Managing social media takes more than 15 minutes a day. This is
true whether you work for an agency or brand, or you own your own business.
The need to engage is at an all-time high. That’s because 73 percent of consumers are
more likely to buy from brands that are responsive on social media.
Even the most experienced social media managers who have watched
Instagram transform into Facebook are struggling to keep up with the engagement
demand.
Someone needs to be representing your brand all day on social
media – responding to and engaging with users.
Without using tools to help manage social media, there truly
aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything that needs to be done,
from researching new content ideas to keeping an eye on your competitors‘ Facebook ads.
Luckily for you, we’ve compiled a list of some of the top and
most practical social media management tools. All of these tools will help you
work smarter, not harder.
If you discover a new tool (or a few tools), consider signing up
for a free trial and taking a test drive.
After all, don’t you want to simplify and improve your social
media life? #yaas
1. BuzzSumo
Running out of ideas for your social media content? BuzzSumo is
the perfect idea generator for new content topics and articles to share. Just
type in a topic and see what they suggest.
You can use filters to see whatever types of content you want,
whether you’re looking to share:
- · Articles.
- · Infographics.
- · Videos.
- · Giveaways.
- · Interviews.
- · Guest posts.
You can export this data and even set up alerts to receive a
daily inspiration of content.
Another bonus? You can search for key influencers by topic and
start following them directly from inside of BuzzSumo. Once you have followed a
few key influencers, you can then see what content and topics they share most
often and the domains they share from.
See what’s happening here? You’re able to follow and see
influencer and competitor data all within the tool.
Pricing Tiers: $79, $139, $239, or $499 a month for enterprise
and custom plans
2. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a lot of fun to use. You can pick
topics like recipes, humor, or questions and schedule these types of topics to
publish on whichever days you want.
If you ever get into a content lull with social media, which
everybody does, MeetEdgar is a great solution. MeetEdgar will add a bit
more fun to your social media calendar. It only publishes content that Edgar
thinks is worthy of engagement.
One of the best features of MeetEdgar is that once your favorite
topics are defined and scheduled out, Edgar makes sure the content never runs
out. So you don’t have to constantly refill or pick new topics. Edgar does it
for you.
Once everything from a topic has been published, Edgar starts to
re-share old content that people may have missed the first time around.
Considering the limited amount of organic reach on social media, resharing
content gives it another chance for engagement. Thanks, Edgar!
Pricing Tiers: Free 2-week trial or $49 a month
3. Post Planner
Post Planner is one of my personal favorite social media content
tools. To see what types of content are being shared around a specific subject
or person, search by:
- · Topic.
- · Trend.
- · Keyword.
- · Hashtag.
- · Facebook.
- · Twitter handle.
Search through their recommended feeds based on industry and
interests and explore new content ideas.
The tool will also give each piece of content a performance
engagement ranking. This ranking, which is based on Post Planner’s custom
algorithms, helps determine whether a post is worth sharing.
Post Planner can determine such ratings by reviewing past
performance and predict future engagement specific to your audience.
BONUS: You also get a scheduling calendar with
Post Planner.
Pricing Tiers: $3, $9, $19, or $49 monthly, depending
upon profiles
4. Foursixty
E-commerce businesses and Instagram users will love Foursixty.
This is a tool designed just for retailers who want to share user-generated
content from Instagram on their website to help increase sales and monitor
their brand.
The idea behind Foursixty is to showcase a company’s products by
featuring Instagram posts that users share and tag about the company.
The product display from Instagram can be customized and
displayed across shopping pages, email newsletters, and just about anywhere
that you can embed code. Seeing these Instagram posts help encourage shoppers
to add additional items to their cart and follow along on Instagram.
Aside from the UGC angle and sales increase, Foursixty also lets
you schedule Instagram posts from the platform.
Pricing Tiers: $50, $100, or $300 monthly
5. SEMrush
I’m a bit biased here as I do work for the company, but SEMrush
is one of those one-stop-shop kinds of tools and they recently improved their
social portion. Their emphasis is on keyword research and SEO, but the tool has
over 30 different features for content marketers, link builders, social media
marketers, and just about every other digital marketing role there is.
Which to add on to their new features, SEMrush recently launched
a new addition to their suite of services that allows you to schedule and monitor
social media posts.
Here’s a breakdown of their social portion of the tool:
·
Social Media Poster: This brand new tool lets you plan,
schedule and create posts and analyze your social media performance on Facebook
and Twitter.
·
Social Media Tracker: Need analytics? Head over here to the Tracker
to track and analyze your competitors across major social media channels. This
isn’t a new tool like the Social Media Poster but will give you some pretty
sweet stats on what your competitors are doing socially.
Pricing Tiers: $99, $199, or $399 monthly. Discounted rates
are available for yearly plans.
6. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is one of the best social media management tools.
More than 19,000 companies, like the Hyatt and VICE, trust Sprout for:
- · Social media scheduling.
- · Engagement reports.
- · Analytics.
- · Brand monitoring.
Whether you’re a small business focusing on a few social media
networks, an agency managing multiple brands, or an enterprise company who
needs it all, Sprout Social will drastically help you save time and accomplish
your daily social media tactics.
Pricing Tiers: Free 30-day trial, and then it’s on to a
monthly plan of either $99, $149, or $249
7. Hootsuite
Hootsuite allows you to connect, monitor, and schedule posts for
35 different social networks. They are also Sprout Social’s biggest competitor
for social media management.
Very rarely will you meet someone who uses both Hootsuite and
Sprout Social, and that’s because – frankly – you don’t need both. These tools
are both fantastic and offer an array of social media features, but are very
familiar in what they offer.
Aside from their similarities, there are a few things that set
them apart.
·
Hootsuite is free up to 3 social media profiles. Sprout Social
has a free 30-day trial, but then it’s time to break out the credit card.
·
Sprout Social is completely international when it comes to
languages. Hootsuite is slightly limited, but not by much.
·
Hootsuite has a huge list of programs they
integrate with, like Salesforce, Marketo, and SocialFlow. Sprout Social
integrates with all of the social media networks, and then just five others
(Uservoice, Bitly, Feedly, Zendesk, and Google Analytics).
·
Both of their dashboards look completely different when you log
in. Hootsuite offers more of a wide angle approach showcasing everything you
need to see (scheduled posts, brand mentions, engagement, feed, etc.). Sprout
Social has a cleaned up version of this and only displays one portion at a time
with top menu and side bars offering the rest.
Pricing Tiers: Free for up to 3 profiles or $19, $99, or $499
monthly. If you need enterprise management then you’ll need to request a demo
to grant access to Hootsuite’s custom solutions.
8. SOCi
SOCi is another great scheduling tool for social media, though
they offer something a little bit different than the normal Hootsuite and Sprout
Social plans. It’s like if Post Planner and Sprout Social had a baby, they
would have named it SOCi.
One of the best parts of SOCi is the Content Center. This is
where SOCi scores the Social Web with its unique algorithms to tell you what
social content is engaging and what’s not. SOCi then provides a numerical score
and recommendations to you on what to post, similar to Post Planner.
In addition to content ideas and scheduling, they also provide
review and reputation management socially, lead generation, reporting, and
more.
Pricing Tiers: Unfortunately, SOCi doesn’t offer pricing
details to the public. You’ll have to schedule a demo and discuss your exact
needs to get a custom quote.
9. Social Bakers
This is a tool every social media manager should have.
Regardless of what scheduling tool you use, this is a tool you’ll want to log
into on a daily basis to access everything you need to know about your social
profiles.
With Social Bakers, you get real-time insights for Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn. You can track engagement,
share reports, and see social advertisement results all in one platform.
But this social media tool does more than just measure
analytics. You can generate reports to compare the performance of up to 10
social media profiles or industries at a time, which means you can track your
competitors and/or industry’s social performance.
What an incredible opportunity to one-up your social
competitors!
Pricing Tiers: $20 per profile gets you started, but if you
want a lot of flexibility with the tool you’ll need to request a demo to
uncover additional options and pricing.
10. TweetReach
Need to know how your Twitter account measures up?
TweetReach used to offer everything you need to know in terms of
performance and engagement for Twitter. They’ve recently expanded with Union
Metrics and now also provide analytics for Instagram and Facebook.
With TweetReach you can:
- · Monitor any topics or profiles, even your competitors.
- · Create Trackers for Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
- · Track trends in sentiment and engagement rates.
- · Export your data into CSV or PDF reports.
- · Determine the reach and sentiment for any hashtag on Twitter or Instagram.
- · Discover the hashtags that get your content in front of new audiences.
- · Find influencers in any community.
Pricing Tiers: $99, $199, and $399 a month
11. Tailwind App
When it comes to social media tools for Pinterest, there really
aren’t a lot of options. But there is Tailwind.
Tailwind provides data for both Pinterest and Instagram, the two
image-based social media networks. Once you have the tool, you’ll be able to
track when someone pins an image from your website or engages with an Instagram
post. It also lets you generate hashtag data, monitor brand mentions across the
two social sites, and more.
You can start a free trial to see if this social media
measurement tool is right for your Pinterest and Instagram accounts.
Pricing Tiers: Pricing starts at $9.99 a month and then jumps
to $799 monthly. There is an enterprise option that you’ll need to request a
personal demo to unlock pricing for.
12. Bit.ly
It’s a must.
Not every tool gives you the option to shorten your ugly URLs,
but Bit.ly does and they’ve done so for over 30 billion links
so far. With the multiple social media networks, you’re going to want a unique
tracking parameter on each URL, and not one that the social media users will
see.
Bit.ly allows you to shorten, customize, and track URLs, making
lengthy coded URLs into neat, pretty little URLs.
Pricing Tiers: Free
13. Buffer
Buffer is one of social media’s most famous tools. With one easy
click you’ll be able to share content and schedule posts on Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google Plus.
Basically, Buffer allows you to stagger content throughout the day
so that your social media feeds are consistently updated. Plus you can schedule
ahead of time, which is really handy.
Also, you can use Pablo Image Creator to create custom graphics.
And you can review analytics about engagement and reach of your posts.
If you own or work for a registered nonprofit organization, you
need to look into Buffer. They offer a 50 percent discount (on what is
already competitive pricing) to all registered nonprofit organizations.
Pricing Tiers: Free, $10 or $99 monthly
14. TweetDeck
Manage multiple Twitter profiles? This is the perfect Twitter
tool for you!
The dashboard may remind you of Hootsuite, but it’s oh so
different and customized just for your Twitter needs. TweetDeck:
·
Organizes your Twitter account by building collections, filing lists,
searches, activity, and more.
·
Tracks topics, events, and hashtags to help with
brand monitoring and to stay in the know of trending conversations.
·
Manages multiple Twitter accounts and lets you
tweet, monitor, and follow from one dashboard. TweetDeck completely removes the
hassle of logging in and out.
15. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a wicked cool app. It’s designed to help drive
traffic to your website and landing pages while increasing social engagement.
They claim to be a “super-smart marketing sidekick” and do a darn good job
living up to the claim.
Crowdfire will make recommendations designed to help improve
your social media strategy. Here’s how:
·
Crowdfire connects to your social networks and begins to get to
know your brand.
·
Then, Crowdfire takes you through a few quick tasks each day
that are personalized to your goals.
·
Finally, it begins to create and find content that your audience
will love and posts it for you, once you give it the thumbs up to do so.
Pricing Tiers: Free
Courtesy & OA : searchenginejournal
