Social media management is a critical part of any small business or entrepreneur’s arsenal. Whether you run a website, blog, or social media account, there are tools and methods available to help manage and monitor your accounts. However, finding affordable and effective social media management tools can be difficult. That’s where the best affordable social media management tools come in. These tools are designed to meet the needs of small businesses and entrepreneurs, so they can focus on what they do best: running their businesses.
What is Social Media Management.
A social media campaign is a plan to use social media platforms to communicate with customers, employees, and other external stakeholders. It can involve any type of marketing communication, from website design and development to managing posts and hashtags.
How to Create and Start a Social Media Campaign
To create a successful social media campaign, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve. You need to identify your target audience, define the objectives of your campaign, and select the right channels for reaching them. You also need to ensure that your campaign is efficient and cost-effective.
Subsection 1.3 Tips for Planning and Settinghing a Social Media Campaign.
When setting up your social media campaign, keep these tips in mind:
-Establish goals and objectives for each channel you are using (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube).
-Make sure all posts are relevant to the objectives of your campaign – don’t just post things hoping people will see them.
-Ensure that your tweets are concise and easy to understand; make sure your posts are short enough so people can easily find the information you’re trying to share, but long enough so people won’t miss anything important.
-Make sure your videos are well made and engaging; be sure they capture the attention of potential customers or employees before anything else.
Best Affordable Social Media Management Tools
1. Sprout Social
Intelligent, real-time social media monitoring with Sprout
Description: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social’s monitoring and engagement tools are part of its social media management software. Sprout Social has two separate features for social monitoring and engagement.
In the Smart Inbox, you’ll get all your social media mentions and messages. With the discovery feature, you can search for particular keywords on Twitter or Instagram (for example when someone mentions your brand without tagging your social media profile).
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+
Prices (per user): $99 per month, $149 per month, and $249 per month
2. Mentionlytics
What does it monitor? All social platforms + broader web
Paid or free? Free tool
Mentionlytics is a professional-grade social media monitoring app that tracks mentions, keywords, and sentiment across multiple languages.
3. Hootsuite
Effectively track topics that matter—then respond quickly
Description: Hootsuite’s monitoring tool is part of its entire package of social media management tools. If you were to subscribe to one of their plans, you can also enjoy other features such as scheduling and analytics.
With Hootsuite, you can set up unlimited streams of social media content based on your mentions, selected keywords, hashtags, or locations. Furthermore, Hootsuite integrates with more than a hundred apps to help you do more from its dashboard.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: Free, $19 per month, $99 per month, $499 per month, and enterprise pricing
4. Nexalogy
What does it monitor? Most major platforms + broader web
Paid or free? Free tool
Nexalogy’s top-tier data visualizations set it apart: interactive timelines, geolocation-based heat maps, lexical cluster maps that show common patterns of topic. Plus the “basic” stuff that would take a human being weeks to figure out, like popular keywords and most active accounts.
5. Zoho Social
Social media management software for growing businesses
Description: Zoho Social is a social media management dashboard where you can publish and schedule posts, monitor social activities, analyze your social media performance.
In the Zoho Social dashboard, you’ll get real-time updates of how people are interacting with your brands. I find this great for events, where I might want to monitor related social media posts and engage with the attendees.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+
Prices: Free, $10 per month, $50 per month, $1,000 per year, and $1,500 per year
6. Reputology
What does it monitor? Yelp, Google, Facebook reviews + other review sites
Paid or free? Free tool
For customer-facing businesses, a bad review can be a real blow if it isn’t dealt with correctly and quickly. Reputology lets you monitor major review sites such as Yelp, Google, and Facebook reviews from one dashboard.
You can track activity across multiple storefronts and locations, and respond using quick links.
7. Agora Pulse
Discover what people are really saying about your business
Description: Agora Pulse is also an all-in-one social media management tool, which comes with scheduling, monitoring, engagement, and analytics features.
Its inbox collects all your social media mentions while its listening feature allows you to search for keywords, URL, and handle on Twitter. Agora Pulse also allows you to monitor comments on your Facebook and Instagram ads.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
Prices: Free, $79 per month, $159 per month, plus enterprise options
8. Tweepsmap
What does it monitor? Twitter
Paid or free? Free tool
This combination analytics/social monitoring tool is built to show Twitter power-users how hashtags and topics travel, so you can tune into what your audience is talking about.
9. Buzzlogix
Buzzlogix is all about ‘catching the buzz’ about your products and services so you know what the public is saying in real time. You can also see what people are saying about your competitors and manage all of your social media channels all in one product. If you or a certain keyword is mentioned, you can reply directly from the dashboard, making it a great tool for managing your interaction with the community. The social media analytics and reports are also helpful. You can get started by signing up for the free version.
5. Brand24
Smart social media monitoring for businesses of all sizes
Description: Brand24 is a powerful yet affordable tool for those who want to dive deep into social media monitoring. Besides the major social media platforms, Brand24 also monitors blogs, forums, and other sites for mentions of your brand.
Apart from collecting your mentions and allowing you to reply, Brand24 analyzes your social media reach, interactions, sentiment, and more.
Platforms supported: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, forums, and more
Prices: $49 per month, $99 per month, and $399 per month
How to Use Social Media for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs.
The first step in using social media for your small business is to understand its purpose. Social media can be used for a variety of purposes such as marketing, customer service, and growth. To use social media effectively, you need to understand the different ways it can be used.
To grow your business on social media, start by understanding the different platforms and how they can be used to reach customers. For example, Facebook is an easy platform to use because people are already familiar with it. You can post updates and videos directly to Facebook without having to go through another website or app.
Twitter is also a popular platform for small businesses because it’s fast and easy to use. You can post updates and news objects directly onto Twitter without having to go through other websites or apps.
Instagram is also a popular platform for small businesses because it offers a wide range of features that are perfect for marketing photos and ideas. You can post photos and stories about your business on Instagram, which will help people learn more about you and your products.
Twitter and Instagram are great platforms for small businesses because they offer a lot of features that are perfect for marketing and customer service. However, Facebook is still the best platform for growing your small business. It’s easy to use and provides a lot of functionality that is useful for marketing purposes.
For more information on how to use social media for your small business, check out these resources:
-An overview of social media from the Social Media Examiner
-A guide to using Twitter for small businesses by Hanley Brown
-How to run a successful Facebook page by Andrea Boles
-A guide to using Instagram for small businesses by Kimberly Park
-How to use Twitter for small businesses by Sarah Taplin
Best Social Media Management Tools For Small Business
Zoho Social
Zoho Social is the best option for a small business looking to take full advantage of its social media presence. The main draw of Zoho is that it offers some next level bang for your buck – it has a generous free plan, while its cheapest paid tier is $10 per month.
But this thriftiness doesn’t mean you’ll be lacking in features. Even on the free plan, you’ll have unlimited posts and no limit on scheduling, all across up to seven profiles. However, if you want analytics, you’ll have to pay for Zoho Analytics – and a lot of Zoho’s other functions are locked behind higher tiers.
This generosity on the free tier is great for a smaller business, but everything has limits. While you’ll be able to post a lot, Zoho doesn’t offer much else on its lower tiers. You can always opt for a higher tier (which are still very reasonably priced at $10, $25, or $37.50 per month) if you want more when it comes to your analytics, engagement, or organization.
Circleboom
Circleboom may not be as well known as some social media management tools, but it’s quickly getting recognition by users and on review sites such as G2.
It actually has two different tools:
- Circleboom Publish A social media publishing and scheduling tool for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google Business Profile. TikTok is being added very soon.
- Circleboom Twitter A management tool for Twitter with follower & friend management and insights, analytics, tools to find fakes, spammers and inactive accounts etc.
I’ve been using Circleboom Twitter for a while and it’s one of the best audience management tools for Twitter I’ve used. You can view accounts that aren’t following you back. And filter by language, fake/spam, inactive, overactives, eggheads (accounts that haven’t set a profile picture) and even create a whitelist of accounts you don’t want to unfollow.
Hootsuite
Most small businesses rely on one person to run their social media, sometimes whilst also doing many other jobs. And for your money, Hootsuite is the best platform for a single user. Just like Zoho, Hootsuite offers unlimited posts and scheduling, all for a very fair price. The free plan is certainly worth considering – it allows you to queue up to 30 posts at a time, which may be more than enough.
For small businesses, we recommend the professional tier at $25 per month. While it only supports a single user, the scheduling limit is removed, and the number of social profiles is raised from three to ten – which should be more than enough to cover a small business’s needs. You’ll also be able to analyze your demographics, look at a calendar of your pipeline, and see a compiled inbox.
You’ll have to reach for higher tiers to make the most of the engagement or analytic functions (of which there are many), but for a solo user starting out and looking to get a grip on the basics, Hootsuite is a great option.
Adobe Express
Adobe Express is the perfect tool for small businesses.
First of all, let’s talk about the price. It’s either free (and the free plan is very generous) or only $9.99 per month (or the equivalent of $8.33 per month if paying annually). That’s incredibly good value.
You get the following with Adobe Express :
- Templates, design assets and Adobe Fonts
- Royalty-free Adobe Stock collection photos (limited access with free plan)
- With the paid plan you get access to 20,000 licensed Adobe Fonts, curved types, grids, and font pairs.
- Plan, schedule and publish social media content (not available on the free plan).
- Add your branding, logo, colours, and fonts
- Convert & export to and from PDFs and other file types.
You use Adobe Express on the web, but there are also apps for iOS and Android.
Sendible
If you’re someone who likes to spend hours tinkering with all the different options, Sendible is a good move for you. They have a $25 tier that offers you some pretty important functions, like send time optimization, inbox message tagging, and listening for Facebook and Twitter.
If you’re looking for a platform that will supercharge your marketing and support rapid expansion, Sendible’s Growth tier is what you need. It’s not cheap at $170 permonth, but on top of the limitless scheduling (which comes with every plan) and 300 posts per day, you also get the following features:
- Profile and post analytics and audience demographics
- Pre-made and custom reports
- Listening for both Twitter and Facebook, as well as brand mention reports and sentiment analysis
- Fully enabled organization, letting you create calendars and dashboards to control your pipeline
- Compiled social media inbox with message tagging
- Content library, image editor, send time optimization, and more
We’ll cut the list there, but there are a lot more features on offer. A lot of their functions are not offered by other competitors on this list, so if you’re looking for the most kitted-out platform, Sendible is the one for you.
Tips for Successful Social Media Management.
To create a social media strategy that is effective and lucrative, you need to first understand your target audience. Understand what interests them, and then develop content that peaks the interest of those customers. Additionally, make sure to use social media platforms to interact with your target audience on an ongoing basis to keep them updated on your efforts and to encourage them to visit your website or follow you on other social media platforms.
How to Use Social Media to Reach Your target Audience
To reach the most people possible with your online presence, it’s important to have a well-crafted social media campaign that targets specific demographics and interests. You can also use tools like Facebook Insights or Instagram follower analysis tools in order to track how many people are following you and what type of content is resonating with them the most. Finally, be sure to regularly share new content, updates, or insights on social media in order to keep your followers engaged and interested in what you’re doing.
How to Use Social Media to Increase Your Overall Marketing Strategy
One of the key elements of successful marketing is driving engagement–not only with individual customers but also with groups of customers who are interested in what you have to offer. In order for your social media campaigns to be successful, it’s important that you provide value for their time and money by offering unique experiences or products that they can’t find at other businesses or websites. Additionally, make sure not onlyto post relevant updates and insights but also create engaging content that will keep readers coming back for more (even if they don’t always buy from you).
Conclusion
Social Media Management can be a great way to connect with customers and grow your business. However, it’s important to take some time to buildup your social media strategy and make sure you’re reaching your target audience. By using effective marketing techniques and planning for success, you can increase your brand awareness and achieve desired results. Thanks for reading!