Many businesses across the globe have started to realize that using social media is an excellent way to not only reach out to new customers, but also provide better customer service and differentiate themselves from their competitors. The actual creation and maintenance of a business’s social media accounts can become a very time-consuming and expensive thing for any business, even large ones. That is why so many businesses choose to outsource their social media management or use third-party solutions.
Wondering which social media management tools to use and how they work? This article provides a thorough introduction to social media management, and outlines some of the most popular tools available.
Buffer (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Safari)
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.)
With Zapier, it’s easy to link any other service you use to Buffer. For example, you can automatically add new blog posts to your schedule, either directly from WordPress or through an RSS feed.
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 (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome)
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 also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically thank new Twitter followers or create new messages directly from your task management app.
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).
Sprout Social
We chose Sprout Social as our best overall due to the platform’s usability, publishing features, and analytics across all major social media platforms. This provider also offers one of the longest free trials in the business.Pros
- Excellent user dashboard lets you manage your social networks in one place
- Utilize Social Media Optimization tools
- Analytics and reports help you manage your user engagement and return on investment (ROI)
- Scheduling tools make creating posts a breeze
- Free 30-day trial
Cons
- Expensive standard plan
- Limits to how many social profiles you can manage
We chose Sprout Social as the best option for businesses based on the array of scheduling tools and analytics they offer, their mobile app for iOS and Android, and their paid promotion tools to help you expertly boost Meta posts. One major benefit you get with Sprout Social is a 30-day free trial with any of their plans. If you’re unsure of the value of this software, this free trial gives you a full month to try it out.
This software currently supports all the major social media platforms, including Meta, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, making it an excellent choice for all-in-one management. There are three paid plans to choose from:
- Standard: $89 per month
- Professional: $149 per month
- Advanced: $249 per month.
Sprout Social says their Professional plan is most popular since it lets you manage up to 10 social media accounts in one place. It also comes with an all-in-one social box, social content calendar, response rate and time analysis reports, analysis tools for Twitter hashtags, and plenty more valuable tools. With any of their plans, you also get a mobile app to manage your social media accounts on the go.
The Standard plan includes many of the features of the Professional plan, yet you can only manage up to five social profiles if you choose this option.
Ripl
Social media management made easy
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Thousands of templates+Easy video creation+Manage on mobile devices+7-day free trial
Ripl offers a platform that makes it easy to generate professional-standard content for social media. As well as offering thousands of templates and over half-a-million stock uses to use for content and animated images, Ripl also makes it simple and easy to create media such as branded videos with just a few clicks.
Posts can be written, edited, and scheduled on the go, as accounts can be directly managed from an Android or iOS mobile device for easy use. Engagement statistics are also available for you to track from one place, and recommended hashtags are provided for audience targeting.
According to Ripl, over 4.5 million small business already use the product, in order to publish and share content across all the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
Both monthly and annual subscriptions are available, as well as a 7-day free trial.
Conclusion
Our list features the best social media management tools for business users in 2022, by taking into consideration the latest trends, major improvements made to each application, and noteworthy new features. We also note what’s holding back the various solutions, highlighting any shortcomings that were apparent in our testing.