Social media is an integral part of online marketing. Social media allows you to reach out to a huge number of potential customers around the world who would otherwise not notice your business. The challenge for businesses is that finding and using social media tools can be time-consuming and tricky. Below we look at the best social media sharing tools and also the best social media management tools 2021, to help you get the most out of your social marketing campaigns.
Have you ever wondered what social media sharing tools are out there? What’s the best way to share your content on social media? In this post, I look at different social media sharing tools and their pros and cons.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite has a special place in my heart, likely because it’s the first social media management platform that I used at my very first job as a Marketing Assistant. At the time, I was managing the company’s social strategy before social advertising had really taken off. I can still remember the hours upon hours I would spend putting together a posting content calendar and setting reminders for myself to tweet at certain times. This was until I discovered Hootsuite and my life as a frantic Twitter bird instantly changed.
So what does the Hootsuite free plan include? This option is decently robust with the ability to:
- Manage 3 social profiles in one place
- Schedule 30 posts in advance
- Generate leads with social contests
The free plan also includes basic analytics for tracking followers and various growth and content statistics and two RSS feed integrations. Not too shabby!
Buffer
Next up is Buffer. Similar to Hootsuite, Buffer has been in the social media management space for quite some time, and they are a respectable platform that allows you to manage multiple social profiles with ease.
With many overlapping features to Hootsuite, some of my favorite Buffer features include the ability to easily schedule content while browsing the web with their Chrome extensions. Buffer also suggests the perfect moments to post based on follower activity – pretty neat!
While there are a variety of options for larger organizations and agencies, the free plan just may suit your social media management needs. Buffer’s free plan includes the ability to manage three social profiles, schedule up to ten posts, utilize their browser extensions and mobile apps (iOS and android) feature, create and schedule content using their image creator and GIF/video uploader, and shorten and track links.
Missinglttr
Social media promotion is vital to success in the online world, but the act of scheduling posts may not be the reason you bounce of bed every morning. Even if you use a tool to help you speed up the process of blasting all your channels at once, you still need to manually input the text and images for each post. Rinse and repeat to re-promote the posts.
Missinglettr helps you automate the process of creating social content by scraping your blog post content and creating a year’s worth of social content for you: nine individual posts dripped out to your social channels over a year.
This means you can focus on writing long-form blog posts while someone else takes care of the creative side of social promotion and the scheduling of posts, so there’ll be one less thing on your to-do list.
With templates for content creation, scheduling, and facilitating client approvals, plus a custom URL shortener to export campaign assets so they can be used in other marketing initiatives, Missinglettr has some great features that’ll lighten your load. You even get a weekly report so you’re on top of your marketing performance.
MeetEdgar
So you need a content manager but you’re already a one-person-band responsible for evergreen content creation, tech support, and design? Meet MeetEdgar.
A social media management tool that handles both re-sharing your content and optimising your social traffic, MeetEdgar is your handy automated content manager.
Working with your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles through a web plugin, you can keep your social channels populated with posts and check in from wherever you are using your mobile.
MeetEdgar allows you to schedule content re-sharing and monitor traffic while boosting engagement and optimizing the ROI of your digital assets.
By putting your evergreen content out there on the regular, you can increase your traffic and boost engagement. With an automated auto-refill queue, you won’t run out of regular posts. It also features a category-based scheduling tool allowing you to mix different content types so your audience never gets bored.
MeetEdgar also features a URL shortener with in-app click tracking which means you can follow your clicks.
Quuu
Already got Buffer? To simplify your work even further, i.e., to eliminate the part where you are the one looking for valuable content to share, start using Quuu. This is a social media marketing tool that curates content for you: it takes hand-picked, always relevant content, and adds it to the Buffer queue. This eliminates any trouble of curating and sharing any content other than the stuff you most want to share (i.e., your own blog posts and promotional content).
Price: plans start at $15/mo
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.
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 for 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.
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.
Conclusion:
Social media has become a global phenomenon, making it vital for most businesses to use at least one platform to engage with their prospects. With every day that passes, more platforms are created for social media companies. On top of this, new features are available with each platform which means you need to keep up with the times and find the best social media sharing tools.