The tool has a library of over 3 million free high-resolution images created by professional photographers to use for commercial, personal projects, and editorial use.

4. VistaCreate (formerly Crello)

Similar to Canva, Crello is a graphic design tool that makes it easy to create graphics without a lot of design knowledge. It has 30,000+ free design templates, 180 million photos, 32,000 videos and 15,000 illustrations that can be animated and put to music. 

5. Dall-E

dmi video thumbnail

Join for FREE to access this video

DALL-E uses AI to create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. Developed by OpenAI the tool uses deep learning methodologies to generate images from prompts.

Tools to create videos

6. Animoto

This is a free video editing software that lets you easily create and edit videos. You can use templates to create a range of video types (e.g. tutorial, promo) and for different industries. Anomito offers a stock library, music library, and voiceover options.  

7. Biteable

Biteable is an animation video creator that can be used by marketers with little or no experience.  You can use templates to create presentations, slideshows, intro videos, logo animations, trailers, and ads. Biteable allows you to add text, music, and resize and convert files. 

8. Promo

Promo’s social media video maker tool allows you to create videos for all social media channels. You can add audio and text, resize, compress and cut videos. Its PromoAI tool helps you create, publish and schedule videos for social media in minutes.  

dmi video thumbnail

Join for FREE to access this video

Tools to create audio content

9. Audacity

An open-source audio editing and recording app, Audacity is great for creating podcasts, recording voice-overs or dictating memos. What’s great is that it’s free and pledges to be free forever for everyone!

10. Riverside

Riverside is an AI-powered podcast recording and authoring tool for both audio and video podcasts. Its AI-powered tool is great for getting sound bites as audio or video clips to share on social media from webinars or podcasts. We use it ourselves for the Digital Marketing Institute’s podcast, Ahead of the Game.

Tools for community building

11. Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform that enables people to have meaningful conversations and collaborate. It allows people to chat in real-time, be moderated by the community, block spam, and translate for 46 languages. 

12. Discord

dmi video thumbnail

Join for FREE to access this video

A popular chat app amongst creators and gamers, Discord enables people to join communities to discuss any topic. The many communities on the platform are in categories such as science and tech, gaming, entertainment, music, and education. Discord offers moderation tools, custom member access, and private channels. 

13. Hivebrite

Hivebrite is an all-in-one community management and engagement platform that helps businesses to build and nurture active communities. It offers analytics to track engagement and can be integrated into a CRM. There is a monetization feature that allows you to drive revenue through ticketed events, merchandise sales, and donations. 

Tools for research and SEO

14. AnswerthePublic

Answerthepublic taps into data from search engines and creates useful phrases and questions people ask related to your keyword. A search listening tool, it can help you source new ideas for content related to your keywords, monitor trends, and help populate your content calendar. 

15. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a tool created by search marketing guru Neil Patel that enables you to conduct keyword research, analyze competitors and do site audits. You can register for free to access some of the features. 

16. Keyword Surfer

This tool allows you to generate keyword ideas and see search volumes in Google search results. You can unearth lots of relevant topic clusters related to your primary keyword to help generate relevant social media content.

Tools for scheduling and management

17. Buffer

Buffer is a popular scheduling and management app for social media. It allows you to publish, analyze, drive engagement and create landing pages. Its new AI assistant helps with content creation and enables caption generation.

18. CoSchedule

An all-in-one marketing calendar powered by AI, CoSchedule offers a content calendar and social media calendar and Mia, its AI marketing intelligence assistant. You can also use its handy headline analyzer to examine headlines and optimized for SEO.

19. Later

Later allows you to create, edit, and schedule posts across all social profiles. You can access content creation tools, use a link in bio tool, use the AI caption writer and find out the meanings of emojis. 

20. Notion

Notion is the perfect tool for content organization, scheduling and developing a content calendar. You can generate and store documents to share with team members, manage projects and centralize knowledge using a Wikis feature. It also has AI integration and Zapier connections.

21. Todoist

Todoist organizes and dates all of your to-do lists and projects in one place. It can sync across all devices, mark tasks as priorities and assign labels. You can also flip between a board layout and simple list layout.  

dmi video thumbnail

Join for FREE to access this video

Tools for copywriting and editing

22. Grammarly

Grammarly is a great tool to help check and refine your social media copy. The tool reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, engagement, and mistakes in English along with detecting plagiarism. It goes beyond regular checking to provide users with explanations and helps improve their writing skills. 

23. ChatGPT

ChatGPT blasted onto the scene last year and is now being used by marketers across the globe. Using prompts the AI tool ChatGPT can be used for brainstorming and SEO research along with proofreading and writing social posts. 

24. Jasper

Another AI tool, Jasper is designed to help in content creation. It can be used for blog writing, copywriting, SEO, content strategy and social media marketing. Using ciple prompts it can kickstart or scale up your content generation.  

Tools for social media listening

25. Sprout Social

Sprout Social leverages AI to uncover critical customer and competitor insights. Using the tool you can build listening queries, sift through data and monitor millions of conversions across social media. 

26. Rival IQ

This tool helps you to conduct an in-depth competitive analysis on social media. You can benchmark metrics, visualize your social performance, detect boosted posts of competitors and get custom alerts. 

27. Upfluence

Upfluence is an affiliate and influencer marketing platform that uses ChatGPT. It can help you to find and analyze influencers to create successful partnerships to promote and sell a brand. You can also track campaign performance and pay influencers directly.  

Looking for a social media and marketing course that ups your game?

Whatever social media content you want to create, these tools will prove invaluable. With our Social Media Marketing course you will learn how to share, tweet and pin your way to success using engaging content that sets your brand above the competition. Plus you’ll learn how to research, plan and strategize along the way!


Nicola Gwillym
Nicola Gwillym

Specializing in organic social media, Nicola drives awareness and consideration on Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (X) for the Digital Marketing Institute. Focusing on virtual brand community development, she builds builds trust and brand recognition through creative educational and informative content.

Upgrade to Power Membership to continue your access to thousands of articles, toolkits, podcasts, lessons and much much more.
Become a Power Member

CPD points available

This content is eligible for CPD points. Please sign in if you wish to track this in your account.