Posting content, answering comments, crunching the numbers – that’s a lot of work! And you can’t expect to do it all yourself forever.
But with exciting new tools coming out every day, how do you even decide what to work with?
This post will introduce you to 10 new (and old) social media management tools that you should definitely have on your radar for 2024 and beyond.
Here we go!
Buffer
Buffer is easy to implement and my top favorite. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever survived social media without it.
Here's an overview of Buffer's key features and benefits:
It's Super Simple to Use
The calendar layout allows you to plan and schedule posts on almost any social network, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, without much hassle.
You Can Customize Your Posts
With Buffer, whenever you’re adding a new post, it’s super easy to throw in a hashtag, or tag someone, or geotag your current location – all those bits of metadata that can help drive engagement.
You'll Get Valuable Insights on Performance
Buffer also gives you detailed reporting per-post to see how content is performing so you can get a better idea of what content is resonating with your audience and become better at it over time.
It Integrates with Browser Extensions
Whatever browser you use, whether that’s Chrome, Firefox, Safari or any other, Buffer has handy extensions so you can schedule things on the go.
It's Budget-Friendly
Buffer’s free plan is a great place to start. And its paid plans cost just $5 per month, per social profile that you want to manage. Get rich, quit your job!
Hootsuite
Arguably the industry’s most powerful and feature-rich app, Hootsuite has more than 200,000 businesses using their social media management platform. It’s a heavyweight that does so much more than just scheduling.
Here are some of Hootsuite's standout capabilities:
It Centralizes All Your Networks
Hootsuite lets you manage all your social networks from one dashboard, instead of repeatedly switching between tabs and apps. Huge time saver!
It's Built for Collaboration
Several team members can log in to Hootsuite, and through customised roles and permissions they manage multiple social networks and multiple accounts.
It Integrates With a Ton of Networks
Hootsuite will allow you to schedule and post to the biggest of the big social media platforms – Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok and others.
You Get Robust Analytics
Dive into your audience demographics, engagement metrics, content performance data and more. Hootsuite brings visibility to help optimise your efforts.
It Offers Social Listening
Use tools to monitor keyword and brand mentions across the social web to see what users are saying about you, what they are saying about your competitors, and what they might be asking about.
Pricing starts at $99 per month.
SocialPilot
If you have a small-but-mighty marketing team in need of effective social engagement, SocialPilot might be your ideal choice.
Here's an overview of some of SocialPilot's core capabilities:
It Makes Scheduling a Breeze
One versatile tool to manage your social accounts is SocialPilot, a multifunctional hub with automatic timeline sharing through social media posting tools right on your calendar. You can even bulk upload posts.
It Helps You Fine-Tune Engagement
SocialPilot also suggests some hashtags and emojis that will help with engagement, as well as audience analysis for good old-fashioned content tailoring.
You Can Track Competitors
Cultivate a keen interest in the social media stats and strategies being employed by your most formidable competitors; understand how you can distinguish yourself from them.
It Enables Team Collaboration
Multiple team members can access campaigns and content while maintaining customized roles and permissions.
It's Surprisingly Affordable
It costs as little as $25 dollars per month for the core features – ideal for small teams!
For brands and organisations that are looking for an all-in-one management platform but don’t want it to overwhelm them, SocialPilot is a good match – powerful function but great simplicity. Check it out!
Loomly
If flexibility matters to your social effort, the Loomly experience arrives with personalisable management. Two of its main strengths are:
It Integrates With Zapier
Zapier allows you to connect your Loomly dashboard with any other app so that you can have absolute flexibility. The possibilities are endless!
You Can Post Anywhere
Write a good post to Zapier and you can publish to mainstream and obscure networks with equal ease.
Extra Features
In addition to its flexible integrations, Loomly also offers expected features like:
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Scheduling and queuing content
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In-depth social media analytics
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Monitoring brand mentions across the web
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Team workflow features
Standard Pricing (In My Opinion)
Loomly starts at just $29/month for up to three social accounts Navigate here to read the full blog post. If you’d like social management that connects with other tools, Loomly is incredibly good.
Iconosquare
With Instagram continuing its stratospheric rise, it really pays to put effort into that platform, especially if you’re a brand. Manually managing Instagram is a big time-waster.
This is where tools such as Iconosquare come in handy for Instagram-savvy marketers. Here are some key features of Iconosquare:
It Allows Easy Scheduling
Create and publish Instagram posts and Stories that will reflect your brand and get you more followers, from both the Iconosquare web and mobile apps (it’s a lifesaver, if you’re managing multiple accounts).
You Get Audience Insights
Look at who your followers are following in return, and analyse what content performs well and what flops. Then you can tweak your approach over time.
It Centralizes Comment and DM Management
Make it easier to moderate comments and Direct Messages flowing into Instagram from one inbox instead of from different browser tabs.
It Can Create Shoppable Catalogs
Which is super useful for ecommerce brands who can easily create an effective and shoppable product catalogue within the app, thanks to services like Iconosquare.
Pricing starts at $39 per month, which is quite affordable. Instagram marketers eager to dominate the leaderboards: Iconosquare helps you work harder, not smarter.
Sendible
At the very least, Sendible likes to consider itself your one-hub stop for all of your lonesome social media efforts, as a one-person social media operator or entrepreneur, you.
It offers a straightforward set of core features tailored to your needs:
It Allows Multi-Channel Scheduling
It makes it super easy to create posts on-the-fly to go out on all your key networks – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter – from one handy dashboard.
It Centralizes Comment Moderation
Manage comments and messages from all your accounts in one central inbox rather than network by network. Time saver! Big time.
You Get Audience Insights
Get access to handy follower demographics and post analytics so you know what types of content your audience responds to best.
It Can Research Top Hashtags
Select your best-performing hashtags by volume, relevance to your brand and past performance.
It Enables Simple Team Management
Invite employees or contractors to collaborate while maintaining control over permissions.
Sendible has a starter plan for only $25 per month – quite a bargain! Can’t recommend these guys enough.
Sprinklr
If your social media needs are massive and you’re a big company that hasn’t been heard from yet, you’re the client for Sprinklr’s heavy duty features designed for major brands.
Targeting big-name clients McDonald’s, Microsoft, and Samsung; Sprinklr’s functions include:
It Offers Unified Management
Monitor hundreds of international social media accounts, for multiple brands, all from one headquarters.
It Excels at Social Listening
Sophisticated tools monitor keywords, languages, locations, and formats across every social channel.
It Leverages AI
The AI extracts knowledge from data to produce tailored content for different language and local markets. Sprinklr social post about the power of AI to drive business outcomes.
It Simplifies Localization
Adapt global social programmes to make them relevant for your people, in your language, in your location.
It Centralizes Paid Advertising
Manage paid ad campaigns for social, search, display and more from one unified platform.
Suffice it to say that all these capabilities in-flight come with a hefty sticker price. Sprinklr represents an enterprise-level investment viable only for large-scale social strategies, with big budgets to match. For enterprises with multi-faceted requirements, it’s a pretty potent drug.
Reputation
But if your brand is hammered with comments across social media platforms, a response team trying to stay on top of moderation would be positively insane.
Let’s look at some of its features:
It Offers a Unified Inbox
View and manage comments from across all of your social accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) in one shared inbox, without having to wallow in individual feeds.
It Uses Smart Routing
Utilise rules and filters to auto-triage inbound comments to the right team based on content.
It Enables Response Automation
Create workflows that automatically tag, flag, delete or reply to comments based on criteria you specify.
It Analyzes Sentiment
Comments are colourcoded according to reputation, and sentiment is analysed, so you can see at a glance how happy your customers are.
It Embeds Everywhere
Seamlessly embed commenting into your website and apps so moderation happens in one place.
For community managers and social media teams oriented towards more efficient moderation, Reputation is a must-have software. You will save hours of manual work.
HubSpot
If you’re a current HubSpot user, another good news note is that you already have great social media management features already built-in to the HubSpot suite of tools.
HubSpot's tools allow you to:
Schedule Social Content
Plan, collaborate on, and schedule upcoming social posts - no additional tools needed.
Monitor Brand Mentions
Keep on top of conversations about your brand and relevant keywords across social media.
See Social's Business Impact
HubSpot also associates social with ROI by reporting social site traffic, leads, and customers acquired.
Unify Your Reporting
Combine social media analytics with other marketing, sales and CRM data for full visibility.
For existing HubSpot customers, as you’d expect from marketing software touting itself as ‘all-in-one’, the social features may be a convenient way to keep your tech stack streamlined.
Khoros
Social media is arguably the most important channel for customer service nowadays, especially considering that there are more than 4.5 billion social media users in the world. Manually dealing with customer enquiries across all these channels is a huge headache.
That’s where services like Khoros can help you take social customer care to a new level with:
Smart Inquiry Routing
Sort incoming communications automatically according to content, sentiment, details of the customer, and so on to move them to the right agents.
Unified Team Inboxes
Collaborate and respond to customers from one shared inbox instead of jumping between networks.
Response Automation
Use pre-approved templates and canned responses to boost response speed and efficiency.
Social Listening
Monitor branded keyword mentions, trends, and competitor actions to better assist customers in real-time.
CRM Integrations
Sync social conversations into your CRM and helpdesk for complete visibility across channels.
With power tools such as Khoros, purpose-built for next-level social customer experiences, brands now have their very own Blade Runner.
Takeaway
Here are some key factors to keep in mind as you evaluate options:
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What are your main use cases – scheduling, or visual content creation, or analytics? Pinpoint those minimum features.
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How much of a tool can you realistically afford each month? How much is on your budget?
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What 1-2 social tools will you use – Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Make sure the tool supports your flagship channels.
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Will you be managing accounts on your own, or do you have a larger support team established? Some tools scale better than others.
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How long will it take you to learn and maintain the tool?
What other questions do you have about keeping up with social media management tools? Let me know in the comments; I would love to point you in the proper direction.
