Hootsuite is the biggest and most well-known social media management tool. You can use it for posting to your social media profiles, scheduling content and even analyzing the performance of your existing campaigns. It has tons of useful reports, such as site analytics, tweet activity, and Facebook insights.
The number of social media management tools continues to grow and free alternatives to Hootsuite are becoming more popular. This post is about good free social media management tools like Hootsuite and why they should be your preferred choice.
Hootsuite is widely used as an alternative to social media management tools. It has gained popularity for its integration with major social networks and its slick design. Many companies opt to use Hootsuite free social media management tools in order to save money.
HootSuite is a social media dashboard tool that allows users, from marketers to entrepreneurs, manage their profiles on a wide variety of social media sites. This article contains an overview of the free version of HootSuite and also some best alternatives you can use.
Why Consider Alternatives to Hootsuite?
Although Hootsuite offers a range of flexible plans with free trials, small businesses might not be able to leverage the true capabilities of this tool without spending a significant amount on subscriptions.
In this post, we shall walk through the top Hootsuite alternatives for social media marketing activities like post scheduling, content creation, publishing, and analytics.
We shall review each alternative to Hootsuite, so you don’t have to. And when we conclude, you will be able to decide the social media management tool that caters to your marketing needs.
But before diving into the list, watch our exciting webinar on “How to Increase Engagement for Marketing Agencies?” Learn the best tips and tricks from industry experts on how your marketing agency can build a long-lasting connection with clients and prospects.
IFTTT
IFTTT is a free social media automation software solution that makes it easy to manage a range of social media platforms. The tool integrates with all the major social media platforms and enables you to create free ‘applets’ which are essentially automations for common social media processes like creating and sharing posts.
IFTTT also integrates with platforms like Medium, WordPress, and Blogger, so it can be used to easily share social media updates about new posts on your blog.
This is the perfect tool for busy professionals as it can really help to streamline common social media marketing tasks and save time.
Pricing:
IFTTT has two plans, free and Pro. The free plan allows you to create up to 3 applets. The pro plan allows you to create unlimited applets and costs only $3.40/month.
Combin
Are you looking for a way to grow your Instagram following? Then look no further than Combin.
Combin is the perfect tool for anyone who wants to increase their followers and engagement on Instagram. It’s simple, easy-to-use, and can help you quickly gain real followers.
Combin offers two different plans – Growth and Scheduler. The Scheduler tool is completely free to use and includes 15 Instagram accounts management, bulk image uploading, location tagging, user tagging, etc.
You can use Combin to find influencers in your niche or industry so that you can collaborate with them and get more exposure. Or, if you want to promote your account, then this is the perfect tool as well.
Their growth plan includes more powerful features such as it can detect who doesn’t follow you back, check your Instagram audience quality, monitor audience activity, and more.
Pricing: Combin comes at three price tiers.
- Free: One account management, two simultaneous searches, 25 search results for posts, stories mass looking.
- Personal plan ($15/ mo): unlimited simultaneous searches, 1000 search results for posts, statistics, search results refresh ability.
- Business plan ($30/ mo): 5 accounts management, unlimited simultaneous searches, 1000 search results for posts, stories mass looking.
Friendsplus
Friends plus is another free tool for scheduling and automating your social media posts. You can create great content, collect it from all over the web, and then bulk schedule it with their desktop application.
They also have browser extensions that make it easy to share on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, or Pinterest right from your browser. And if you’re using a mobile device, they also have applications for iOS and Android so you can manage everything in one place.
The dashboard is very simple and doesn’t include many features as other tools.
Pricing: Friendsplus offers five different plans:
- Free plan: One user, two queues, 5 schedule posts per queue, link shortening, Zapier integration.
- Individual plan ($7.50/ mo): 10 additional team members, five queues, 500 schedule posts per queue, Pinterest scheduling, bulk scheduling.
- Small plan ($24.17/ mo): Everything in the individual plan, including 20 additional team members, 15 queues, 1500 schedule posts per queue.
- Medium plan ($49.17/ mo): Everything in the small plan, including 30 additional team members, 30 queues, 3000 schedule posts per queue.
- Large plan ($215.84/ mo): Everything in the medium plan, including 50 additional team members, 120 queues, 5000 schedule posts per queue.
TweetDeck
By the name, you can understand what this tool does. TweetDeck is a free tool for managing your Twitter accounts in one place.
It’s easy to use and packed with features that help you to reach your audiences and discover the best of Twitter. You can easily track conversations, find new people to follow, messages, and get updates from all the people and lists you are following.
Using TweetDeck is very simple. All you have to do is log in with your existing Twitter account, and you are good to go.
Pricing: Using TweetDeck is completely free.
Sendible — Social media software for brand awareness
Designed specifically for brands with multiple clients, Sendible is an excellent tool for voicing your brand to increase brand awareness. It’s a fully optimized tool for digital marketing, mostly used by digital marketers. It has all the features a brand needs to engage with target audiences and keep them engaged. Easy scheduling and posting, most relevant content queuing, preview posting, post tailoring, these are all just some of the exceptional SMM features that Sendible offers.
Still, the best thing about Sendible is its built-in functionality that supports multiple users. Businesses use Sendible to include teams on their social media needs. Any team member working on the client’s accounts has access to enhancing and creating relevant posts. It’s an excellent SMM tool that most businesses use to improve their customer service and sales team efficacy. Boosting customer service is one of the best things about Sendible. Put simply, Sendible allows a business to dive deep into the pool of consumers and see if their strategies provide the wanted results or not.
Key features
- Multiple social network publishing
- Integrated analytics and tracking
- 360-degree brand building
- Reputation monitoring
- Customer engagement
- Lead generation
- Schedule posts
- Manage multiple users and clients
Pricing
- Free trial
- Startup – $59/month
- Business – $99/month
- Corporate – $139/month
- Premium – $499/month
eClincher — Best social tool for growing your brand
Many businesses struggle with coping with huge scopes of work when it comes to social media management efforts. It’s quite tedious work, especially for small businesses operating on a limited budget.
Fortunately, eClincher can help share the load. The tool allows companies to manage social media groups, pages, and accounts across multiple platforms in the most intuitive way. Digital marketing agencies, teams, professionals, businesses, and social media managers all use this tool.
Same as many other social media management software, Clincher is compatible with Blogger, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Linked In, Facebook, and Twitter. It’s one of the best social media scheduling tools for growing your brand and improving your efforts related to engagement, scheduling, reporting, and networks.
The majority of companies use this tool when they want to periodically share evergreen content across multiple social media platforms. In terms of engagement, eClincher allows a business to gather all social media notifications, comments, and messages and store that content in one place for easy retrieval. You can access this content base every time you need to engage, follow, thank, or respond to your audience.
Key features
- Advanced publishing
- Auto-post with queues
- Content recycling
- Engagement
- Hashtags and keywords monitoring
- Content curation
- Social media analytics
- Website analytics
- Team collaboration and agencies
Pricing
- Free trial
- Individual – $15/month
- Basic – $40/month
- Premier – $80/month
- Agency – $200/month
- Enterprise – $1200/month
SocialPilot — Best tool for teams and agencies
If your business requires a cost-effective and user-friendly SMM solution that provides multiple features, SocialPilot should be your option number one. It’s an excellent and simple to use tool suite for managing social media, scheduling posts, improving engagement, and analyzing results for even better performance.
SocialPilot is a preferred tool of choice for small businesses, business professionals, marketing agencies, and various other enterprises. Aside from competitive pricing and user-friendly design, the SocialPilot tool also allows for seamless integration of social accounts, while offering improved control over handling all the essential tasks.
It also allows brand management, content curation, and bulk scheduling, directly from the software. That aside, SocialPilot offers more functionality and additional features that users need to easily go through large chunks of data to filter only the most relevant data. That alone makes rescheduling content a walk in the park.
Key features
- Advance post scheduler
- Single social network interface
- Advanced social media scheduling calendar
- Custom Facebook branding
- Bulk scheduling
- Teams and collaboration
- Content suggestions
- Custom feeds
- Client management
- Deep URL shortening integration
Pricing
- Free trial
- SocialPilot Lite Plan – Free
- Individual Plan – $10/month
- Professional Plan – $24/month
- Small Team Plan – $40/month
- Agency Plan – $80/month
CoSchedule — Best tool for a marketing organization
CoSchedule is one of the best social media management tools that allows you to work smarter rather than harder and do more with less. Every marketing campaign requires a decent amount of effort and organization. You can do that and more by keeping all your marketing-related work in one place.
This is quite an intuitive tool that allows businesses to build better relationships with their clients, customers, and audiences.
Aside from covering all your social media management needs, it also caters to your other marketing needs, including events, content, emails, etc. Find the best times to post your content, schedule your promotions, develop a reusable template for social media, and more.
Key features
- Campaign analysis
- Campaign management
- Content management
- Customizable templates
- Reporting and statistics
- Social network marketing
- Third-party integration
- Drag and Drop interface
- Engagement analytics
Pricing
- Essential + Requeue (For solopreneurs) – $40/month billed annually
- Growth (For start-ups and agencies) – $60/month billed annually
- Professional (For professional marketers) – $300/month billed annually
- Enterprise (For established marketing teams) – starting at $1,200/month billed annually
What Skills Do You Need To Be A Social Media Manager?
One of the greatest challenges working in social marketing is that you’re never done learning. With the recent changes in their field, social media managers need to evolve continuously. They have to adapt to the latest trends, develop the strategies according to different social networks, post the content at the perfect timings, manage organic & paid campaigns, engage with the community, and everything in between.
Communication, creativity, writing, organizing & management skills are critical features required in a social media person.
He needs to be a copywriter and designer. He also can be a strategist, and marketer, analyst, or customer service representative at times. Sometimes, all in just one day.
And with all these tasks, the two things that keep the person sane are coffee & a social media management tool.
If you’re a part of a larger team, you might be introduced to a lot of tools by your supervisor that can help you manage & prioritize your daily tasks.
Conclusion
Social media managers, influencers, and marketers can all agree that social media management tools are a necessity in the social media era. Social media marketing has become hugely popular to businesses today, but there are so many options out there.
Just like you, social media marketers and PR agencies have limited resources. So they need the best tools to get the most out of their online presence. In this document, we’ve put together a list of some of the best free social media management tools that you can use to scale your campaigns and boost your content marketing efforts. While they may not be as popular as Hootsuite, they certainly get the job done.