Now known as X, this platform has been a public forum, town square, micro-news site, and the source of much obsession.
Companies with a strong X presence may find it invaluable for driving traffic to other sites and expanding their digital footprint. However, managing X as part of a cohesive and well-planned social media strategy takes some significant work.
Instead of winging it and hoping for the best, the right X marketing tool can make your social media management easier and more rewarding – turning it into a space where your engagement rate keeps rising. Here are our favorite X tools to help you turn that into reality.
What are X (formerly Twitter) tools?
Most businesses are managing multiple accounts across a complex ecosystem of social media. This requires a social media marketing strategy with flexibility but also strong guardrails. You've got to manage your audience engagement rate, post scheduling, and detailed analytics to measure if what you're doing is working.
Social media management tools help automate some of the more laborious parts of managing multiple accounts while freeing up your team to be creative and, more importantly, highly responsive. Good social media tools enhance what your team is doing without ever dipping into "sounding like a machine" territory.
The benefits of X tools
X marketing tools have various benefits if you choose one with the right kinds of features:
- They can help you build a social media presence by supporting your content strategy, planning, and implementation. They also facilitate finding and attracting your target audience by allowing you to see more details about your audience demographics.
- Social media interactions become easier because your team spends less time doing things like manually uploading posts or first comments and more time responding to comments or direct messages.
- Social listening tools help parse what people think of your brand and your competitors from moment to moment.
- Analytics tools help you benchmark posts and campaigns based on key metrics important to your organization.
- They allow you to stay on top of multiple social media accounts through comprehensive dashboards and advanced analytics.
We really can't imagine how much time it would take your team to maintain social media accounts without using a robust set of tools.
Top 12 X tools
We've compiled a list of our favorite X tools to ensure your team gets the most from their efforts.
1. Brandwatch
Brandwatch offers a variety of bespoke tools to build your X presence. You'll have access to the X Firehose, which brings you complete real-time analytics based on 500 million posts.
You can use this massive dataset to study what your target audience loves, build a strategy, create content, and then schedule posts to go out when your audience is online. You'll manage your X strategy alongside other social media platforms and then measure the performance of organic and paid posts.
Brandwatch also supports influencer marketing with a personalized customer relationship management (CRM) tool that integrates with other social media platforms. You can find influencers on X and then discover what reach they have on other sites as well.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite offers a comprehensive social media management tool with X features. You can schedule X posts alongside other platforms and visualize how posts will look on your feed. An artificial intelligence tool helps you generate content and then determine the best time to post based on a list of recommended times. You can manage both organic and paid posts and consult in-depth analytics tools to determine how they're performing.
3. Later
Later is a scheduling, social listening, and analytics tool that integrates with multiple social media platforms. It allows you to automate posting and monitor engagement. Later recently acquired creator site Mavely, so users now have the ability to explore partnerships with creators and influencers and set goals for a number of metrics.
4. SocialPilot
SocialPilot focuses on scaling your efforts through bulk scheduling tools and strong analytics. It features collaboration tools for managing multiple accounts and an AI pilot to help generate social media posts more efficiently. A "collaborate on drafts" option allows teams to share ideas and provide feedback through one tool. Plus, a content library makes it easier to repurpose content and reuse your most popular posts.
5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social's platform lets you plan and execute X posts through a shared calendar. Your social media managers can see multiple accounts through one calendar tool, and you can set up approvals to ensure brand consistency. Sprout Social's AI suggestions for message replies and a full conversation history help your team manage audience relationships. With a smart inbox, you can manage customers across multiple profiles.
6. Planable
Planable is a client-facing tool with strong scheduling and approval capabilities. It allows you and clients to view a feed in a familiar format, with feedback tools located directly beside each post. An AI tool helps generate and ideate new content, and a robust analytics tool shows you how all posts are performing. It also includes a mobile app and a photo and video editor for managing visuals across multiple platforms.
7. X Pro (formerly TweetDeck)
X Pro is an X tool that was once a standalone app, but X (then Twitter) acquired it in 2011. It became X Pro in 2023 and is a premium account feature. It's used as a web app to schedule posts and review accounts using an integration with the X API. Though the tool once offered limited integrations with other social platforms, it offers no such support now.
8. Twitonomy
Twitonomy is an analytics app designed to make it easier to view your X account through a series of lenses. You can monitor your own account or your competitors, see post performance, research influencers, and gain insights into your follower demographics. You can also visualize mentions across geographic, providing a better understanding of where your brand is succeeding and where you might have new interest.
9. Agorapulse
Agorapulse integrates with your X account to schedule posts, collaborate on content, and measure your follower growth. It allows you to moderate and respond to messages and comments right from the platform and set approval workflows for consistent content. Plus, it automates many of the tasks associated with maintaining an X account, including post scheduling and analytics reports.
10. Audiense
This particular platform is heavily focused on providing rich audience analytics. It includes customer segmentation options and gives you information about your audience's preferences through three different lenses: social, digital, and demand intelligence.
11. Buffer
Buffer is an all-in-one planning and scheduling tool for multiple platforms. You can analyze both your audience and the performance of posts, as well as schedule and track posts. It allows you to cross-post to nearly any platform, which is convenient if you repurpose much of your content across different social platforms. An AI assistant helps generate content and captions, while personalized insights help you determine when the best time to post actually is.
12. Fedica
Fedica gives you insight into what your audience likes, is talking about, and their sentiment about a number of different things. You can create posts based on this information, schedule them, and easily see when your audience is online. It features a straightforward tool for reports and strong community analysis tools.
What to consider when choosing an X tool
A few non-negotiable features in your X tools can really make a difference. Let's talk about it.
Pricing
When you're just starting out, a free tool might be all you need. However, as your social media efforts grow and evolve, you'll need a more robust X tool. Often, paid tools can give you advanced features with all the metrics you need and actionable insights related to your best-performing posts and audience engagement.
The right tool would have enough seats for everyone on your team who needs one. Pricing should reflect the value you receive from the tool but also have some room to flex up or down as your needs change.
Features
A few key features are non-negotiable:
- Content creation tools such as feed planners, AI generation for captions or first comments, and a content library can help your team keep content ideas in one place.
- Enough analytics to track performance for popular posts, types of content, audience size, and other benchmarks that matter to your marketing team. Even better, AI-driven analytics can offer actionable insights and help direct the approach you take.
- A unified inbox makes creating a content strategy, getting approvals, and scheduling posts easier. This helps prevent important information from getting lost in multiple emails, messages, and conversation threads.
- Social listening capabilities help keep you on top of brand mentions (you and your competitors), as well as revealing any potential strengths or weaknesses in both your X strategy and your brand's operations. This can be unbelievably valuable in getting ahead of any potential opportunities or negative feedback.
- A content scheduling tool is vital for managing X posts. The platform moves so quickly that it would be a major challenge to manually upload each post. Scheduling tools give you suggestions for posting at optimal times as well.
User-friendly design
The user interface is an important part of choosing the right social media management tool. You don't want to have to retrain users each time a member of your team leaves or changes roles. A user-friendly design helps shorten the learning curve for team members as they use it and also makes it easier for agencies to collaborate with clients.
Scalability
Your social media needs will evolve over time as the tool's algorithm changes or your audience preferences do. Ideally, the tool would allow you to scale your efforts to meet new trends or manage behavior changes in your audience. It would also be nice to scale up or down if you experience busier times during certain parts of the year.
Customer support quality
A social media management tool also integrates customer support and communication right into the platform. This gives your team better visibility into any conversations happening through X or other platforms. It can also help provide insight into any new followers who've shown an interest. An ideal tool lets you reply to comments and messages directly from the tool itself, so the entire conversation history is present.
Official partnership
Tools and platforms with an official X partnership can really unlock some of the best features of using X for marketing. They often integrate more strategically and provide access to exclusive data for deeper audience and content insights.
A partnership can also provide enhanced features to help you with follower growth. With direct access to the platform's API, you might also stay ahead of new releases and be able to take advantage of beta releases for new features before your competition does.
Access to the X Firehose
The X Firehose is a real-time data stream provided by the platform. Because it's constantly pouring out data, it's a really valuable tool for social listening, finding upcoming trends, and analyzing public opinion.
Good social media management tools can use features like machine learning to go in-depth with this volume of data to uncover insights other tools can't access. Plus, advanced features powered by the X Firehose could provide a more accurate understanding of your efforts on the X platform.
Frequently asked questions
Do X tools help with scheduling posts?
Yes, many management tools like Brandwatch, Sprout Social, or Hootsuite offer robust scheduling features to help you stay on top of the fast-paced climate of X posting.
Can I use X tools to analyze performance?
X tools with strong analytics, especially those with access to the X Firehose, can help you find out how your content is doing.
Once you know what content performs well, this can help you improve your follower count, repurpose content, and streamline the entire workflow. Additionally, analytics can help you find relevant users and target their likes.
Do X tools integrate with other social media platforms?
It's possible to find tools that only work with X, but many also offer integrations with other platforms. This is a positive feature because you'll be able to view your entire strategy as a whole, instead of just as siloed platforms.
How do X tools help with content curation?
X tools can give you customizable dashboards with accessible analytics, a content calendar and media library, and strong approval processes to maintain creativity and brand consistency. Many also offer AI support to generate captions or first comments more quickly.
These capabilities remove some of the biggest roadblocks in content creation: a lack of ideas or inspiration and overwhelm over implementing brand guidelines.
What's the difference between free and paid X tools?
Free tools may not offer as many features or in-depth analytics as paid tools. Individuals and small businesses that are just starting out can certainly use something free to maintain their budgets. However, companies with a mature social media strategy and a presence on multiple platforms will likely need the expanded functionality of paid tools.
Expand your reach with our favorite X tools
Where X marketing once meant posting a bunch of times per day and hoping something went viral, attracting an X audience now requires more strategy and finesse. Integrating a tool into your X API sets you up for better decisions and a more realistic workflow.
