Social media has become a significant part of our daily lives and plays a huge role in the marketing strategies of brands, small businesses, and individuals. The term ‘social media is quite broad and you may apply different meanings to it. To some, it is a time-wasting activity while to others it is an important form of communication and promotion.
Social media has become an important part of marketing for all companies, no matter their size. Whether you are the head of marketing of a Fortune 500 company or own a mom-and-pop shop, social media management tools help you promote your business and increase traffic to your website. Using social media management tools, like Buffer and Hootsuite, is just one piece to the puzzle.
Buffer
Buffer is one of the longest-running social media tools aimed primarily at scheduling posts, although it’s gone through multiple updates, shifts, and iterations. It supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. Free users can connect up to three social accounts, including Facebook Pages and groups.
When you first connect a social account, Buffer will create a schedule for you. By default, Buffer creates four slots per day: in the morning, around noon, late-afternoon, and later in the evening for the time zone you’ve selected. Head to Settings > Posting Schedule to tweak this at any time, delete or add time slots, or disable an entire day. The more slots you have, the more updates you’ll need to schedule, but scheduling updates is easy with Buffer’s intuitive dashboard, mobile apps, and browser extensions.
For scheduling content from the web, Buffer offers browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. Click the Buffer icon in your toolbar (or use a keyboard shortcut), compose your update, and click Add to Queue to schedule. There are also mobile apps available for both iOS and Android, so you can schedule on the go.
While Buffer’s free plan is good enough to get started, if you want a more complete social media management solution or to control more than three social media accounts at once, you’ll need to pay $6/month per social channel for the Essentials plan. This gives you access to detailed analytics and engagement features, which let you interact with your audience directly from Buffer. (Also, if you want to bring team members on board, Buffer goes up to $12/month per social channel.)
Buffer Price: Free plan includes one user, three accounts, and 10 queued posts per profile; from $6/month per social channel for the Essentials plan that offers unlimited queued posts per profile; from $12/month per social channel for the Team plan that offers unlimited users.
Hootsuite
If you’re looking for a complete solution to all of your social media management needs, Hootsuite will cover all your bases. The app is compatible with over 20 social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. More network connections are available through the Hootsuite app directory, though they can be hit or miss.
Hootsuite includes a full scheduler for queuing posts at times of your choosing. You can create your own schedule or use the AutoSchedule function to schedule your updates at optimal engagement times. By uploading a CSV file with prepared updates using the Bulk Composer, you can fill your queue for days, weeks, months, or the duration of an entire social campaign. Once you’ve filled up your queue, it’s easy to view your outgoing posts from the Planner and reorder your update schedule with a simple drag and drop.
One of Hootsuite’s strongest areas is analytics, though you need one of the more expensive plans to get the full suite of them. The tool helps you understand social results by drawing on more than 200 metrics to measure performance. Once you’ve generated reports, you can export them as Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and CSV files for use within your organization. You can run similar reports to measure team or individual performance.
Hootsuite can also help you monitor the social web with custom social streams. These customizable feeds let you watch the social web for mentions, new followers, search terms, hashtags, engagement, and more. You can construct precise streams that include or exclude specific keywords, post types, locations, and languages. As an example, if you’re in the business of selling custom portraits, you could target the search term portrait :( filter:images to find negative posts that mention the word “portrait” with an attached image. You could then target these users with your own business.
For bigger businesses, you can assign different levels of access to various team members to avoid handing out passwords. Your team can use Hootsuite’s included content library to compose updates with on-brand assets of your choosing. Hootsuite includes free stock photos and GIFs courtesy of GIPHY, or you can connect Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive to draw on your own resources or your paid account with services like Adobe Stock. You can even assign tasks to your team members (like responding to comments or incoming messages), then approve the outgoing responses before they’re sent.
Hootsuite Price: Free plan includes one user, three social profiles, and 30 scheduled updates; from $39/month (billed annually) for the Professional plan that includes one user, 10 social profiles, and unlimited scheduling; team plans start at $129/month (billed annually).
SocialPilot
With many apps in this category, if you want to delegate social media management to someone else in your organization, you’ll have to pay a serious premium for the privilege. (You could give them the login credentials to save money, but that comes with a whole host of security concerns.) With SocialPilot, though, the Small Team plan starts at $50/month and includes two other team members and 25 social media accounts. With Buffer or Hootsuite, you’d be paying hundreds of dollars more per year.
While SocialPilot’s user interface is a bit dated, it’s entirely functional. The sidebar has tabs for managing your posts and accounts, accessing your inboxes or analytics, lining up content from RSS feeds and configuring your team and client setup. All the features you’d expect of a good social media management app are there—though it’s the Team options that are most compelling.
Different team members can be assigned roles, based on what you want them to be able to do. For example, you can set things up so content creators have to submit all posts for approval or allow managers to edit and schedule but still retain final approval for yourself. This allows you to delegate responsibilities to the people you work with, without having to give them free rein.
Social Pilot Price: From $30/month for the Professional plan; the Small Team plan with 3 users and 25 accounts starts at $50/month
eclincher
eclincher might just be the best-kept secret in social media due to their grassroots ‘word of mouth’ content marketing efforts in the past. etc, as brand advocates tote, has been reviewed as “the swiss-army knife of social media”.
why eclincher?
They are pushing out extremely more value to marketing agencies and larger business teams, than their competitors.
You might expect that customer service is a standard in general. But, in the SaaS world eclincher’s support team really takes the clients’ expectation of service seriously, and not just because they are 24/7.
You’ll capture some serious social media ROI using eclincher’s social media management tool. Centered around marketing automations, eclincher helps social media managers save time using a single dashboard with this digital marketing platform, automate mundane marketing tasks with bulk scheduling options, rss feeds, queues, etc.
Every feature or capability seems to have the goal of productivity in mind to the end-user.
An all-in-one social media management tool and consistently expanding platform, eclincher is packed with all the value every social media team needs (and wants too).
Scalable from the professional solopreneur, SMBs (Small & Medium-Sized businesses), Enterprise, to Agencies with large teams who need that extra workflow and internal/external team collaboration.
The huge benefits you gain working with a well-rounded solution help you quantify your return, increase productivity, save precious time, and gain back insight into what is working and what isn’t.
It stands to note their customer support is consistently and notably awarded best in class from sites like G2Crowd, Capterra, GetApp, and the like.
This top-rated powerful social media management tool, or should we say a platform, has everything you need to execute your social media marketing strategy.
There are loads of value in the features and capabilities offered, such as a comprehensive content publisher, savvy drag and drop visual calendar, campaign tracking, competitor analysis, and omnichannel tailored social media post-editing.
If Instagram scheduling is top of mind you’ll love the custom Instagram grid planning, and being able to schedule Instagram stories and carousels with push notifications.
eclincher has an intuitive scheduler toting auto-posting with smart queues, a very smart inbox or social CRM so you never miss a review, message, or engagement, integration of RSS feeds, suggested content plus curation, keywords and hashtags monitoring, social media analytics reporting including Google Analytics, URL shorteners, campaign tracking and more.
This social marketing tool really has it all to keep campaigns innovative and organized catering to multiple social media account(s).
Remarkably, two of the most amazing benefits of working with eclincher is their agile team atmosphere and their ability to be nimble with the ongoing addition to features benefiting new and current clients without costs pushed onto users.
The real value of eclincher evolves when you need to scale. If you have many brands to manage or a lot of franchise locations, that cost adds up in thousands.
Compared against some of the social media marketing giants like Hubspot, Sprout Social, or Sprinklr eclincher is the best choice for scaling large accounts with multiple locations or brands.
You won’t have to lose capabilities with regard to visual marketing either.
In other words, if the feature doesn’t exist, suggest it with their live 24/7 live chat offering and if it is scalable and beneficial for companies like you, they will implement that suggestion. How cool is that?
They have recently updated their UI in July 2019 to be more user friendly and users are raving! There are a lot of features to choose from, so make sure to get a live FREE personal demo.
Pricing starts from $59 per month up to $219 for more advanced plans. Pricing supports up to 40 social media profiles, but some clients have hundreds of profiles and require a more custom social media plan.
Falcon.io
Falcon.io. is a cloud-based social media marketing and customer experience management solution that features tools for social media listening, engagement, publishing content, measuring, and customer data management.
They pride themselves in being versatile for any type of marketer whether it’s for a solopreneur or a digital agency. Toting Auto-Queue posting and visual planning, their tool can be used for monthly planning across different social channels.
They have a Social Inbox feature in addition to social monitoring and listening. They do not have an Influencer Search feature, yet they are a fully encompassed tool that is likely to serve businesses of any size.
Falcon.io provides users with a content calendar that allows them to plan, create and schedule content in collaboration with marketing teams.
It also facilitates the creation of pages using the campaign builder that consists of pre-designed templates providing APIs that deliver metrics on social data, audience, and content, for integration with existing client CRM, CMS and analytics systems.
This social media management software offers support through online guides, tutorials and via email, and a ticket submission portal 24/5 on business days and custom hours on weekends.
Zoho
Zoho stands out as an all-in-one tool consumers can use to run the social aspects of their business in one place while managing their email, projects, accounting, and webinars.
Pros
- Zoho offers a CRM product that lets you manage your email, projects, accounting, and more under one umbrella
- You can integrate their social media management platform, which works with all major social media networks
- Social media planning for individuals starts at $10 per month
- A free edition with limited features is available with an option to upgrade
Cons
- Plans for agencies start at $230 per month, which is on the expensive side
- Plans for individuals and businesses only include one to three team members, with more users requiring an additional monthly spend
Zoho made our ranking as the best all-in-one tool based on the CRM product they offer in addition to social media management software. You can utilize Zoho to store and manage your email, create and oversee products, and take care of accounting all in one place. Zoho also offers comprehensive social media management software you can buy separately or integrate for full all-in-one management.
When it comes to their social media management software, Zoho offers three plans for businesses:
- Standard: $10 per month
- Professional: $30 per month
- Premium: $40 per month
Each plan lets you publish and schedule posts across multiple platforms, access summary reports and analytics, and access a Bitly integration & URL shortener. The Standard and Professional plans are limited to one brand and one team member, but both plans let you add additional team members or social channels for an additional cost.
A free plan with limited functionality is also available. With the free plan, you get access to one team member and brand and the ability to publish multiple posts in one place. Zoho also offers social media software for agencies that manage at least 10 different brands under their business umbrella.
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar stands out due to its automation and scheduling features. They even offer continuous posting, which means they will automatically curate and reshare relevant posts on your social media accounts.
Pros
- Excellent automation and scheduling features let you set your social media and forget it
- Free trial for seven days
- Analytics for engagement and response
- Edgar Lite plan starts at just $19 per month
Cons
- Only integrates with Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram
- Most affordable plan only lets you work with three networks
- No central inbox for messages or managing comments
MeetEdgar wins for best automation because they are set up to help time-strapped businesses automate their accounts. This software lets you generate posts using a browser extension, set up category-based scheduling that saves you time and effort, and execute continuous posting that ensures you’re constantly engaging your audience.
With MeetEdgar, you also get access to an unlimited content library, which the platform will shuffle and schedule for you on your behalf. You can also set up your account to automatically upload your newest content, and you can use an automatic link shortener that helps you save space when you share your content on social media.
MeetEdgar offers two main plans:
- Edgar Lite: $19 per month
- Edgar: $49 per month
Both plans offer similar tools, although the Edgar Lite plan only lets you integrate with three social media accounts. The more expensive plan also offers 1,000 recurring scheduling time slots per week versus just 10 with the Edgar Lite plan. Either way, you can try MeetEdgar for free for seven days.
Sendible
Sendible is a powerful social media management tool for agencies that need to manage social media for multiple clients.
You can either schedule posts across different social media platforms or integrate it with blogs and social sharing sites. You can even add it to Slack and make the communication process a whole lot easier.
Sendible can create an organized editorial calendar for your blog. Additionally, it also reports brand mentions, allowing you to respond to people and know your social media presence.
This tool offers a unique feature to share existing content across the web and share it to get more eyes on your profile.
Standout features:
- Sendible schedules content and helps your team to communicate better
- It comes with a handy mobile app for getting notifications when you’re away from your computer
- You can easily manage multiple marketing campaigns
CoSchedule
If you take a close look, you will realize that all of the social media tools are designed to save your time.
CoSchedule is undoubtedly one of the best social media management tools in 2020. It is a marketing calendar to help you manage projects on a single dashboard social media management tool. You can simultaneously share and publish content to save time. CoSchedule helps you boost your productivity by making your workflow organized.
Standout features:
- Manage content posting on multiple platforms via a single window
- Schedule an organized calendar for smart marketing campaigns
Conclusion
Social media has been a popular resource for marketing your business. It is free, easy to use, and shares customers’ opinions and feedbacks with the world. It grows with every click and share.