Social media management tools are software applications or platforms designed to assist individuals, businesses, or digital marketing agencies in managing their social media presence. These tools provide various features and functionalities to streamline the process of creating, scheduling, publishing, analysing, and monitoring content across multiple social media platforms from a centralised interface.
Here are some key reasons why social media management tools are beneficial:
Centralised Management: These tools allow you to manage all your social media accounts from a single dashboard, eliminating the need to log in to each platform individually. This saves time and effort by providing a centralised location to create, schedule, and publish content across multiple channels.
Content Scheduling: Social media management tools enable you to schedule posts in advance. You can plan your content calendar, determine the best times to post and automate the publishing process. This ensures a consistent presence and saves time by allowing you to batch-create and schedule posts in advance.
Analytics and Reporting: These tools provide valuable insights and analytics about your social media performance. You can track metrics such as engagement, follower growth, reach, and clicks. This data helps you understand what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to make informed decisions and refine your social media strategy.
Social Listening and Monitoring: Social media management tools often include features for monitoring mentions, comments, and conversations about your brand or industry. You can monitor keywords, hashtags, and competitors, enabling you to engage with your audience, respond to inquiries, and address customer concerns in a timely manner.
Collaboration and Team Management: For businesses with multiple team members handling social media, these tools offer collaboration features. You can assign roles, grant permissions, and collaborate on content creation and scheduling. This streamlines workflow ensures consistent branding and facilitates effective teamwork.
Content Curation and Discovery: Some social media management tools provide content curation features, allowing you to discover relevant and engaging content to share with your audience. You can monitor industry trends, find curated content from trusted sources, and share it seamlessly with your followers.
Ad Campaign Management: Many social media management tools integrate with advertising platforms, enabling you to create, monitor, and optimise your social media ad campaigns. This streamlines the process and provides a comprehensive view of your organic and paid social media efforts.
Social media management tools can enhance your productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness in managing your social media presence. They help you save time, measure performance, engage with your audience, and improve your overall social media strategy.
Here are the Best Social Media Management Tools (In our opinion)
To find the best social media management tools for your small business, see the list below. These handpicked tools will help you save time while growing your community and your potential customer base.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media management tool that enables businesses and marketers to manage multiple social networks, connect with customers, and scale campaigns across different platforms. Features include the ability to schedule posts, manage media content, monitor messages and mentions, and track analytics to understand the performance of the campaign. Furthermore, it provides a social media content calendar for pre-planning and scheduling posts, making it easy to ensure a consistent online presence.
There are several pricing tiers, including a free plan for individual users and a professional plan for businesses, starting at $49 per month. With each tier upgrade, Hootsuite provides additional features like team management, advanced analytics, security, and more. Also, each plan comes with a 30-day free trial, providing the opportunity to test out the service before committing.
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar stands out for its emphasis on automating content. The platform provides tools for unlimited scheduling of social media posts and offers flexible automation features. This includes an evergreen content library, auto-variations for creating new posts, and simplified scheduling. MeetEdgar streamlines the entire process of managing and distributing social media content, providing users with a more hands-off approach.
MeetEdgar offers two main plans, Edgar Lite at $19 per month and the regular Edgar plan at $49 per month. With the regular plan, users have access to unlimited posting, a high level of automation, and can manage up to 25 social accounts. Both plans come with a 7-day free trial, allowing users to test out the service before committing.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social provides robust social media management services designed to help businesses maximise their social media strategy. Beyond the basic features of publishing and scheduling, the platform offers user-friendly engagement and analytics features. Sprout Social allows you to monitor conversations, uncover trends, and evaluate how specific types of content perform over time, providing essential insights for strategy development and execution.
Sprout Social offers various plans, with the standard option starting at $99 per user per month, including up to five accounts, a content calendar, review management, and an all-in-one inbox. Additionally, you can add on specific features like social listening and premium analytics, customising the experience to fit your business needs. Free trials and demos are also available, making it easy to explore the platform before purchasing.
Soho Social
Soho Social provides flexible scheduling features to accommodate a wide array of businesses. The platform supports multiple social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google My Business. Soho Social goes beyond basic features by offering an analytics tool to determine when your followers are most active, helping you to identify the ideal times to post content.
In addition to this, Soho Social is part of the Soho One Suite, making it possible to integrate with other tools such as Soho CRM and ads to maximise performance. Their business plans range from $10 to $37.50 per month and come with 15-day free trials, providing ample time to decide if the service suits your needs. They also have options for social media agencies that manage multiple brands’ accounts.
Buffer
Buffer is a simple yet effective social media management platform. The goal is to assist businesses in forming authentic connections online. Buffer allows users to publish content directly or add it to a queue for periodic automatic posting. Along with this, Buffer provides analytic features to monitor post-performance and assist in determining the best times to post and the most effective types of content for your brand.
Buffer offers both free and paid plans. The free plan permits managing up to three accounts and queueing up to ten posts at a time. Paid plans, which range from $15 to $99 per month, increase the number of managed accounts and queued posts and add team collaboration and advanced analytics. Every paid plan comes with a 14-day free trial, offering an opportunity to test the service.
Sprinklr
Sprinklr is a unified customer experience management platform that integrates social media management with other digital touchpoints. Its suite of tools is designed for larger organisations and enterprises, offering a wide array of capabilities that include audience segmentation, campaign management, content marketing, reporting, and more.
In terms of pricing, Sprinklr is more premium, with the cost typically customised based on the sise of the company and its specific needs. However, this reflects the platform’s comprehensive and sophisticated functionality. It allows larger organisations to align their social media management with other marketing efforts, enhancing overall campaign effectiveness and customer engagement.
AgoraPulse
AgoraPulse is a social media management tool built with simplicity and efficiency in mind. Its features include publishing and scheduling, social inbox, listening, reporting, and team collaboration. What makes AgoraPulse stand out is its user-friendly interface and focus on team collaboration, which enables businesses to easily manage their social media presence and engage with their audience in a timely manner.
AgoraPulse offers a variety of plans that cater to different business sises and requirements. Pricing starts at $79 per month for the medium plan and can go up to $399 per month for the Enterprise plan. Each plan includes a 28-day free trial, allowing businesses to try the platform and see how well it suits their needs before making a commitment.
CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a robust marketing suite that includes social media management as part of its toolkit. CoSchedule’s Social Organiser tool helps businesses manage, schedule, and automate their social media posts. In addition to that, its marketing calendar offers a holistic view of all marketing activities, making it easy to track and coordinate campaigns.
Pricing for CoSchedule starts at $14 per month for individual users and goes up to $29 per month for small businesses. Each plan includes features that are designed to help businesses streamline their marketing efforts and improve their social media engagement. The platform also offers a 14-day free trial, allowing users to test the service before committing to a paid plan.
Soho Social
Soho Social is a social media management tool that’s part of the broader Soho Suite of business applications. This platform offers post-scheduling, real-time monitoring, collaboration features, and social analytics. Its integration with the larger Soho Suite makes it ideal for businesses already using Soho tools and wishing to maintain consistency across their software.
Pricing for Soho Social ranges from $15 to $300 per month, depending on the plan and the number of users. Each plan includes a free trial, giving businesses an opportunity to try the platform and see how it aligns with their social media management needs before making a commitment.
Sendible
Sendible is a powerful social media management tool designed to help businesses manage and amplify their social media presence. It offers post-scheduling, automation, audience engagement tools, and robust analytics. Sendible’s unique feature is its ability to recommend content based on your audience’s interests, which can assist in improving your engagement rates.
Sendible offers various pricing options, starting from $29 per month for the Starter plans up to $299 per month for the large plan. Each pricing tier includes an expanded set of features to cater to businesses of varied sises. A 14-day free trial is offered to give businesses a chance to explore the platform’s features.
How do you use social media management tools for your business?
Social media management tools provide an array of functionalities tailored for small businesses, each offering a distinctive set of features. Here’s how businesses utilise them most commonly:
Scheduling social media content: The basic facility provided by all social media management tools is the ability to line up posts for future publication. This allows you to designate specific dates and times for posts or arrange them in a queue for consistent posting.
Coordinating multiple accounts: Many businesses are responsible for multiple social media profiles. Social media management tools streamline this process, offering a single dashboard to manage and create content across all platforms, eliminating the need to visit each account separately.
Tracking interactions and discussions: social media is a platform for interactive dialogue. Social media management tools help you identify instances where your followers mention your business, utilise hashtags, or raise inquiries.
Content curation: Certain social media tools offer suggestions for posts or allow for the speedy selection of images, text, or other content types to enrich your feeds.
Automating content: Some of your social media content may be evergreen, warranting repeated posting. Some social media tools facilitate this process, allowing you to establish recurring posts. This is where social media automation becomes crucial.
Identifying pertinent trends: By tracking conversations and trending topics, you can glean insights into what your customers or industry peers are discussing. This could provide inspiration for added content to feature on your own feeds.
Which Social Media Tools are Best for You?
When it comes to selecting an optimal social media management tool, it depends on your business’s unique social media requirements. Assess your existing social media usage and think about the features that could bolster your social media marketing strategies. Here are a few specifics to consider:
Compatibility with your social media platforms: Some social media management tools accommodate a range of platforms, while others support just a few. Compile a list of all the platforms you currently operate on. Ensure that any management platform you select is compatible with these sites and/or apps.
User-friendliness: A major advantage of social media management tools is their ability to save you time. Therefore, you won’t want to spend excessive hours learning how to navigate a complex interface or understanding features that you won’t utilise. Consider requesting a demo or free trial to ascertain whether the social media management platform is user-friendly.
Cost-effectiveness: Some social media management tools are available at no cost, while others require a fee. Establish a budget for your social media marketing initiatives and confirm that your chosen platform aligns with this.
Integration with your team’s workflow: If your social media accounts are managed by a team, you will need a management platform that accommodates multiple users. Some even provide approval mechanisms or workflow processes to facilitate collaboration among different roles.
Reporting and Analytics: Most social media management tools offer analytics and reporting functionalities that can help you understand your audience, monitor your performance, and optimise your strategy. Look for tools that provide comprehensive analytics, including post engagement, audience demographics, best-performing content, and more.
Engagement features: Look for a tool that lets you manage and respond to comments, messages, and reviews across all your platforms from one place. This will allow you to engage with your audience more efficiently and maintain an active online presence.
Content Library and Collaboration: Some tools offer features such as a content library where you can store and organise your posts and images for easy access. If you work with a team, consider a tool that allows you to collaborate, share content, and give feedback within the platform itself.
Mobile Access: In today’s fast-paced world, being able to manage your social media accounts on the go is crucial. Consider tools that offer a mobile app or a mobile-friendly interface.
Security Features: Make sure the tool you choose has robust security features, especially if you’re managing multiple accounts or sharing access with a team. This can include two-factor authentication, permission levels for team members, and secure data storage.
Customer Support: Ensure the tool you choose provides good customer support. You should have access to help when you need it, whether through live chat, email, or phone support.
Remember that no one tool may be perfect or have every feature you need. The important thing is to prioritise your needs and find a tool that fits your budget, your team, and your business goals. Be open to experimenting with different tools and don’t be afraid to switch if a tool isn’t meeting your needs. It is all part of optimising your social media strategy.
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