Social media has rapidly become an important marketing channel. However, overwhelmed brands on social media are a common sight. Whether you’re confused about your social media management strategy, have trouble managing your time or just want to free up some time, here is your guide to social media management tools!
There is no doubt that Social media management tools have their place in the field of online marketing. They can contribute a lot towards making your social media presence stronger, helping you manage followers and your posts efficiently, along managing the whole process much better.
So, you want to become a social media marketer but lack the budget for paid software. Social media management tools freeware is just what you need to free your mind and maximize your efforts. It is possible to use free social media management tools and still be very effective in your marketing.
Later
Later is the best tool for scheduling and publishing on Instagram. It was founded in 2014 and now powering more than 4 million users globally.
Initially, it was started as a simple Instagram scheduling tool, but later, they added more platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Later offers a free plan that includes one social set (including one Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Tiktok account), schedule 30 posts per social profile, and basic analytics.
They also have tons of pre-made templates, so there’s no need to start from scratch ever again.
Using their hashtag research tool, you can find the right hashtags for your posts; it even provides advanced analytics so you can see how well your posts are doing in terms of engagement.
Pricing: Later offers four different plans, including 14 days free trial.
- Free plan: 1 social set, 30 posts per social profile, one user
- Starter plan ($12.50/ mo): 1 social set, 60 posts per social profile, one user, Linkedin bio
- Growth plan ($20.83/ mo): 1 social set, 150 posts per social profile, three users
- Advanced plan ($33.33/ mo): 1 social set, unlimited posts per social profile, six users
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a similar app to Hootsuite in many ways. More than 19 million users worldwide use the Crowdfire app to automate their social media activities. It’s packed with features that make everyday life easier and more productive.
The free version of Crowdfire allows you to link three social media accounts, schedule 10 posts per account, and provide you with one day of social analytics data.
With Crowdfire, you can connect up to 25 accounts and schedule posts across all platforms from one place.
Using their hashtag suggestion feature, you can get the most used and relevant hashtags for your posts quickly and easily. They also have auto-customize content for each platform, so you don’t have to spend time creating multiple posts across different platforms.
Additionally, you can schedule up to 50 posts at once using their bulk upload feature, saving your time and effort. You also get access to up to 30 days of your account’s performance data analytics in just seconds.
Pricing: Crowdfire offers four different plans.
- Free plan: link up to 3 social accounts, schedule 10 posts, hashtag recommendations
- Plus plan ($7.48/ mo): 5 social accounts, schedule 100 posts, connect up to 5 RSS feeds
- Premium plan ($37.48/ mo): 10 social accounts, bulk schedule posts, up to 15 RSS feeds, additional team member
- VIP plan ($74.98/ mo): 25 social accounts, scheduled 800 posts, 25 RSS feeds, 20 competitor analyses, 30 days social analytics data.
ContentCal
ContentCal offers a 14-day free trial. Feature-wise, it is a CoSchedule-like tool. It offers a powerful collection of features to help you manage your entire content marketing plan. It’s segmented into 3 tools. Here’s a look at what they do:
- Publish: This is where you’ll go to collaborate with team members on content ideas, create workflows, and publish articles, emails, and press releases. ContentCal also comes with Web Clipper, a tool that captureS content you come across on the web and saves it to your content library for use later.
- Analyze: Dig into audience engagement with content and campaigns. Track hashtags, stories, top-performing content, and competitors to see what’s working and how to improve your content. Reporting is a major component of driving growth, and Analyze lets you visualize data for paid and organic analytics across platforms, and export your u findings in PDF or PPT format.
- Engage: Connect with customers through ContentCal’s team inbox. Depending on the size of your organization, you can assign queries to specific teams, handling messages from all platforms. Engage also offers a notes feature for messages from customers. These can be added by team members to formulate a complete and effective response to customers.
ContentCal’s also working on a fourth feature called IQ. It’s an AI-powered intelligence solution to offer deeper insights. It will help identify channel performance, assign a content quality score, benchmark competitors, attribute revenue to campaign performance, and deliver industry benchmarking.
Loomly
While Loomly doesn’t provide a free plan, it does offer a free 15-day trial, and its cheapest plan is $48 per month (or $36 per month if you pay for a year up-front). That Base plan permits two users and a maximum of ten social accounts.
You can connect all your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts to Loomly. It is a simple process, although, like all social media management software, you have to live within limitations set by the social media networks, e.g., you can post to Facebook business accounts, but not personal profiles.
Loomly asks you to set a workflow that matches the way you run your accounts, whether you are part of a team, or operate your accounts solo.
You can select from three views in Loomly:
- Calendar view – shows all posts spread over a calendar month.
- List view – displays all posts as a list and includes essential information for each
- Post view – allows you to examine individual posts
You can do more than just schedule posts in Loomly, however. It offers an interactions feature where you can manage comments, messages, and track social handle @-mentions.
Analytics are available for each of your social accounts, as well as Loomly’s main dashboard containing an overview.
Meet Edgar
Meet Edgar offers a single $49 paid plan after a 14-day trial. That plan includes all their features, and you have the option of whether to pay monthly or annually (for a month’s discount).
Meet Edgar is excellent for businesses that want to concentrate on queuing and delivering content. It doesn’t offer any social listening capabilities, nor does it have an in-app inbox.
At its core, Meet Edgar helps you schedule different categories of posts across your social networks. Categories are the heart of Meet Edgar. There are default categories; however, you can add to or adapt them to match your posting style.
You create a weekly recurring schedule for each of your social accounts, deciding on the post category for each slot. There are multiple ways you can source content to fill these slots. You can create original posts, or you can import content by connecting an RSS feed for your favorite blog or importing a CSV spreadsheet containing multiple posts.
Once you approve enough content, Edgar creates a queue for the next two weeks. It matches your queue to your schedule and categories. By default, Meet Edgar selects the newest content in each category first; however, you can click the Shuffle button on a category to reorder the posts into a new random order.
Meet Edgar doesn’t have social listening, a centralized inbox, or much analytics, but it should do the job for people more interested in intelligently scheduling their posts.
Buffer
Buffer is known for being a storytelling platform with a focus on authentic engagement designed for small business owners. They offer a 14-day free trial, and no credit card is required. Some of the unique features include helping you plan and schedule Instagram Stories and create and save hashtags. Buffer’s free plan allows you to schedule posts on three social channels, and pricing ranges from $15 to $99 per month.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo helps you analyze what content is performing well and what isn’t working. The discovery feature provides you with suggested high-performing content to help boost your KPIs. The tool also helps identify influencers in your industry that can elevate your brand by sharing content on their own networks. BuzzSumo offers a free trial for 30 days and a free plan that includes 10 free searches per month. Paid plans range from $99 to $299 per month.
Conclusion
Social marketing is a part of the marketing strategy. It is also known as Digital Marketing, social is one of the most effective ways to reach more people. Social network sites are very popular and that’s why businesses, bloggers, artists, and even celebrities have social media accounts to connect with their fans and advertise their products, services, and careers.
With the explosion of social media, there are more ways than ever to get your name out there. While many of them rely on being social, some people aren’t very comfortable in that arena. But with the right tools, you can increase your brand exposure without too much work – and with social media management tools freeware available, it could be free to do it!