What Are the Tools of Social Media Manager

There are thousands of social media management tools on the market, and you’re probably asking yourself how do I know which ones are best? In this article you’ll find a few of the best free social media management tools available to small businesses in 2021.

There’s a lot of people out there that don’t know a lot about social media management tools. They wonder what they should be using and if they are even free. Did you know that there are a bunch of great resources to help you along the way? It’s true! Learn all about the best social media management tools you can use right now.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most established and popular apps for social media scheduling and marketing. You can use it to schedule posts, receive in-depth reports, and collaborate with your team members, thanks to built-in teamwork features. It enables you to view multiple streams at once and monitor what your customers are saying. There is a free limited plan available for 3 social profiles and up to 30 scheduled messages.

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.

Later

Later has a highly visual focus. Although it allows you to post to Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, its main emphasis is on Instagram. 

Later does offer a free plan, with one social account per platform, one user, 30 Instagram posts, 50 Twitter posts, 30 Facebook posts, and 30 Pinterest posts per month. You can schedule photos and upload unlimited images to their Media Library, see your basic Instagram analytics, can search and repost user-generated content. The four paid plans (starting at just $9 per month) add to these capabilities.

Unlike all the rest of these social media managers that start with a social message and then allow you to add an image, Later requires you to start a post by uploading a picture. You then add suitable text to the image.

The heart of Later is its Media Library. You begin every post by either uploading new media to the library or reusing media you’ve already uploaded. You can add notes and labels to your media items and add a Star to any image you wish to highlight. You can filter your images by Label or Star, by media usage, type of media, and by the time frame in which you uploaded your media. You can store unlimited media, even on the free plan.

The free plan limits you to scheduling static images, but the higher plans add videos, Instagram Stories, and multi-photo posts.

Buffer

Buffer is also one of the best apps for managing your social media presence and scheduling your posts. The app also comes with analytics tools that enable you to track your audience’s activity and figure out when it is the best time to post in the future. We especially love its Chrome extension, which integrates itself seamlessly and never gets in the way, yet it is always there when you need it. It is a more straightforward and more effective way of managing your social media, and you are never more than a few clicks away from setting up anything you want. Buffer supports over 7 different platforms – you can add up to 4 on the free plan.

Crowdfire

Crowdfire offers a free plan alongside its premium plans. It’s also a smart blend of content discovery and social media management capabilities. To find new and engaging content for your audience, Crowdfire curates articles according to search terms you choose. Once terms are selected, you’ll receive a steady flow of new content to share. And sharing’s easy. Crowdfire presents a default post with copy and a link. You can publish posts in this format, but I recommend that you personalize it a little to look fresh and appealing. 

Something any busy influencer or marketer can attest to is the slog of grabbing links from websites and other, online shops, or other resources. It can be a painful process. Crowdfire will help give you back that time. By connecting your YouTube channel, WordPress site, Etsy or Shopify store, you can publish directly to your social accounts. Crowdfire pulls new content and you can easily publish content or tweak post copy before sharing. 

Crowdfire would be incomplete without post scheduling. It will help you identify the best times to share content, allowing you to prep content in advance. Need attention-grabbing images? Crowdfire’s image curation feature is another time-saver. It pulls images for posts and automatically credits creators. Crowdfire also comes with the option of adding your own RSS feed and a helpful Chrome extension to quickly share articles you come across.

You’ll love Crodfire’s team inbox. It’s where all direct messages are stored, making it easier to get to all messages without missing any. You also get a solid analytics reporting feature. Gather insights on post engagement, and customize reports with metrics that matter most. Analytics also covers competitors. You can spot which posts perform best, or get an overall view of their performance on social. 

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is definitely not your tradition social media management tool when it comes to scheduling posts, but it is an effective tool when it comes to understanding your audience at a much deeper level. Followerwonk allows you to dig deep into Twitter bios and compare various accounts to find the most relevant influencers. With this tool, you can analyze your current followers – by location, bio, accounts they follow, and more – and contrast relationships with competitors. This will help you improve your social content by matching your activities with gains and losses of followers.

This tool is definitely worth exploring, because having a lot of followers is meaningless if these followers are not relevant and actually engaging with your brand. Luckily, Followerwonk offers a free account, as well! Like many of the others on this list, the free account does come with several limitations, but you will still be able to connect one profile, view authority rankings, see followers and their locations, see when followers are active, and access several other details to further analyze your social audience.  If you are interested in more capabilities their plans are still decently affordable ranging from $29 to $79 per month.

Conclusion:

It is a great time to be a social media marketer. The amount of tools we have at our disposal is tremendous, and they are growing more and more advanced every day. It can also be overwhelming more than ever before to try and keep up with all of the new social media management tools coming out.

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