New social media marketing is already becoming a huge force for marketing your business. Which tools are the best to help you become most effective? What tools can they not live without? In this article, executives from leading global brands discuss the top software and service providers in the space. This opinion based list is designed to give you ideas for software that will help with your small business social media marketing efforts.
These social media management tools help you save time and stay on top of your social media activity. With monitoring and scheduling capabilities, as well as listening and analytics features, these mobile and desktop tools will help you to more efficiently manage your marketing efforts.
Sendible (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome)
Sendible is a complete social media management package, with one big feature that makes it stand out: its price. It offers more advanced features at a lower price point than almost any other app we tested.
As you’ve likely come to expect, a full set of scheduling tools is included. You can queue up posts for all connected social networks, blogs, and mailing lists. Smart Queues make it easy to maximize engagement by adjusting publication times for you, with the option of setting your best-performing evergreen content to be automatically recycled in the future.
These scheduling tools are as good as any in the business. A shared calendar displays all of your pending updates across any networks you have connected, with the option of connecting RSS feeds to curate and automatically schedule future content.
Unlike many of the more affordable social media management apps, Sendible enables you to monitor social media for mentions of your brand, competitors, or other terms of interest. It’s just a matter of setting up an appropriate keyword alert. You can pick which keywords you want to target, optional inclusions and words you want to exclude, and where the posts were made. You can then browse the list of relevant keyword results from your dashboard or have them automatically emailed to you on a daily or weekly basis. You can even choose to just receive the positive or negative alerts.
Similarly, Sendible offers eight pre-built reports (including integration with Google Analytics) even on its cheapest plan, so you can see how well your social campaigns work. You can also see any new comments, mentions, or direct messages sent to your social media channels and address them from within the app. While common with enterprise social media management apps, few other options in this price range offer all that.
Sendible Price: From $29/month for the Creator plan that includes 1 user, 6 services, and 100 posts per day.
Loomly
Loomly is our top pick for large team collaboration due to its comprehensive plans for teams of up to 26 people. All plans also come with core features such as audience targeting, post preview, automated publishing, analytics, and more.Pros
- Try it out free for 15 days
- Base plans start at just $25 per month
- Manage and share all your social assets in one place
- Real-time optimization of posts
Cons
- Plans for large teams can be costly
- Companies with large ad spend may have to upgrade to a more expensive plan regardless of their team size
Loomly is an excellent option for large teams that want to collaborate on a social media strategy. While their base plan is only accessible for up to two users, their top-tier plan for businesses can include up to 26.
Core plans from Loomly include the following:
- Base: $25 per month (2 users)
- Standard: $57 per month (6 users)
- Advanced: $119 per month (16 users)
- Premium: $249 per month (26 users)
- Enterprise: Price available upon request
This pricing is only available if you pay for a year of management upfront; you’ll pay more if you want to pay for your plan monthly. As you compare options, you’ll also note that each tier of management software has a cap for ad spend, so you will have to use the Premium plan if your business spends $5,000 or more on ads with Meta.
All plans from Loomly let you post unlimited content and come with core features like audience targeting, automated publishing, post sponsoring, interaction tracking, and basic analytics. You’ll also get chat and email customer service with each of their plans. A 15-day free trial is also available regardless of which tier of coverage you want to try out.
Buffer
Buffer scored well in our ranking because their plans start at just $5 per month. You can try any Buffer plan free for 14 days, and there’s a free plan for one user that lets you access three social channels and create 10 scheduled posts.Pros
- Plans start at $5 per month
- Free 14-day trial available
- Free plan available
- Works for Instagram, Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest
Cons
- Doesn’t integrate with as many major platforms as competitors
- Free plan limited to three social profiles
Buffer is the best budget option for small businesses with few employees that want to manage social media without a pricey management plan. They offer a free plan that lets one user access three social channels. For an extra $5 per month, a Team Pack upgrade allows for unlimited social channels and unlimited users.
Either way, you can use a 14-day trial to get started, and all plans let you directly schedule posts on the platform. Other core benefits of Buffer’s plans include a posting scheduling tool, a link shortener tool, and optimization tools for hashtags, tags, and mentions across platforms. All plans also come with a browser extension, access to a mobile app, two-factor authentication, social media and email support, and access to the Buffer community.
Sprout Social
Best Social Media posting software
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Covers a wide range of social media accounts+Powerful data analysis capabilities+Helps with customer support
Sprout Social is probably first and foremost known as a one-stop shop for managing and scheduling all of your social media accounts through one simple-to-use platform. Very handy indeed for your company’s social media administrator when they’re trying to juggle Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more at once.
But it doubles up as a powerful tool for analyzing your data, too. You can sort by various demographic and geographic measures to quantify exactly what content is working for which followers. Sprout can manage multiple accounts and monitor keywords across all social media so that you know when your brand is being discussed. It also helps your company respond to customers by directing messages to the people within the organization who need to action them.
You can try Sprout Social for free with its 30-day trial. If you like it, starter plans cover up to five different social profiles, with additional plans offering more profiles, scope, and features.
Conclusion
Content management tools are typically designed for large organizations, frustrating SMB’s who need access to the same tools at a lower cost. CoSchedule offers a powerful social media management solution that allows teams to manage social media campaigns across all networks using one dashboard. Quipped with features like social media calendar automations, an easy-to-use editorial calendar, publishing tools, and project organization, companies find themselves saving time and increasing productivity managing their social media marketing efforts.