Social media management software is a way to automate and improve your social media marketing. These are simple programs you can use that will take care of content scheduling, engagement, and in some cases setting up advertising for you.
Social media management is taking over the world of internet marketing. Every day, it’s becoming more and more important to have your social media content posted at the right time, in the right place, and according to the right plan. This is an art form that’s much easier said than done. That’s why people are using social media management software.
Social media has been used by businesses to immensely grow their business and also manage content. One of the best tools that allow you to post updates on your social media channels is a Social Media Management tool. These tools come in various forms and can be free as well as paid. So, if you are looking for social media management software then here is a list of tools I am going to share with you below.
Salesforce Social Studio
Salesforce provides probably the most comprehensive set of products for enterprises. Its Social Studio, a part of its Marketing Cloud platform, can help you strengthen your customer relationships by aligning your marketing, customer service, and sales efforts on social media.
Later
Everything about Later is visuals – it is one of the best platforms to bestow your social profiles a fresh and appealing look that captivates the public’s eyes. The tool works well with Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, but its emphasis is mainly on Instagram – and that’s why it prides itself on being the number one Instagram scheduler.
Unlike other social media management platforms, Later requires you to add an image first, then insert the corresponding text content later. Because Later is a visuals-centric tool, its highlighted feature lies in the media library. Before you start your post, you can upload new media, or reuse what is already existent in the library. You can add any notes or labels to your posted graphic, or use a Star to highlight them. Thanks to these features, filtering posts on Later is no longer challenging as you can sort your images by the added Labels or Star, by the type of media, or by the time frame your images were posted. Later offers unlimited media storage, so no worries to adjust it.
As mentioned earlier, Later is an Instagram-featured platform, so its functionality to support Instagram users is obviously more optimal than Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter, although setting up these platforms on Later is relatively easier than Instagram. You can plan your Instagram feed for one week with a drag-and-drop, organize your Instagram media in one place, analyze your posts’ performance with Instagram analytics, or search any Instagram posts by using hashtags to find suitable content for reposting.
Pricing plans for Later are quite various. Later does offer a free plan allowing one profile and 30 posts for one social platform – and you can schedule your photos with the visual planner, upload unlimited images to the media library, access the saved captions, search by hashtags and see your basic Instagram analytics. The paid plans are relatively affordable, ranging from $9 to $49 per month, and you can save up to 17% with yearly billing. The higher the plan is, the more advanced and diverse features you can get.
Sendible
Founded in 2008, Sendible was initially designed to offer API integrations of social, blogging, email, and SMS. Over more than a decade, the platform has significantly evolved and further updated a social media management tool to their feature list, making it more cohesive than ever.
The most competitive advantage of Sendible over other platforms is the ability to publish fresh content. You can schedule your posts through queues or upload them in bulk while utilizing the interactive calendar for precise time and location settings. Also, Sendible has an amazing capability of identifying trends with its custom analytics reports that present useful information such as the most optimal posting times on each channel or statistics of web traffic from social. Besides post scheduling and analytics, you can enjoy many other optimal features such as team collaboration, social listening, or mobile optimization.
Additionally, what most users love about Sendible is its integration with Canva – the number one graphic auto-creation platform. Since Sendible is not supported with an in-built editor, the integration of Canva is perfect enough to help users create beautiful images to optimize your content.
Pricing on Sendible varies quite significantly, ranging from $29 to $299 per month. The Sendible team has classified each plan for each enterprise’s scale, with sorting features and prices. You can test Sensible’s functionality with a free 14-day trial for all plans to get first-hand experience and see which version is your best match.
FollowerWonk
When it comes to pitching, Twitter is a goldmine of information. Journalists often have their email information in their Twitter handle to make it easy for potential sources to contact them, celebrities tweet with fans every day, and when someone’s DMs are open, you can spark conversations with them.
But Twitter is also a giant social media platform. It can be hard to search for the people you want to follow or connect with. That’s where FollowerWonk comes in. It is a Twitter profile search engine to help you find and connect with the people you’re interested in.
My husband Alex has used FollowerWork many times of the year to connect with journalists for publicity purposes. He has helped clients get featured in Dallas Morning News, Entrepreneur, and other business publications by using FollowerWonk to find the right journalists to pitch.
A Design Kit
Want to take your Instagram Stories to the next level? A Design Kit from the whimsical team at A Color Story wants to help you do just that. A Design Kit is a free mobile app that lets you add design, fonts, gradient and metallic brushes, stickers, and more. If you’re looking to let your creative flag fly, this is the app for you.
This app will add that extra bit of pizzazz to your Instagram stories, so you can promote your business, grow your following, and stand out from the status quo. Those brushes though.
Don’t judge my graphic design skills, y’all.
Over
Meet Over, the social media graphic design app of the future. This app is the most graphic-design forward tool on this list. #trending
With 500+ premium fonts, 8K+ editable templates, plus live graphics, Over makes you look like a bold, graphic design trendsetter born at the crossroads of millennial and Gen Z. But the secret power is how simple and easy it is to use.
Over allows you to edit design layers extremely well right on your phone. It also pre-curates layouts, colors, and fonts to really jive with today’s graphic design trends. If you’re looking to mix your Instagram stories, ads, or Facebook posts up, I’d definitely recommend you give this app a try.
Sparktoro
From Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, comes Sparktoro, a tool that helps you get an insider’s look into what your audience frequently talks about, as well as their most-used hashtags, websites, and follows. Sparktoro’s free plan includes 10 searches/month.
For example: a food blogger might use Sparktoro to explore the search term, “frittata.”
As you can see below, by entering this term, you can determine audience size, social accounts they follow, websites they visit, podcasts and YouTube channels they promote, and so much more. Dive into audience insights like the hashtags used in shared content, as well as frequently used words/phrases in content or bios—so you can connect with that audience on their terms and reflect their world back to them.
Friends+Me
Another social media scheduling tool: Friends+Me lets you schedule content for up to two social profiles. But what really stands out here is that you can add an additional user. In most of the free scheduling tools examples in this post, you can only have one person scheduling content. Friends+Me lets you share a subscription with one other team member.
The free version also offers link shortening, Zapier integrations, and a browser extension to make posting even faster.
A solopreneur might give publishing and scheduling access to their assistant, for example. Instead of giving them your personal login information, you can simply set your assistant up as the second team member.
Canva
Social media is increasingly becoming more and more visual. Canva is an excellent tool for anyone managing social media accounts to use. You can create designer-level marketing assets using any of the thousands of ready-made designs they have available to you. Now, you can even connect your social channels and publish or schedule directly from Canva. They have a free version available, which gives you decent access to great pre-made templates. The pro plan gives you access to all of the templates for only $12.95/month.
Buffer
Buffer is also one of the best apps for managing your social media presence and scheduling your posts. The app also comes with analytics tools that enable you to track your audience’s activity and figure out when it is the best time to post in the future. We especially love its Chrome extension, which integrates itself seamlessly and never gets in the way, yet it is always there when you need it. It is a more straightforward and more effective way of managing your social media, and you are never more than a few clicks away from setting up anything you want. Buffer supports over 7 different platforms – you can add up to 4 on the free plan.
Conclusion
It’s no secret that social media has become an essential tool in growing your business. With hundreds of millions of followers, all your favorite influencers are using these same platforms to share their content and grow their brands. However, posting on each channel can be time-consuming. This is why some businesses opt to use social media management software to help manage all these channels. Including scheduling posts and tracking analytics for each channel. But with so many options, how do you choose the right one?