An astonishing number of 3.5 billion people are using social media worldwide. More businesses and brands use social media to reach, nurture, and engage with their target audience.
Social media marketing is becoming more popular among marketers. It helps businesses engage with the target audience, convert them into customers, build a social media presence, work with influencers, and ultimately increase revenue.
However, it is easier said than done.
Social media management can be a headache, especially when there are many social media accounts to manage. It can be time-consuming and stressful to keep up with the ever-changing world and immediately respond to the changes. Below are some usual tasks that social media managers have to perform daily:
- Create and post content
- Respond to comments
- Track reach, impression, engagement, and other social media statistics
- Interact with users and brands
- And more.
Social media management can be a full-time job. Some businesses even have a team to manage their social media platforms.
Fortunately, there are tools to help you automate tasks and make social media management more effortless. These tools allow you to:
- Schedule your posts in advance
- Engage with users
- Track analytics, such as engagement, reach, conversion, etc.
- Manage inbox
- Collaborate with influencers
- And more.
To make your decision easier, we have reviewed some of the best social media management tools. Let’s get started!
What are Social Media Management Tools?
Social media management tools are software or apps that help you manage social media accounts from one place. They often allow you to automate your social media strategy. Some popular features are scheduling and auto-posting, team collaboration, identifying brand mentions, managing inboxes, and monitoring all of your social accounts in one place.
Best Social Media Management Tools
Later
Later is founded as the first-to-market Instagram scheduler in 2014. Formerly known as Latergramme, this social media management software solution has now grown to be one of the leading visual marketing platforms for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. It is currently serving 4 million+ users globally.
Some of the brands that are using Later are Fast Company, Mr. Porter, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
Later Key Features
This social media management tool offers seven main features: Scheduling, Instagram Analytics, Linkin.bio, User-Generated Content, Instagram Stories, Instagram Hashtags, and Pinterest Scheduling.
Some of the key features are:
- Easily schedule photos, videos, and carousel posts.
- Detailed analytics that tracks followers’ number, growth, engagement, etc.
- Drive traffic and sales from Instagram with the link in the bio feature.
- Find shareable UGC on Instagram fast.
- Schedule Pinterest Pins.
- Suggest Instagram hashtags to use and post them in the first comment of your post.
What are the Cons of Later?
- It does not support LinkedIn scheduling, which many businesses find useful.
- Scheduling for Instagram stories only via push notifications reminder. You’ll still need to post manually.
Later Pricing
- Starter: $15/month (yearly) – 1 user.
- Growth: $33.33/month (yearly) – 3 users.
- Advanced: $66.67/month (yearly) – 6 users.
There’s also a 14-day free trial for all pricing plans.
Overall, Later is among the best social media management tools for individuals and brands that focus more on visual content and have a heavy focus on Instagram and Pinterest. Its pricing is also relatively more affordable than other platforms.
Planable
Planable is a straightforward social media management software solution that allows you to schedule social media posts, publish social media content, and plan projects directly within the platform. However, Planable stands out due to its collaboration-centric approach.
More specifically, this social media management platform offers all the tools necessary to help bring multiple team members on the same page, leave feedback and edit designs in real-time.
Planable Key Features
- Post content on multiple social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and more.
- Invite collaborators to the platforms and assign them multi-level permissions.
- Access grid, calendar, list, and feed views for better project planning.
- Leave feedback right next to social media posts for better visibility.
- Easily backtrack your posts’ designs via the version history.
- Store files and give your team easy access to media assets.
- Add internal notes for specific team members.
What Are The Cons of Planable?
- Steep pricing between pricing packages can hinder scalability.
- Limited social media analytics and reporting features.
Plananble Pricing
- Free.
- Basic: $11/user/month (annually).
- Pro: $22/user/month (annually).
- Enterprise: upon request.
Note that the pricing listed above is only available for one user and one workspace. Each additional user and workspace will cost extra.
Overall, Planable is an excellent option for small teams looking to plan, schedule, and manage content in a collaborative environment.
HubSpot Marketing Hub
HubSpot Marketing Hub is more than a social media management software solution. As the name suggests, this platform’s functionalities are meant to be used across multiple marketing activities. More specifically, HubSpot covers email marketing, ad management, landing page builders with built-in SEO recommendations, and much more.
However, its social media management tools are also pretty solid, so let’s discuss them in more detail.
HubSpot Marketing Hub Key Features
- Plan and schedule posts across multiple social networks, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
- Monitor social media performance between multiple accounts, publishing times, and campaigns.
- Link relevant content to social media marketing campaigns for easier management.
- Set keywords for social listening to grab an understanding of your followers’ overall sentiment.
- Link the platform with HubSpot’s other products to unify all of your business activities.
What Are The Cons Of HubSpot Marketing Hub?
- Limited social media management tools compared to other platforms in this list.
- Although there’s a free plan, the paid packages can get pretty expensive.
HubSpot Marketing Hub Pricing
- Free.
- Starter: From $45/month (yearly) – up to 1000 contacts.
- Professional: From $800/month (yearly) – up to 2000 contacts.
- Enterprise: From $3600/month (yearly) – up to 10000 contacts.
All in all, HubSpot Marketing Hub is an excellent choice for those looking to boost their marketing efforts in general. Although it covers solid social media management tools, HubSpot’s main strengths lie in its ability to accommodate multiple types of marketing campaigns.
You can also seamlessly integrate the platform with HubSpot’s Sales Hub, Customer Service Hub, or CMS Hub to unify your business processes. These also come with a bunch of free tools.
Use HubSpot Marketing Hub for free here!
Crowdfire
Crowdfire branded itself as ‘the only social media manager you’ll ever need.’ With 19 million+ users worldwide, social media management tool supports businesses and individuals, including social media consultants, freelancers, and small business owners, to drive social media engagement and growth.
Crowdfire Key Features
- It works with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WordPress, Etsy, Shopify, Medium, 500px, Vimeo, and many more platforms.
- Curate articles from across the web from thousands of sources.
- Image curation: provides Image recommendations to curate shareable images for Instagram.
- Schedule and publish content to multiple social media platforms from one place.
- Tailored posts for each social media platform with previews.
- Automatic and custom’ best time to post’ recommendation.
- The analytics report builder allows you to create and share custom professional reports with the data points you want to highlight.
- Detailed insights into your ROI.
- Competitor analysis.
- Track every mention and reply instantly.
What are the Cons of Crowdfire?
- It will only recommend articles and images to share that have been posted by other Crowdfire members.
- It cannot help you promote your self-hosted blog.
Crowdfire Pricing
- Free – up to 3 accounts.
- Plus: $7.78/month (yearly) – up to 5 accounts.
- Premium: $37.48/month (yearly) – up to 10 accounts.
- VIP: $ 78.98/month (yearly) – up to 25 accounts.
Overall, Crowdfire is among the best social media management tools for individuals and small companies who want to manage their social media platforms from one place and be more socially active without dedicating a lot of time.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social was built in 2010 with the belief of building real connections through social. Trusted by 20,000+ world-class brands and organizations of all sizes, it is stated to be the leader in usability, customer support and satisfaction, ROI, and user adoption.
Sprout Social Key Features
Sprout Social offers features in four main areas: Engagement, Publishing and Scheduling, Analytics, and Listening. Some of the key features are:
- Organize all incoming messages from one place.
- Teamwork and collaboration tools: assign tasks and content approval.
- Analytics that track impressions, engagement, clicks, etc.
- Analyse ROI.
- Chatbots to quickly respond to messages.
- Visualized calendar to organize content across all networks.
- Multimedia assets: store, edit, and publish images and videos from a centralized library.
- Works well with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
- Social listening integration.
- Influencer recognition.
- Competitor comparison.
What are the Cons of Sprout Social?
- Approvals and task assignments aren’t available with the standard plan.
- Some users reported problems with LinkedIn integration.
- The user interface may be less intuitive compared to other platforms.
Sprout Social Pricing
- Standard: $249/month.
- Professional: $399/month.
- Advanced: $499/month.
- Enterprise: Upon request.
There’s also a 30-day free trial for all pricing plans.
Overall, Sprout Social is best for businesses and organizations with a more generous budget and interest in social listening.
Zoho Social
Zoho Social is part of Zoho‘s product offerings. This is a relatively affordable social media management software solution with built-in collaboration tools, comprehensive social media monitoring tools, Facebook and LinkedIn Lead Ads integration, and more.
There’s also a free social media management platform available.
Zoho Social Key Features
- Build and schedule customized reports to track the metrics that matter to you the most.
- Create post pipelines, assign multiple time slots, and reschedule/schedule social media posts via an intuitive interface for easier content planning.
- Monitor brand mentions, reply to Twitter and Facebook messages, and receive real-time updates from your audience directly within Zoho to gauge social media engagement effectively.
- Assign multi-level permissions, invite guests, share reports, and talk with members in real time for better team collaboration.
- Connect Zoho with Facebook and LinkedIn Lead Ads to gauge ad performance, track leads, and boost your lead generation efforts.
What Are The Cons of Zoho Social?
- The free plan, Standard, and Professional packages only allow for one team member.
Zoho Social Pricing
- Free (up to one team member).
- Standard (up to one team member): $10/month (yearly).
- Professional (up to one team member): $30/month (yearly).
- Premium (up to three members): $40/month (yearly).
- Agency (up to five team members): $230/month (yearly).
- Agency Plus (up to five team members): $330/month (yearly).
Each additional team member will cost an extra $10/month (yearly). There’s also a 15-day free trial available for all pricing plans.
Generally speaking, Zoho Social is a solid all-in-one social media management software solution for small businesses. The platform covers a wide variety of features, offers good value for money considering what it offers, and is highly easy to use.
Buffer
Buffer is one of the best simple social media management tools that is currently serving 73,000+ customers. Some of the brands that use Buffer include Stripe, Microsoft, Shopify, and Business Insider.
It is a neat platform for individuals and businesses to manage their social media and grow their audience.
Buffer Key Features
Buffer offers features in two main areas: Publish and Analyze. Below are some of its key features:
- Works well with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn for publishing content
- Plan and publish posts from one place
- Instagram marketing: direct scheduling, include the first comment when you schedule a post, drive traffic and sales from your Instagram bio
- Receive notifications when it’s time to share
- Track performance and create reports for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
What are the Cons of Buffer?
- The features might not be as extensive as other platforms
- You’ll need to pay separately for its ‘Publish’ and ‘Analyze’ features
Buffer Pricing
- Free- up to 3 channels.
- Essentials: $5/month/channel (yearly).
- Team: $10/month/channel (yearly).
- Agency: $100/month (yearly) – up to 10 channels.
There’s also a 14-day free trial for all pricing plans.
We think Buffer is suitable for individuals and businesses as a starter, given its small learning curve. You won’t be overwhelmed by many of the extensive features other platforms offer, and instead, focus on publishing quality content and tracking the performance of your social media strategy.
Conclusion
Social media marketing has become an integral part of any digital marketing strategy. It offers instant reach to your target audience and allows you to interact with them directly. It is precious in building brand loyalty and reaching a wider audience.
To choose a social media management tool, you must carefully consider your needs and what you hope to achieve with it. That said, let’s briefly summarize all social media management platforms and see what each one is best at.
- Later: best for individuals and brands that have a heavy emphasis on visual content and are active on Instagram and Pinterest.
- Planable: Best for teams seeking a content planning platform with excellent team collaboration tools.
- HubSpot Marketing Hub: Best marketing platform with solid social media management tools.
- Crowdfire: Best for individuals and small businesses to increase content volume on their social media accounts.
- Sprout Social: Best for companies and organizations with a more generous budget and interested in social listening tools.
- Zoho Social: Best all-in-one social media platform for small businesses.
- Buffer: A simple tool for individuals and small businesses to focus on content and tracking key metrics.
Many of the tools above come with a free trial. So test them out and see which one fits your social media management needs the best.
