Great social campaigns don’t have to cost a lot to be effective. You can make your social media approach easier and more results driven by using free or low-cost tools to create content, measure results, organize scheduling and identify influencers.

Here are 15 budget-friendly tools that you should consider to improve your social media ROI.

1. Falcon Social Media Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is the glue that binds everyone involved in your social campaign. The Falcon Social Media Editorial Calendar optimizes workflow, provides transparency, establishes accountability and helps to make sure you never miss an important date or event that requires special social promotion.

2. Skitch

Visual contents dominates social media, but not everyone excels at design. Skitch by Evernote lets the layman create stunning visual content with less technical prowess than what is required to master PhotoShop.

3. Shopify Shipping Label Template

A shipping label template helps transfer branding from the online world to the physical world. Every time a buyer receives a package from you, it will have the same label. This creates continuity and lets you adapt to any changes you make across any of your online channels.

4. Bit.ly

Bit.ly is known for turning long, ugly URLs into small, pretty URLs. But Bit.ly is also a powerful tracking tool that enables marketers to see where on social media their content is being shared, by whom and how often.

5. If This Then That (IFTTT)

IFTTT lets users create “recipes” to trigger automatic reactions to specific engagements. For example, you can save time by directing IFTTT with a recipe that says “if a user follows me on Twitter, follow them back.” Anything you can automate removes the burden of doing it manually.

6. Viraltag

Viraltag is a great solution for consistently and constantly releasing image-driven content — specifically, pins on Pinterest. It organizes all of your visual content under one umbrella by unifying Picassa, Dropbox, Instagram, RSS Feeds and more.

7. Mention

Sort of like Google Alerts for social media, Mention crawls social pages and looks for keywords, mentions or any other term you specify. The Mention slogan is “never miss a thing online.” It delivers on its promise, alerting you right away about any chatter concerning your brand or client.

8. Portent Content Idea Generator

Coming up with fresh ideas occasionally poses a challenge even for the most skilled blogger or content creator. Portent Content Idea Generator is useful, and it’s fun. Enter search terms and the generator will provide you with ideas for content, and even ideas for titles with inspirational excerpts to guide you along.

9. Komfo Free Facebook Analytics Tool

Komfo provides a free Facebook Analytics Tool that is easy to use and generates detailed reports on everything from fan penetration to viral amplification to CTR average. Find out the percentage of fans you’re reaching and how well your content is performing.

10. Overvideo

Add calls to action directly into video using Overvideo. Overvideo lets you add music and text into video… so that users don’t have to make it to the end of the video to act on your CTA.

11. Chase’s Calendar of Events

Every single day of the year is special to someone. From breast cancer awareness to Mother’s Day to business anniversaries to holidays in different countries. Chase’s Calendar of Events has a slick interface that helps you post about what’s important to your audience on the right day.

12. Atomic Reach

When you write content, Atomic Reach helps you optimize it for audience appeal. Basically, it analyzes your content and then submits reports on whether it is written in a way that appeals to the people who are likely to read it.

13. Little Bird

Whether you are directly involved in influencer marketing or just keeping tabs on the influencers in your industry, Little Bird can help. Discover the authorities, use the best content to get their attention and get reports on how well your influencer marketing campaigns are working.

14. Canva

Create visually stunning content with no experience — and no money. Canva is a simple, drag-and-drop design tool that is free and operates online with no software download necessary.

15. Pocket

Although not exclusively for social marketers, Pocket is the simplest, easiest and all-around best online organizing tool on the market. You see a story, a photo, a video or anything else you want to finish reading or save for later, Pocket it, and access it whenever you want from wherever you are.

You don’t need to spend a lot — or anything — to track your content’s progress across different channels and organize your social campaigns. Use tools not only to automate whatever you can, but to cut corners and bolster your weak points, like creating visuals or getting organized.

Any other social media tools you’d recommend? Feel free to share in the comments below.

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