Top 7 social media management tools in 2019
A digital marketing team focuses on several mediums to engage potential prospects to create inbound leads. One of the critical platforms is social media. The power of social media can't be stressed enough, as a brand’s presence and engagement on social networks does not only help in creating inbound leads but also improve brand health, visibility, networking, audience building and more.
But, when it comes to managing social media accounts it gets a tad bit tricky when there are multiple brands/product/services. Just imagine the kind of manual effort that goes into managing multiple handles.
Enters Automation.
There are hundreds of social media management software out there with different claims to automate the process. But, how do we choose the right one?
Here’s the list of top 7 social media management software that is a detailed guide on the tool overview, pros, cons, pricing, and highlights.
One of the finest social media management tools that is a complete package that allows scheduling posts on multiple channels across multiple brands. With the help of the content calendar, it becomes easy to spread content across the timeline and schedule consistently. The built-in reports and analytics help in periodically monitoring performances and tweak strategies based on those insights.
Pricing:
Zoho social has four plans that are standard, professional, agency and agency plus. Depending on the requirements (number of users and brands to be managed) you can choose the most appropriate plan. They also have a forever free plan that is limited to posting from the tool across channels. However, you cannot schedule or perform analytics in the forever free plan.
To learn more about the pricing, read here.
Pros:
- The UI is very intuitive and user-friendly that makes adapting to the tool an absolute ease
- The pricing plan is well-thought-out as you have to pay per brand and not for social profiles
- It supports all major integrations (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and Linkedin)
Cons:
- There are murmurs about how the tool gets a bit slow when you want to upload heavy digital media files
- You cannot schedule Instagram videos, that are becoming a necessity in this day and age
With Hootsuite, you can manage all your social networks at the comfort of a single dashboard and get a bird’s eye view on your social media presence. There is an in-built analytics report that helps in monitoring brand mentions, comments, and engagement. It becomes easier to monitor metrics and quickly respond.
Pricing:
They have two plans, professional and team. While the professional plan allows 10 social profiles and one user, the team plan allows 20 social profiles and 2 users. Based on your requirements you can land on the most ideal plan.
To learn more about the pricing, read here.
Pros:
- Gives a complete view of the panel of social accounts thus easing visualization of content scheduled
- The tool gives a little preview before your post goes live that helps in carefully editing errors
Cons:
- Their free trial requires credit card information that restricts users from trying out the product and understand the UI. However, the professional trial includes great modules like 10 social profiles, real-time analytics, auto-scheduling, and unlimited RSS integrations
- The UI is a bit complicated that makes it a tad bit difficult for new users to feel comfortable
Buffer is an intuitive, streamlined social media management platform that drives engagement and favorable results through automation. With their suite of modules - publish, reply and analyze helps social media managers carefully plan their campaigns.It helps in managing multiple social profiles from a single dashboard.
Pricing:
They have three plans - publish, reply, and analyze. While the publish plan has pro, premium, and business based on features, the reply has professional and business. The analyze has a premium plan.
Depending on your requirements you may want to analyze these plans carefully and choose the appropriate one.
Pros:
- Draft posts and get approvals before publishing with the help of preview content
- Simple and easy-to-use software that can be set up quickly and is easy on the pocket too
- Integrations with multiple platforms and chrome extension make the process a lot easier
Cons:
- The pricing structure is complicated and all over the place
- To respond to your audience, you have to use a separate software called buffer analyze that makes the task tedious
- It misses collaboration features that make it hard for teams to work
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that solves a broad spectrum of requirements. Sprout social is for social management, social marketing, customer care, employee advocacy, and data & intelligence. It covers all major social networks like Twitter, facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Pinterest. You can schedule posts, monitor analytics, engage with your audience - all from a single dashboard.
Pricing:
The pricing structure is divided into three plans - standard, professional, and advance. Depending on your requirements you can choose the most appropriate plan.
Pros:
- The interface is highly intuitive, user-friendly, and fun to use. It gives a granular user control too
- Their support team is super cool and respond to your requests within 24 hours!
- There is a wide range of integrations available that make the whole process easy
Cons:
- The calendar needs a refresh every time to see updates. Also, it does not have a mark of events and special days to make a note of
- There are rumors about how the users find it difficult to upload gifs, post multiple photos, and find it difficult to tag facebook pages
Coschedule is a marketing management suite that also comprises of social media management software. You can visualize your entire social media strategy from one place that makes building successful campaigns quick and easy. You get notified about the best time to schedule the content for better engagement. You can also use ReQueue to reshare your evergreen content and engage your followers.
Pricing:
You have a 14-day free trial and the pricing plans are growth, professional, and enterprise. You can try the first plan for free. But, for professional you can request a demo and for enterprise, you can get in touch with their sales teams. To learn in detail about their plans, go here.
Pros:
- They have a ton of classes, training and free tools to cultivate your social media skills
- The support team is proactive and super-friendly
Cons:
It is not very pocket-friendly
Meet Edgar is a cool all in one social media app with some interesting features like automatic posts and creation of custom categories. Their resource wealth is brilliant with adequate support guides and some interesting blogs on social media management - industry trends and best practices.
Pricing:
It has a free trial and the pricing is at $49 per month subscription.
Pros:
- Edgar can help you create content for your posts by automatically identifying quote-worthy text from articles and blogs. It is just a click away to share them
- Create custom categories and organize your posts based on content type and days in the week
- Allows posting videos and multiple image posts
Cons:
The limit of accounts is what is inconvenient about the platform
It does not allow tagging people on LinkedIn which is a major set back for B2B users
Social pilot is a social media automation tool that helps in scheduling posts and managing social media content for multiple handles. You can connect over nine social media accounts and connect up to a hundred profiles with one social pilot account. The social media analytics and reporting helps you track and analyze your performance, and visualize your schedule with the help of a calender.
Pricing:
They have a 14-day free trial and the pricing architecture is broadly classified into four plans. There is an agency, small team, professional, and enterprise plans. You can pick the one that is most suitable for you.
Pros:
- Simple interface that makes it easy to navigate
- The Chrome Extension is a fantastic boost as it helps to act on a curated piece of content at the moment
Cons:
- It is a bit on the expensive side
- Some social accounts get disconnected occasionally that is seen as pretty annoying. But, hey, all platforms have such bugs!
Wrapping Up
Social media presence plays a huge role in your content marketing success. However, the process of management can be quite tedious and the decision to choose the best platform from hundreds of choices can be overwhelming.
We hope this post has helped you demystify your doubts and ambiguities by presenting a thoroughly researched list of the best social media tools for marketing out there. This post has been written based on the understanding of the market, analysis of the user feedback, and research on the listed tools.
Hope you found this useful. If we have missed out your favorite tool, do let us know in the comments section, we will add it!
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