Do you manage a social media account, schedule posts, and respond to comments all day long? Social media can be a time-draining headache, but with these tools your life just got a lot easier. If you are looking for tools to help run your business or busy personal pages, turn on and off accounts when needed, schedule posts, click like and comment within minutes, then the process is made much quicker for you. This post includes some of the most helpful tools that we know of.
The Social Media Marketing bundle is the perfect collection of tools for social media marketers. Get a complete set of tools to help you manage all your social media channels in one convenient place. Social media is so essential to your business that it takes a coordinated effort from your entire team. What if you could manage all aspects of your social media efforts from one easy-to-use interface? That’s just what this bundle offers, with some of the best software for managing your social media profiles and campaigns, including HootSuite Pro, Buffer, Swayy, and more.
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.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite earns high rankings for its tracking tools and analytics. This software lets you analyze trends and engagement in real-time. Their analytics tools extend to both regular posting and social media ads.Pros
- Professional plans start at just $49 per month
- Free plan available
- Connects with 20+ social networks
- 30-day trial available
Cons
- Some analytics reports are at an additional cost
- Plans can be costly if you have a lot of social profiles or spend a considerable sum on ads each month
- Free plans have limited tools
Hootsuite made our ranking as best for analytics because they offer some of the most comprehensive analytics and social media tracking tools on the market today, including customizable reports and team productivity reporting.
While paying more for detailed analytics and reporting can cause the cost of Hootsuite to swell, having access to this information can be crucial for businesses that rely on social media for the bulk of their marketing efforts.
Hootsuite has four paid options:
- Professional: $49 per month
- Team: $129 per month
- Business: $599 per month
- Enterprise: Varies (it’s for larger or more complex institutions)
The starter Professional plan can be a good option for small businesses because it allows you to manage 10 social profiles in one place. You also get unlimited scheduling, although you’re limited to one user. The Team plan is available for up to three users, and you can manage up to 20 social profiles in one place.
Note that all plans from Hootsuite come with unlimited scheduled messages, unlimited auto-scheduling, a publishing calendar, a social inbox, and plenty of other tools. You can also try two of Hootsuite’s four plans free for 30 days, which is a major benefit if you prefer to try before you buy.
Buffer
The platform for successful social media management
Prices: Forever free plan, $5, $10, add $10 per month per social channel connected (with a 14-day free trial).
Description: Buffer is an intuitive, streamlined social media management platform trusted by small businesses and individuals to help drive meaningful engagement and results on social media.
We have a suite of products for publishing, engagement, analytics, simple landing pages, and team collaboration. Our products are carefully considered and highly refined in order to help social media marketers and teams work more efficiently and effectively.
Unique value: What we’ve heard from our customers is that they love how clean and intuitive our tools are, how friendly and timely our customer support is, and how helpful our content is.
Agora Pulse
Social media management simplified
Prices: Free, $79 per month, $159 per month, plus enterprise options
Description: Like the social media management platforms mentioned above, Agora Pulse is also an all-in-one social media platform with scheduling, responding, and reporting features.
Unique value: Unlike the rest, Agora Pulse has several unique features such as competitor analysis and Facebook contest apps at a very affordable price point.
eclincher
Platforms: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Twitter, Google My Business, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok
G2 Ranking: 4.7 out of 5
eclincher might just be the best kept secret in social media due to their grassroots ‘word of mouth’ content marketing efforts in the past. ec, 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 helps you quantify your return, increase productivity, save precious time, and gain back insight for 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 notification.
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).
Did we mention they already partner with a wide range of companies like Canva, wave.video, Zendesk, Bitly, Feedly, Unsplash and add more integrations constantly? Slack and TikTok for Business are coming in the 1st quarter of 2021.
If they don’t have a feature or integration you need, your odds are good they probably will soon.
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.
Comparing 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.
Customized add-ons such as Reputation are also available for larger teams so be sure to check out their paid plans. LIVE demos are available with their team and currently they offer a 14-day FREE trial with no credit card required.
Conclusion
Social media has become an ever-growing and evolving platform to connect with others, market a business, or just share an opinion. Each of these tools can help you organize what’s out there so your time and efforts are spent smartly!