Social media management tools are programs designed to make your social presence more effective. From increasing your followers on Twitter and Facebook to properly scheduling the different algorithms that they use, you really need to start using this services to be successful.
What is social media management? Is it important? Why should you care? Social media management tools are becoming increasingly popular and in-demand with businesses and organizations of all sizes all over the world. The goal, of course, is harnessing all the power of social media networks to generate immediate results, and that’s part of what makes them so important.
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar stands out due to its automation and scheduling features. They even offer continuous posting, which means they will automatically curate and reshare relevant posts on your social media accounts. Pros
- Excellent automation and scheduling features let you set your social media and forget it
- Free trial for seven days
- Analytics for engagement and response
- Edgar Lite plan starts at just $19 per month
Cons
- Only integrates with Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram
- Most affordable plan only lets you work with three networks
- No central inbox for messages or managing comments
MeetEdgar wins for best automation because they are set up to help time-strapped businesses automate their accounts. This software lets you generate posts using a browser extension, set up category-based scheduling that saves you time and effort, and executes continuous posting that ensures you’re constantly engaging your audience.
With MeetEdgar, you also get access to an unlimited content library, which the platform will shuffle and schedule for you on your behalf. You can also set up your account to automatically upload your newest content, and you can use an automatic link shortener that helps you save space when you share your content on social media.
MeetEdgar offers two main plans:
- Edgar Lite: $19 per month
- Edgar: $49 per month
Both plans offer similar tools, although the Edgar Lite plan only lets you integrate with three social media accounts. The more expensive plan also offers 1,000 recurring scheduling time slots per week versus just 10 with the Edgar Lite plan. Either way, you can try MeetEdgar for free for seven days.
Friends+Me
Friends+Me is another prime player in the social media management tools family. While Friends+Me puts the highest emphasis on Google Plus features, many other social platforms are supported. Friends+Me appears to get rave reviews from users, and has a beautifully designed website with plans available based on the size of your business. And yes, there is a free plan!
While the free plan is not super robust, it still allows for two queues (which is a destination to publish posts), the ability to schedule five posts per queue at one time, link shortening, browser extensions, an integration with Zapier, as well as standard support. The free plan can also be used for a variety of social platforms like Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Pinterest and Instagram are supported as well, but you will need to upgrade. Plans range from $7.50 to $216 depending on if you decide to utilize monthly or annual billing.
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:
Social media is something that’s on the rise in the content marketing world. It’s about connecting your followers with you, but it’s also about having control over what they see and how they interact with your content and brand. This is why we need to have a very well thought-out strategy on how we want our audience to engage with us. And this is why social media management tools are so important. By using them, you can take more control of your social presence, as well as monitor activity that happens around your brand.