Social media engagement often feels like a giant puzzle. How do some brands attract so many likes? Why do others consistently struggle to garner shares?
These kinds of questions are commonplace in the minds of social media marketers - so common, in fact, that there are hundreds of marketing tools specifically designed to address the engagement challenge.
To help you overcome this setback, we've rounded up four helpful tools that are known to increase follows, likes, and shares. They're also easy to incorporate into your regular routine, so you won't spend a significant amount of time or resources when testing them out.
Check out these tools to help you get ahead.
1. Klout

Today's marketing technology provides in-depth details about our audience's behavior, needs, and desires, making it easier than ever to create targeted messaging. But it also poses challenges for audience engagement. Since modern consumers are more in tune with promotional marketing and advertising, it can be harder for marketers to build trust when it matters most.
One of the best ways to build audience trust is through influencer marketing. Klout is a tool that simplifies the influencer outreach process with an easy, convenient search engine.
Rather than sifting through thousands of tweets or posts, marketers can use Klout to find relevant influencers and content based on topics and phrases. Since influencer marketing can be an extremely time-consuming process, Klout cuts down on the time and frustration by delivering influencers directly to you.
2. PromoRepublic
From a fresh product release to a new article mentioning your company, it's important that your brand stays on top of exciting industry news. This not only helps to engage your audience with content that's relevant to them, but it also helps boost your brand credibility.
PromoRepublic is an 'idea discovery tool' equipped with engaging, pre-made content templates. These templates can be customized and sent across social media to drive engagement based on certain topics and ideas.
Content ideas are grouped into categories such as "creative content" "promotions" and "engage," so you can choose the post based on your desired outcome. There's also a "made for you" category with customized templates based on the topics you chose to explore.
After creating and scheduling posts, you can refer to PromoRepublic's Statistics section. Here, you can access details on likes, favorites, retweets, and overall engagement for each post on every social media category - including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and more.
3. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
All content marketers understand the power of a well-crafted headline, and when you're sharing content to social media, a compelling headline can make or break your engagement.
But how do you know if your headlines are optimized to reach their fullest potential? That's where the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer can help.
The CoSchedule Headline Analyzer is a frills-free tool that shows you exactly what's wrong with your headline - and how you can make it better. Based on the words you used, the tool will rate your headline on a scale from 1 to 100.
You'll also gain insight on the structure and readability of your headline, plus tips on how to improve your score through word choice. CoSchedule also has a great library of resources on headline writing, like how to include more emotional and power words in your headline, and how to master headline balance.
4. ShortStack
Contests and promotions are a great way to generate a sense of urgency on social media. This entices your audience to take a desired action more quickly, and it also creates a bump in engagement on your profile.
ShortStack is a tool that helps you create contest campaigns tailored to your audience. You can choose from a pre-existing template for efficiency, or you can upload your own. The tool makes it easy to create contests in the form of giveaways, voting contests, quizzes and more. Completed campaigns come with a single URL which you can use to post across social media multiple times.
What's your favorite tool for increasing social media engagement? Let us know in the comments below.