This is 2023, so it’s not an issue of whether your business or brand is on social media or not. It’s almost certain that it is. But the question of the moment is which social media platforms are you using and whether you’re using any social media management tool.
In today’s world, a social media strategy is a vital concern for any business that wants to stand out in its field and reach out to a wider audience. A social media strategy involves several steps that must be repeated daily in order to become an industry leader through engagement with current and potential customers.
That’s why a large number of agencies prefer to utilize specific tools to achieve these results.
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There are several useful tech solutions that ease the burden of juggling multiple social media accounts that are available for all types of businesses. Whether you’re looking to schedule, get analytics, design social posts, or research or all these put together, you’ll find a social media management tool to match your needs.
Remember an effective social media platform extends to planning, this means there’s a lot of collaborating with various people including the clients themselves. So, between creating ideas and getting approvals to creating workflows, you will find that some of these tools such as the social media calendar are very handy during planning and through the implementation stage of the strategy.
Why Use Social Media Management Tools
Imagine using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn for your social media and needing to post on each and every one of these platforms daily and at times several times a day. That would be tedious, to say the least.
So, here are a few reasons why you should use a management tool:
a. Organize Your Social Media Calendar with Ease
The best social media management tool will help you stay on top of your posts, what you have planned to do, your next post, and the type of content to create. It also brings support to building a social media strategy because it will help you observe what’s working and what’s not.
b. Analyze Your Performance
A good social media management tool will offer you data that you can use to evaluate your decisions based on what worked and what didn’t work in the past.
They will show you for instance who is engaging with your content the most, the kind of posts are performing best, the best time to post in order to reach most readers, and also the platform that performs the best overall.
These details will surely guide your next steps in your social media marketing strategy.
c. Monitor Multiple Accounts in One Place
So, as said earlier, rather than login into each social media platform individually, these social media management tools allow you to manage all your accounts from a single interface. On top of making your life a whole lot easier, it also improves your efficiency.
d. Boosts Engagement
Isn’t this the main scope of every marketer and business? Most of these tools will allow you to centralize all your messages into one place, where giving that single response might just be what you needed to gain another loyal customer. You’ll also be able to interact with them when they share, like, or even follow your account.
e. Team Collaboration
For most businesses, chances are that the social media strategy involves a team of people working together, so it’s important to find a channel through which everyone can stay in the loop. This will avoid scenarios where 2 or more people respond to the same message. Social media management tools are designed to streamline all team communication through the use of a shared inbox.
So, How Do You Know What Is the Best Social Media Management Tool to Use?
There is a plethora of good social media management tools out there, so it is rather easy to get confused. But, as you go through the following list, you will be able to identify the ones that fit your unique organizational needs and integrate them better with your strategy.
Most people running their own businesses or social media managers first want to find out what is the best free social media management tool. Well, we all know that most often free means dealing with a limited version of a tool. Thus, there is no such thing as a best free social media tool, if you want to manage multiple social channels. And most social media management tools offer for free a trial period of 2 weeks or a month to test the services.
With that said, here are the best social media management tools to enhance your workflows and catapult your social media strategy to the next level:
Hootsuite
Has a free plan, a 30-day free trial, and plans that start at $99.
This is probably the most successful social media management tool. This tool offers features that you can use to manage all your social media accounts from a single dashboard. Besides enabling you to create and schedule content and providing you with analytics, it also measures your ROI as far as your campaigns are concerned. Plus, it also runs your social media ads.
Some of the features that make it stand out include a limited free plan, compatible with the major social media platforms and it offers free training courses to help you get started. No wonder it’s most marketers’ favorite tool.
The analytics graph will show you the number of clicks per day, as well as the geographical locations of these people. It will also show you the top referrers and links and this is free for all plans.
Hootsuite will also enable you to follow topics that are relevant to you with their social media following feature. You can use it to filter conversations through the use of hashtags, keywords, and location, and even in multiple languages, in order to keep track of what’s being said about your brand, your competitors, and the whole industry in general.
It also offers a centralized messaging feature you can use to respond to messages by assigning this to the appropriate team member.
Buffer
Has a forever-free plan, and a 14-day trial with the cheapest plan starting at $6.
This is an intuitive tool, featuring a clean and quite easy-to-use interface. Buffer enables content publishing, boosts engagement, and offers analytics. It also includes team collaboration features for smooth and effective functioning.
Buffer’s functionality works in three directions: Publish, Reply, and Analyze.
Under “Publish” the team members can contribute if they have full access, alternatively, the posts can be submitted to the managers for review since they have tweaking rights.
The “Publish” feature allows you to publish your content across all platforms and an overview of all posts scheduled.
The “Reply” function is all about engagement, as well as details referring to who is liking, sharing, following stats, plus location and sometimes the company they work for and management level they have. This function goes further to include old chats even fresh conversations for easy tracking. Managers are able to assign specific interactions to any team member they deem fit while internally adding notes to each task. It’s also very effective in upholding excellent customer service.
Buffer’s “Analyze” function offers a unique approach, where there is a feedback loop that spins back any content that stands out. This means while going through post metrics, the post that did best can instantly be shot back to the queue with just a click with the ability to edit it if need be.
In short, Buffer has a competitive offer and provides value to its users.
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Sprout Social
Prices: Start at $249 with a 30-day free trial
This tool sort of gives the other tools a run for their money, here’s why. Sprout Social integrates with Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest and has an all-in-one scheduling dashboard that allows you to seamlessly switch between these platforms for better management.
You’re able to queue your posts and optimize the captions and tags for each platform. It includes a ViralPost feature that guides you on the best time to publish your post, i.e. when your audience is highly likely to engage.
Sprout developed a smart inbox feature that instantly prompts you when you have a message from your followers; this immediate responsiveness is especially useful for conversions, people generally like responsive brands. The smart inbox compiles your incoming messages from your different platforms and allows you to use a tag or branded keyword filters to sort the messages in order of relevance. It allows you to assign these messages to the relevant team member to handle it and when done properly, this is really great for your customer service.
Moreover, Sprout Social provides you with a comprehensive analytics and reporting function. Besides giving you the most functional hashtags for your content, you access insights like audience growth, post engagements, impressions, clicks, and general performance of your posts on all platforms.
It highlights the most engaging content you created and that your audience likes as referral traffic plus conversions, therefore offering an opportunity that you can leverage. When used properly, Sprout Social features are a great place to start in developing your impact on your audience.
The HubSpot Marketing Hub Including the Social Media Software
Price: From $792 per month Inclusive of the Marketing Hub Professional Tier
This tool is versatile and saves you lots of time since it schedules your content, integrates all your social networks with your blog, and keeps track of your messages and mentions all at once. Your marketing is integrated with your CRM, therefore you’re able to figure out the number of leads and customers you’re getting directly from your social media platforms.
The unique thing about Hubspot that makes it stand out as a social media management tool is that it works as part of the Hubspot Marketing Hub and therefore besides managing your social media, it facilitates your entire marketing effort through a very smooth integration.
So, what are some of its features?
You’re able to share posts and other types of content from the same interface you’ll be using to build your marketing campaigns. You will be equipped to automatically share any fresh content from your blog to your social networks as it gets published.
It enables you to schedule your content and suggests the best time to post for maximum reach. It monitors your social mentions and enables you to create and use keyword monitoring for relevant interaction.
It offers social reports that permit you to compare how different platforms or campaigns are performing, meaning that whether you will be publishing straight from HubSpot or elsewhere, you’ll still get a report on the effectiveness of your social strategy from one central point. And this ability to do all your marketing under one umbrella is the core reason why it’s a brilliant tool.
Zoho Social
Zoho pricing starts at $10 per month and offers a free trial.
If you’re looking for team collaboration, this is another fantastic social media management tool. It has the (now almost standard) features that include a calendar for scheduling, as well as a feature for bulk scheduling where you can create as many posts as you like and then schedule them up in one go.
Here is a brief breakdown:
It offers unique timeslots for bulk scheduling your content and has SmartQ that can publish your content at peak times when your audience is active. Zoho includes a listening dashboard that can create columns through which you can track your mentions, keywords or reviews, or conversations around your brand.
You can view all incoming engagements as they happen and may respond in line to all your messages or assign them to a team member.
Zoho has a complete sphere of analytics and permits the creation of tailor-made reports for all your platforms, using appealing graphs and charts.
Later
Later pricing begins at $18 per month and has a free version but does not offer a free trial.
If your social media strategy revolves around Instagram, then Later is the best social media management tool for you. It comes with a visual publishing calendar that is easily editable, with a drag-and-drop feature, it allows you to preview your posts before publishing in order to keep a consistent theme of your feed.
One key feature that stands out is the blissful content organization function that lets you sync your images and videos from any location, be it your mobile device, desktop, or Google Drive. Besides, it allows you to tag your content meaning you can find it with ease and repost it whenever you want.
Finally, Later has built-in analytics features to help you keep track of all your posts and have a global overview of your Instagram marketing. Even though Later mainly focuses on Instagram, you can also use it for other platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
E- Clincher
This one starts at $65 per month and offers a 14-day free trial.
E-Clincher is packed with features as well, from a content scheduler, an inbox or social customer relations management feature, smart queues for auto-posting, suggested content including curation, influencer alert, keyword monitoring, and essential analytics reports.
The auto-post is the most appreciated feature that allows users to publish bulk content that could last for months! There is the possibility to recycle the content that performed well. It supports video publishing, animated GIFs as well as auto link shortening.
The social inbox enables you to manage your entire social media engagement from one single place. E-Clincher offers social listening features that help you monitor relevant conversations. And lately influencers’ discovery and engagement.
When it comes to client management, E-Clincher offers a clean workplace feature for each client. This means a separate calendar, analytics, inbox, and various assigned team players. And as said, it allows you to generate reports through fully customizable white-label analytics reports.
It supports all the major social media platforms including Google My Business and Google Analytics.
Sendible
Pricing starts at $29 per month per user and offers a free 14-day trial.
So, what does Sendible offer?
Bulk content scheduling to as far in the future as you need. You can create bespoke posts for each client’s post for every social platform, taking advantage of hashtags or attachments that can boost your organic reach. Using the publishing calendar offered, you can get a view of your content and rearrange it through a drag-and-drop feature.
You can also enhance your posts with visual content since you’re able to upload videos and images from other sources; you can share your stellar content using the RSS feeds, preview your social media posts, and much more.
The analytics feature here allows you to track your social media efforts and get custom reports that can be delivered directly to your clients’ email daily, weekly, or even monthly. And finally, it enables social listening that can keep you in the loop of what’s being said about your brand. A unique feature is how it can sort your messages according to their sentiment: positive, neutral, and negative.
Sendible works on all major social platforms.
Social Pilot
Price starts at $30 with a 14-day trial.
If you’re looking for the right tool to help you curate relevant content, then Social Pilot is the place to be. Their content curating function allows you to search for ideas based on relevant keywords and industries (e.g. hair and beauty industry) and this simply makes your content creation work a whole lot easier.
For agencies handling multiple accounts, there is a client management feature that allows access without requiring countless passwords and logins. There is an option of inviting your clients, so when they log into a social media account, they’re automatically added to your accounts lists.
The client management feature also offers white labeling, meaning you can add your company name plus logo to your emails as well as to the panel the clients see and therefore they don’t need to know the social media management tool you’re using.
The rest of the standard features Social Pilot offers include the possibility of connecting and managing over fifty social profiles from one place; an easy-to-understand analytics tool that tracks your efficiency and performance with the possibility of exporting the data into a PDF in a click; the use of social inbox feature that lets you reply, comment or send messages in real-time; a social media calendar that helps you visualize your content and a mighty bulk scheduling feature that can schedule up to five hundred posts for the coming days, weeks or months with a delete or edit feature.
Social Pilot works on all the major social media platforms.
Unfold
What is the best free social media management tool? This list would not be complete without a tool that is reliable and free (at least for the moment)!
Unfold describes itself as a tool for storytellers, available on both Android and iOS. It is a great tool for bringing your creativity out to play.
On Unfold you can take advantage of the easy-to-use templates given to create engaging stories, you can edit your images, or use the videos filter and effects features provided. They have also offered curated fonts and styles to personalize your text and they let you export your stories and share them on other platforms with ease.
It’s worth noting that you can get extra features with Unfold+ for just $2.99. Such features include over 200 templates to create your stories, advanced editing tools, and early access to new collections.
Unfold is ideal for lifestyle brands as it offers an array of stylish collages that really draw an organic audience and engagement easily.
Barely Scratching the Surface
There are numerous high-quality social media management tools out there, this list does not sum them all, but it gives you a hint of what the best tools have to offer. The most important for you is to pick the tool that best fits your marketing needs, your budget as well as your marketing goals.
You can start by comparing your list of needs and requirements against what these tools offer in order to determine the tool that will make business sense to you. With some social media management tools free plans.
