The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools
- Updated on: 2018-11-26
- Read original article here
The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools
March 27, 2017
Revised June 17, 2017
Revised March 29, 2017
Monitoring and managing even a moderately active business social media presence can be time-consuming. The number of people using social media continues to grow, usage is increasing, and more networks require attention.
Pinterest is going beyond its wedding-planning-and-home-decorating roots and being embraced by leading B2B companies. Instagram has more users than Twitter. And SnapChat may become difficult for B2B marketers to ignore; the mobile messaging app now has more than 150 million daily active users , and half are older than 25.
Add multiple accounts on each platform (for example, monitoring accounts for specific product lines or key executives) and the time challenge becomes even more significant. Add multiple companies (as an agency or social media consultant may manage) and it borders on overwhelming.
Fortunately, social media management tools are increasing in number and sophistication as well. The tools here can help marketers and social media managers monitor brand mentions, schedule posts across multiple social networks, manage multiple social media accounts, redirect posts for customer service followup, track performance metrics, and more.
As a reminder, in all posts in this series, tools are shown with the number of results returned by Google on Boolean searches for each tool name in conjunction with “review,” “tool” and other related words. This doesn’t perfectly capture the actual number of reviews, but it does provide a reasonably accurate reflection of relative popularity, as well as a uniform standard of measurement.
Other sources and methodologies will, of course, produce different ranking results. For example: one of the sources used for this post was Ian Anderson Gray’s 5 Best Social Media Management Tools . He recently updated that post for 2017. Based on more than 1,000 user ratings, his top five tools are, in order:
Agorapulse
1) HootSuite
Google Review Count: 437
Post to multiple social media networks, from multiple accounts, from a single dashboard. Measure social contennt performance, and monitor social media brand mentions.
Sample review: “Mobile networks or Utility companies love Hootsuite as it allows them to delegate customer messages to different team members and these can be managed overall by an administrator. Another useful feature is that Hootsuite allows you to store draft messages that you can post when you receive a frequently asked question for example open hours or directions to your business.” — iag.Me
Pricing: $10/$35/$100 per user per month; enterprise pricing by quote
Showcase reviews: B2B PR Sense Blog, Blogging Wizard, BuzzBlogger, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, Express Writers, iag.Me (HootSuite), iag.Me (Social), iMedia Connection, MarketingLand, Mention, RazorSocial (Technology), Robbie Richards, Shift Communications, SnapApp, SteamFeed, StoreYa Blog, ViralBlog, Visually
2) Buffer
Google Review Count: 426
Schedule posts and updates across social networks, from multiple accounts. Create image posts with graphics pre-sized for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Sample review: “Buffer is a great automation tool. You set at what times of the day you want Buffer to post to your connected networks. You can add to your Buffer with one click from Feedly, or the Chrome extension.” — Anders Orsander
Pricing: free or four levels from $10 to $400 per month
Showcase reviews: Anders Orsander, ArCompany, Blogging Wizard, BuzzBlogger, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, Cent Muruganandam, Entrepreneur, Express Writers, iag.Me (Social), Katie Lance, Marketing Insider Group, Online Marketing Institute, PR Daily, RazorSocial (Technology), Rebekah Radice, Shift Communications, SnapApp, SteamFeed, StoreYa Blog, TNW News, ViralBlog, Visually
3) Radian6 (aka Social Studio)
Google Review Count: 331
Publish posts across social networks and accounts; analyze trends and sentiment with analytics; monitor brand mentions; and automatically trigger customer service cases and tech support tickets. Now part of Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud.
Sample review: “Known as the industry’s social pioneer, Radian6 says it lets marketers quickly and efficiently track, monitor, and react to comments, questions, and complaints in real-time. Listen and engage more than 650 million sources, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.” — MarketingLand
Pricing: contact vendor for pricing
Showcase reviews: MarketingLand
4) Sprout Social
Google Review Count: 324
Post to multiple social networks, deliver social customer service, execute social marketing programs, and monitor brand and keyword mentions.
Sample review: “Known as the industry’s social pioneer, Radian6 says it lets marketers quickly and efficiently track, monitor, and react to comments, questions, and complaints in real-time. Listen and engage more than 650 million sources, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.” — MarketingLand
Pricing: four levels from $59 to $1,500 per month
Showcase reviews: ArCompany, Blogging Wizard, BuzzBlogger, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, Express Writers, iag.Me (Social), Katie Lance, MarketingLand, Rebekah Radice, SnapApp, Visually
5) SocialFlow
Google Review Count: 306
Enter your content into a queue and SocialFlow uses real-time data, along with your business rules, to determine what and when to publish through your social media accounts. Supports Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and social media advertising.
Sample review: “Awesome posting and social management platforms that allow you to scale all your social promotion by scheduling, analyzing, listening, and collaborating across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, among others, include SocialFlow.” — SnapApp
Pricing: contact vendor for pricing
Showcase reviews: Catherine Pham/SlideShare, SnapApp
6) SocialOomph
Google Review Count: 300
Schedule updates across the major social networks, track keyword and brand mentions across social platforms, set follow-back rules on Twitter, and simplify many other social media management tasks.
Sample review: “Schedule your tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates, and more. Track keywords. Monitor your social media activity and find key influencers in your market. Social Oomph allows you to be more efficient and effective on all of your social media platforms.” — BuzzBlogger
Pricing: free, $14 or $36 per month
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Catherine Pham/SlideShare
7) Edgar
Google Review Count: 255
Add content manually, in bulk, or through an RSS feed to Edgar. Organizes posts into categories and create a schedule for each category. The tool automatically reshares older posts, keeping your content and accounts active.
Sample review: “Edgar, like Buffer and Hootsuite, is a great solution to manage what you share. Edgar though takes scheduling a step forward by enabling the system to choose what content to share (with your help).” — StoreYa Blog
Pricing: $49 per month
8) Commun.it
Google Review Count: 242
Measure social media efforts with analytics, grow your following with social insights, manage multiple profiles, collaboratively manage accounts with team members, and indentify top influencers and supports for influencer marketing. Works across Twitter and Facebook, with support for additional platforms planned.
Sample review: “If you’re looking to better manage your Twitter stream, Commun.it is the tool for you. Commun.it is a true relationship-building tool that takes Twitter from noisy to nurturing. Log in and you will quickly find data, analysis and insights that allow you to quickly engage with those engaging with you. Build better relationships by listening in on conversations happening around your industry, business or niche.” — Katie Lance
Pricing: four levels from $20 to $118 per month
Showcase reviews: ArCompany, BuzzBlogger, Express Writers, Katie Lance, Rebekah Radice, StoreYa Blog, ViralBlog
9) DrumUp
Google Review Count: 183
Generate relevant content recommendations for postings, quickly publish to the top social networks, manage multiple social media accounts, follow and curate updates from any feed, and set key posts on repeat schedules. Manage from a desktop browser or mobile device.
Sample review: “I have found (DrumUp) to be the easiest way to co-promote my content on multiple social media channels. Easy scheduling and re-sharing options!” — Robbie Richards
Pricing: four levels from $15 to $159 per month
Showcase reviews: Moz, Robbie Richards
10) Post Planner
Google Review Count: 180
Discover content to share based on algorithmic recommendations, by keyword, hashtag, or author; measure past results and predict future content performance; schedule updates and re-post popular items across the most popular social networks.
Sample review: “(Post Planner is) an app that helps you manage and enhance your marketing strategy. In other words, it does all the heavy lifting so you can focus on what matters – building relationships, driving traffic and making sales. But what really makes Post Planner stand out is that it also helps marketers find the perfect content to post. ” — Rebekah Radice
Pricing: $9/$19/$49 per month
11) Oktopost
Google Review Count: 174
Schedule content for posting across social platforms, measure clicks and engagement, discover and curate relevant industry content, monitor brand mentions, collaborate with social media team members, and tap employee advocacy for amplification.
Sample review: “Underscoring their focus on B2B engagement, Oktopost integrates with Marketo, Salesforce, Act-On and others, directly linking social media actions to the impact on sales. One thing that places Oktopost above other tools is its ability to monitor LinkedIn Groups as well as company pages. As a whole package, Oktopost qualifies and quantifies better leads for you and your business.” — Visually
Pricing: contact vendor for pricing
Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, RazorSocial (Technology), SteamFeed, Visually
12) Sendible
Google Review Count: 173
Discover and curate content, post to muliple social media accounts and platforms, schedule future updates, monitor brand mentions, and track results from a one dashboard. Identify influencers, collaborate as a team, and build actionable reports.
Sample review: “(Sendible) is a powerful social-media tool that brings together all aspects of your social-media management responsibilities. This includes pulling all posts and comments into one dashboard for analysis, measurement and engagement. Other features include publishing, collaboration, customer relationship management and mobile tools.” — Entrepreneur
“There’s so much to like about the tool. A huge number of social integrations for a start, including ones that many other tools don’t support, such as Flickr, Slideshare, WordPress and Tumblr. I love the integrations with Dropbox, Google Drive and Canva. Larger agencies will love the ability to white label Sendible and offer it as their own social media management tool as one of their services.” — iag.Me (Social)
Pricing: $59/$139/$499 per month
13) Everypost
Google Review Count: 173
Curate visual content from a variety of sources, customize and schedule posts, collaborate among team members, and measure results with social analytics. Share multimedia content across multiple social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest and tumblr.
Sample review: “One of the most popular mobile apps for publishing your content to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Tumblr. Used by Guy Kawasaki, Ian Cleary, and many other social media superstars.” — BuzzBlogger
Pricing: free or four levels from $10 to $100 per month
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger
14) Agorapulse
Google Review Count: 169
Monitor brand mentions, keywords, and hashtags; schedule and publish updates across social accounts and networks; measure and report on all activities; run social media contests, quizzes and promotions; and benchmark performance against competitors.
Sample reviews: “Agorapulse, unlike other scheduling platforms, offers a cool unique feature whereby you can spy on your competitors so that you can see how well (or not so well) their social media campaigns are performing. You’re able to view a breakdown of their following, fans, people talking about them, fan posts, page posts, interactions and engagement.” — Lilach Bullock
“Agora Pulse (is) now my main social media management tool…The social inbox workflow helps me get through all my social mentions, comments and messages every day very quickly.” — iag.Me (Social)
Pricing: four levels from $49 to $299 per month
Showcase reviews: Lilach Bullock, Entrepreneur, Express Writers, iag.Me (Social), RazorSocial (Technology), RazorSocial (World), Rebekah Radice, StoreYa Blog
15) BundlePost
Google Review Count: 152
A social content management system that lets you curate posts from RSS feeds, Google Alerts, or other sources. The most recent and unique posts are preformatted and ready to be selected, edited and merged with a schedule. Designed to work with, rather than alternative to, social management tools like HootSuite , Sendible or SocialOomph .
Sample review: “This social-media tool is another option for scheduling your posts but one that comes with features that improve upon other options. One highlight is Bundlepost will replace common niche keywords with hashtags, vastly improving your engagement results.” — Entrepreneur
Pricing: $20/$50/$100 per month
16) Babbly
Google Review Count: 131
Share content from other Babbly users to get your content shared. Post to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with one click. Schedule posts or use “autospread” to automatically post social updates at timed intervals.
Pricing: free
17) HubSpot Social Inbox
Google Review Count: 78
Post content directly to multiple social networks manually, automatically, or based on a schedule you create. Monitor social mentions, keywords, or hashtags, set up alerts, and collaborate with team members.
Pricing: a component of HubSpot inbound marketing software
Showcase reviews: Catherine Pham/SlideShare
eClincher
Google Review Count: 122
Schedule and publish updates on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest; manage posts as one-time, “recycled,” or campaigns; auto-post from RSS feeds; monitor keywords and hashtags; track analytics via dashboards or reports; and collaborate among team members.
Pricing: four levels from $15 to $199 per month, plus enterprise pricing by quote
MavSocial
Google Review Count: 120
Schedule and publish content across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr. Create and schedule social media campaigns; reschedule posts; track audience engagement by network; source images for social updates; and collaborate among team members.
Pricing: $59 plus $24 per additional user per month; enterprise pricing starting at $599 per month
Repost by Elokenz
Google Review Count: 105
Store social media content and RSS feeds in your library, then repost across popular social networks with a click, based on a schedule you create, or let the tool automatically and intelligently share content based on different audience variables.
Pricing: free or $10/$26 per month
Social Champ
Google Review Count: 102
Schedule posting of content across the top social networks and track clicks. Set time gaps for repeated content. Get suggestions for content to share based on topically filtered RSS feeds.
Pricing: free or $10/$50/$100 per month
RecurPost
Google Review Count: 88
Add promotions, popular posts, links, and image posts to your content library. Share selected updates manually or let the system auto-schedule posts at the best times. View post performance and overall reach, and run A/B split tests.
Pricing: free or $25/$50 per month
Falcon.io
Google Review Count: 58
Social media management platform incorporating social listening (based on product, category or popular topics, with sentiment analysis and influencer identification); content distribution channel planning and scheduling; customer support and engagement; and audience management.
Pricing: contact vendor for pricing
Showcase Reviews
