12 Best Social Media Management Tools to Help Grow Your Business
HootSuite
Source: Images from HootSuite
HootSuite is a social media management platform that enables users to track and monitor their social media accounts in one place. It is used by almost 18 million people worldwide. The platform provides users with tools to help them schedule and publish content, track mentions and followers, measure analytics, and more.
HootSuite allows users to create custom reports and dashboards, helping them make better-informed decisions about their social media strategy. This is perfect for a small business owner looking to better manage their social media presence or a large corporation seeking to monitor your brand’s online reputation; HootSuite can provide you with all the tools needed to be successful.
If you’re a freelancer looking for a platform that can handle your client’s social media accounts in one place, this is a great place to start.
HootSuite Features:
- Manage paid ads
- Bulk Scheduling
- Custom Branded URL
- Paid and Organic ROI reports
- Promote organic content
- Publish and schedule contents
- Content suggestion feature
- Track and measure your results on all social media networks
- Manage messages from multiple channels in one platform
- Updates about market trends and competitors
- Offers courses and certifications to enhance your skills
Pricing Plan:
Source: Images from HootSuite
HootSuite offers a free plan and four different paid pricing plans, which are:
- Professional – $49/month
- Team – $129/month
- Business – $599/month
- Enterprise – Contact HootSuite directly for the pricing that suits your business needs
Buffer
Source: Images from Buffer
Buffer is a solution that helps social media users to manage their accounts better. It is trusted by social media managers, business owners, and agencies who aim to drive meaningful engagement with their followers. The tool gives users insights into their audience, helping them determine when and what to post to maximize engagement.
Buffer allows users to schedule their posts in advance, making it easier to maintain a consistent presence on social media. Perhaps most importantly, Buffer helps users avoid social media addiction’s negative effects by providing insights into their usage patterns.
Although Buffer doesn’t have the option to upload bulk content and recycle them, it does have RSS feeds features allowing you to publish posts from blogs.
Buffer Features:
- Planning and Scheduling posts
- Offers tailored posts for each channel
- Instagram reels and carousels
- Monitor keywords
- Link shortener
- Multi-Channel Campaigns
- Instagram Stories Scheduling
- Performance Overview
- Individual Post Analytics
- Historical Data Access
- Campaign Analysis
- Hashtag Performance
- 30+ Third-Party Integrations
- Engagement tools
- Landing Page Builder
Pricing Plans:
Source: Images from Buffer
It offers a free plan and a 14-day free trial for all of its paid pricing plans, which are:
- Free – $0
- Essentials – $5 per month/per channel
- Team – $10 per month/per channel
- Agency – $100 per month per 10 channels
Sprout Social
Source: Images from Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management software that allows you to manage marketing, social campaigns, publishing posts and content, analyzing social media metrics, and engaging with customers. Sprout Social also offers a suite of social media listening and reporting tools.
In addition to its core features, Sprout Social integrates with many third-party applications, making it a comprehensive solution for managing all aspects of a business’s social media presence. It was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
The company has raised over $160 million in venture capital funding. It has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States by Inc. Magazine and Deloitte Technology Fast 500. What social media managers love about Sprout Social is the ability to provide clear and excellent reports allowing them to save time without the need to edit them.
Sprout Social features:
- Analytics and engagements
- Social listening and automation
- Chatbots with automation tools
- Social Commerce integrations
- Schedule posts, save drafts, and task
- Keywords, profiles, and location monitoring
- Workflow management
- Filtering out spam/noise
- Mobile app access
- Insightful data studies
- Review management
- Competitive reporting
- Trend Analysis
- Content library
- Built-in CRM tools
Pricing Plans:
Source: Images from Sprout Social
Sprout Social doesn’t have a free plan, but it offers 30-day free trials to all of its pricing plans:
- Standard – $89/user/month
- Professional – $149/user/month
- Advanced – $249 /user/month
AgoraPulse
Source: Images from AgoraPulse
Agora Pulse supports multiple platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Youtube, all in one platform. It provides users with various features, including publishing content, tracking engagement, measuring results, and managing inboxes in the same place.
Agora Pulse also easily tracks competitor activity, analyzes social media trends, and monitors customer sentiment. The platform provides users with insights and tips on improving their social media strategy and maximizing their online reach. This is an excellent alternative for Sprout Social if you’re looking for a more affordable option.
What we like about Agora Pulse is its clean interface allowing users to understand how to use various features. You can manage comments, reviews, and DMs easily. It’s easy to export reports enabling you to monitor how your social media performs or if you want to show it to your clients.
Agora Pulse Features:
- Reporting, monitoring, and bulk scheduling
- Monitoring keywords, hashtags, and mentions
- Content labels (tagging)
- Social listening tools and monitor ad comments
- Collision detection
- Facebook ROI calculator
- Facebook competitor analysis
- Mobile app and CRM functionalities
- Up to 40+ social accounts
Pricing Plan:
Source: Images from AgoraPulse
- Free – $0
- Pro – $79/month (billed annually)
- Premium – $199/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise – Contact AgoraPulse directly for enterprise pricing
eClincher
Source: Images from eClincher
eClincher is a social media tool that helps small businesses, agencies, and individuals add value to their followers and manage their social media accounts. The platform provides users with tools to help them grow their online presence through features and functionalities such as bulk scheduling, RSS feeds, analyzing social media analytics (custom and automated), team collaboration, workflows, and smart queues.
It is integrated with popular third-party apps and offers library images allowing you to access content graphics in one place. eClincher makes it easy to search for social media influencers to help you with brand awareness.
It helps users with marketing efforts, brand campaigns, and advocates. What users love about this platform is its 24/7 customer service support. It provides one-on-one demos or meetings, which is great if you’re unable to understand how to use its features or if you encountered some problem with the software.
Social media marketing is much easier because of competitor analysis and campaign tracking features. You can use their Insta link functionalities to drive traffic to your Instagram account. Grid planning, scheduling posts, stories, and carousels.
This is the best platform for managing multiple accounts; their user interfaces are updated continuously, ensuring users have the latest features and trends.
eClincher features:
- Content & Visual Calendar
- Unified Inbox & engagement
- Saved libraries & suggested hashtags
- Publishing and Scheduling tools
- 24/7 Live Support
- Team collaboration & post approval
- RSS & WordPress feeds
- Local SEO
Pricing plan:
Source: Images from eClincher
eClincher offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card requirements to its three paid plans, which are:
- Basic – $59 per month
- Premier – $119 per month
- Agency – $219 per month
Sendible
Source: Images from Sendible
Sendible is a social media management tool that works with various platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Instagram, and GMB. It’s designed to help businesses and agencies plan their content easily in one platform by providing features like scheduling posts, social media health checks, an Instagram audit checklist, and managing team members.
This is most suitable for marketing agencies or social media managers who handle multiple clients. It lets you customize your dashboard based on your branding to attract more clients. It has automation features that help users save time from repetitive tasks.
It is integrated with Canva making it a lot easier to edit graphics and allowing you to search royalty free-image. Like eClincher, Sendible also features a smart queue allowing social media managers to repurpose content. Unlike eClincher, which offers social media influencer search, Sendible doesn’t provide that option. Still, it gives a CRM system that allows you to interact with influencers and connect with them in real-time.
Sensible features:
- Social media campaign checklist
- Holiday Calendar
- Social inbox in one place
- Post previews
- Calendar View
- Cloud integrations
- Instagram geotags
- Built-in image editor
- Smart queues
- Custom tags and fields
- Analysis tools
- Schedule content
- Build custom reports
Pricing plan:
Source: Images from Sendible
Unlike other social media software platforms, sensible doesn’t have a free plan. You can try their 14-day free trial without needing a credit card, and you can cancel anytime. They offer four paid plans, which are:
- Creator – $29 per month
- Traction – $89 per month
- Scale – $199 per month
- Expansion – $399 per month
Later
Source: Images from Later
Founded in 2014, Later is one of the first companies to offer this service. Later is used by both individuals and businesses, and it has become an essential tool for social media managers. In addition to scheduling posts, Later offers many other features, such as creating and sharing content calendars, tracking analytics, and collaborating with team members.
While Later is most commonly used with Instagram, it supports many other platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Pinterest. If you’re going to focus on Instagram, you should probably want to consider Later. You can try its free trial for 14-days before you commit to any of its paid plans.
It has a drag and drops feature that helps users schedule content easily. Nowadays, Instagram reels are becoming more popular; Later allows you to save time and effort by allowing you to schedule your Instagram videos. Isn’t that great?
What’s more about Later is that it offers many marketing tools and courses to level up your social media game, even if you’re a small business owner or a social media manager. Although later offers a free plan, it has only limited features that you can use.
Later features:
- Multi-Profile Scheduling
- Visual Instagram Planner
- Post Performance Analytics
- Hashtag Suggestions
- Reels Scheduling
- Best Time to Post Suggestions
- Shopify Connection
- Reels Analytics
- Auto Publish Carousel (Multi-Photo) Posts
- TikTok and Instagram Strategy
Pricing Plan:
Source: Images from Later
You can try the 14-day free trial to all of the Later paid pricing plans, which are:
- Starter – $18 per month
- Growth – $40 per month
- Advanced – $80 per month
SocialBee
Source: Images from SocialBee
SocialBee is a social media management tool that helps you save time and be more productive with managing multiple social accounts. The software lets you schedule posts, track analytics, and measure your results to fine-tune your social media strategy.
By connecting to your social media accounts, SocialBee allows you to schedule posts ahead of time and then automatically publish them at the best times for engagement. This saves you time and helps ensure that your content is seen by the largest audience possible.
SocialBee also provides team management features, allowing you to delegate tasks and monitor progress. With SocialBee, you can take the guesswork out of social media and focus on what matters most: connecting with your audience.
It is available as a web app and mobile app, and it integrates with various other tools, including Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer. Founded in 2015, SocialBee is headquartered in New York City.
SocialBee features:
- Integrated with Canva and other third-party platforms
- Offers content categories allowing you to mix contents
- Team workflow and collaboration features
- Posts customizations on different platforms
- Social media posts scheduling tools
- Real-time preview of posts
- Social media analytics
- URL shorteners
Pricing Plans:
SocialBee offers different pricing plans for businesses, agencies, and individual creators. Their plan starts at $13.30 per month. They offer a 14 – a day trial on their paid plans.
Pallyy
Source: Images from Pallyy
Pallyy is a social media tool best for managing personal and professional accounts. The app helps users to organize and schedule posts, track analytics, and engage with followers.
Pallyy is available for both iOS and Android devices. One of the best features of Pally is its ability to help users manage multiple accounts. The app allows users to create separate feed streams for each account, making it easy to keep track of different conversations.
In addition, Pally provides detailed insights into each account, including engagement, reach, and impressions metrics. This information can help determine which content is performing well and needs to be tweaked.
Though Pally offers lower price points than other social media platforms, it comes with powerful features to help you with your social media needs. You can access Pally through your mobile phone, iPad, and desktop.
It offers drag and drops editor features allowing you to visually plan your Instagram feed content, helping you create relevant content for your brands. What we love more about Pallyy is that it will enable you to schedule your first comment for your Instagram posts.
Pallyy features:
- Drag and drop editor
- Bulk scheduling
- Best time to post suggestions
- Track competitors, followers, and engagement
- Team collaboration and designated task features
- Unlimited custom analytics reports
- Auto publish Facebook and Instagram carousels, videos, and images
- Allows you to post TikTok videos automatically
- You can import holiday calendars by country
Pricing Plans:
Source: Images from Pallyy
As mentioned above, Pallyy offers a lower price than other social media software. You can use their free plan for one social set, feed planner, reports, table views, boards, and calendar for $0 per month.
You can subscribe to their Premium Plan for $15 per month if you want to upgrade. It offers features such as bio link, bulk scheduling, custom domain, and other premium features of Pallyy.
Post Planner
Source: Images from Post Planner
Post Planner is a tool that helps users improve their content strategy on Facebook and other social media platforms.
The tool gives users insights into what content is performing well and allows them to schedule and publish the content accordingly.
It is designed to help users increase engagement and reach through hashtag research and analysis, automated commenting, finding high-quality content, and optimized posts on every social media platform.
Post Planner is used by some of the world’s leading brands and organizations and has received multiple awards because of its incredible features.
Post Planner features:
- Media Editor
- Analytics feature
- Offers libraries of gifs, media, and blogs
- It helps you create viral images, videos, and articles
- Provides post ideas, quotes, content, and curated questions
- Bulk upload using a spreadsheet
- Schedule tweets
- Post recycling
Pricing plans:
Source: Images from Post Planner
Unlike other social media software that offers a 14-day trial, you can only try Post Planner for seven days and then upgrade to their paid plans if you decide it’s perfect for your social media needs. There are five paid pricing plans that you can choose from, which are:
- Starter – $6 month
- Solo – $19 per month
- Business – $39 per month
- Venture – $79 per month
- Enterprise – $349 per month
Brandwatch
Source: Images from Brandwatch
Brandwatch is cloud-based tools for customer experience management and social media marketing software that offers functionalities such as consumer research, understanding reviews, managing campaigns, monitoring insights, community engagement, competitor and trend analysis tools, and so much more.
The platform provides users with the ability to create customized reports and visualizations. Brandwatch is a powerful tool that can help organizations to better understand their customers and make more informed decisions about their business.
Brandwatch is perfect for businesses of all sizes, and it has an Influencer Search tool that is perfect for brand awareness, and other powerful marketing features that will help you level up your social media game. With brandwatch, you can collaborate with your marketing teams in creating contents and scheduling them.
It offers a campaign builder and has pre-designed templates to choose from. It is widely used by famous brands such as Coca-Cola, Diesel, Toyota, Columbia University, and Greenpeace. This social media management platform offers an intuitive UX interface, you can have your organic and paid content visible in one place, and have customizable contents based on your preference.
Managing messages from social channels such as Facebook Pages, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Youtube can be managed using their cross channel inbox. This social media tool offers automation to save you time and has an audience profile interaction history. Many social media managers love the features that Brandwatch offers. This platform is constantly improving to provide users the best social media software they can use.
Brandwatch features:
- Social CRM
- Social listening tool
- Unlimited channels
- Unlimited scheduling
- Integrated with 3rd party platforms
- Crisis Management
- Competitor and trend analysis
- Content marketing
- Community Engagement
- Centralized social inbox
- Message templates
- Automation tools
- Shareable reporting
- Customizable dashboards
Pricing Plans:
Source: Images from Brandwatch
Unlike other social media management tools, Brandwatch doesn’t offer any free plan. You can try their Essentials paid pricing plans for 14-days with no credit card required.
Iconosquare
Source: Images from Iconosquare
Iconosquare is a website and app that provides users with analytics and insights for their Instagram accounts. It is similar to other social media analytics tools, such as Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics.
Iconosquare provides data on various topics, including follower growth, engagement rate, and post-reach. It provides access to different data for your social media campaigns and visualized metrics.
It also allows users to track hashtags, posts, and filters. In addition, Iconosquare has a built-in photo editor that will enable users to make basic edits to their photos before posting them on Instagram.
It has conversation features allowing you to respond quickly to essential comments and track mentions in your Instagram account. It has basic features such as best time recommendation posting, user tagging, Instagram post preview, first comment scheduler, and more.
Iconosquare features:
- Social listening
- Custom dashboards
- In-depth analytics report
- Team collaborations and post approval
- XSL and pdf reports
Pricing plans:
Source: Images from Iconosquare
There’s no free plan in Iconosquare. You can choose from their three paid pricing plans and try them for the 14-day trial. The three paid options are:
- Pro – $49 per month
- Advanced – $79 per month
- Enterprise – If you’re an agency owner or have a large social media marketing team, you probably want to subscribe to their Enterprise plan. You may wish to contact Iconosquare directly for a custom plan for your social media needs.
Things To Consider Before Subscribing To Social Media Management Software
Who is your target audience?
Before you subscribe to any social media management software, it’s important to consider who your target audience is. Are you trying to reach consumers? Businesses? If you’re unsure, it’s worth segmenting your audience to better tailor your messaging.
Once you know who you’re trying to reach, you can start to look at different software options and see which one will allow you to engage with your target audience most effectively. For example, some software is better for managing multiple accounts, while others offer more in-depth analytics.
What type of content do you want to share?
If you plan to share a mix of text, images, and videos, you must choose software that can handle all three types of content. In addition, you need to consider how often you will be sharing content.
A basic subscription may be sufficient if you only plan to post occasional updates. However, if you want to share multiple times daily, you must choose a subscription that includes more features and allows for more frequent posting.
What budget do you have for social media marketing?
It’s important to consider your budget for social media marketing. The software can be expensive, and you can easily overspend if you’re not careful. It’s essential to set a budget and stick to it.
Otherwise, you may find yourself in financial trouble or worse. Additionally, you need to consider the time commitment required to use the software effectively. If you don’t have the time to dedicate to learning how to use the software, you won’t be able to get the most out of it.
Once you have answered these questions, you can narrow your choices and select the best social media platform for your business.
FAQS
What is a Social Media Management Tool?
As a business owner, social media is a powerful tool to reach new customers and grow your brand. But what are social media management tools?
Social media management tools are software programs that help businesses and individuals manage their social media accounts. These tools can schedule posts, track engagement, measure reach, analyze data, and find new customers through social media posting. They also help users to collaborate with team members, as well as find and curate content.
What are Social Media Managers, and do I need to hire one?
A social media manager is a professional responsible for creating and managing an organization’s social media presence. This includes developing strategies, creating content, and engaging with followers on various platforms.
While some businesses may choose to handle their social media in-house, others may opt to hire a dedicated social media manager. There are several benefits of hiring a social media manager, the most notable of which is increased efficiency.
A social media manager can help develop and implement a strategy aligned with the organization’s overall goals. This can free up time for other employees who would otherwise be responsible for managing the company’s social media accounts.
In addition, a social media manager brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. This can be beneficial in terms of identifying new opportunities and pitfalls to avoid. Overall, hiring a social media manager can be a wise decision for businesses looking to maximize their presence on social media.
Final Thoughts
In the past, businesses had to rely on traditional forms of marketing, such as print, TV, and radio ads, to reach their target audiences. While these methods can still be effective, they can also be expensive.
Social media provides a cost-effective way for businesses to reach many people quickly and easily. It allows companies to interact directly with potential and current customers.
This two-way communication can help build trust and loyalty between a business and its customers. It can be used to generate leads and drive sales. By sharing valuable content and providing special offers, companies can encourage people to buy their products or use their services. In short, social media is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes.
That’s why if you’re a large or small business owner, you probably need to consider using social media management tools to make handling your business’s social media needs easier.
The 12 best social media management tools mentioned above can help you level up your social media presence and improve brand awareness. Each of these tools has unique features and benefits that can help you manage your social media accounts.
However, it’s important to remember that no tool is perfect, and you’ll need to find the one that works best for you and your specific needs. With that in mind, take some time to experiment with different tools and see which ones work best for you. The right tool can make a world of difference when growing your business on social media.