Top 10 Best Social Media Management Tools for Businesses
May 24, 2018 - 14 minutes read - Marketing Tools, Social MediaIn today’s hyperconnected world, it’s imperative for businesses to have an active social media presence to reach and engage with a wider audience. It’s no longer sufficient to simply post a few times a week; audiences now expect quick responses and real engagement. Luckily, the list of the best social media management tools available is a long one.
These tools allow businesses to curate content, schedule posts, review analytics, and listen to their audience to discover what their customers are saying about them. Whether you’re looking for a better option to manage social media for your own business or don’t know which tool you should use for your clients, our list of the top 10 best social media management tools below is a great place to start.
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The Best Social Media Management Tools:
Here’s our list of the best social media management tools for businesses. Click each name to learn more about it and find out why it’s one of our favorite digital marketing tools:
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1. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is one of the most powerful social media posting tools, allowing you to share content to Facebook (pages, profiles, and groups), Twitter, and LinkedIn (profiles and company pages).
What’s great about MeetEdgar is that it automatically posts content for you from a rotating content library — making it great for sharing evergreen content. Rather than schedule a post for a set time, you assign the category to a time slot, and MeetEdgar posts content you added to that category every week at that time.
You can create hundreds of categories, upload and edit posts in bulk, shorten links, and set deadlines or ‘expiry dates’ for seasonal content.
MeetEdgar is one of Mod Girl’s favorite social media marketing tools — something we make use of on a regular basis!
Though there isn’t a free version, it’s a great option for businesses and social media managers who want to regularly share evergreen content without having to remember to schedule it every single week. It also includes support for up to 25 social media accounts, making it an ideal option for digital agencies managing their clients’ social media.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is another one of the best social media management tools for business. Though digital marketers often overlook this tool due to the low-quality user interface, it can be a great option for those looking for a free or low-cost social media marketing tool to manage their own social media or social media for just a handful of clients.
At Mod Girl Marketing, we use Hootsuite for more time-sensitive posts, while sharing evergreen posts via MeetEdgar. And we’re in good company; Hootsuite has over 15 million users in 175 countries.
Hootsuite supports social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Google+, and was one of the first social media scheduling tools to support Instagram scheduling. Additional integrations are also available on the Hootsuite app store, for platforms such as Reddit, Tumblr, Marketo, and Mailchimp.
One great feature of Hootsuite is their dashboard, which allows you to quickly see all of the activity happening on all of your social media accounts in one place. You can view comments on your Instagram posts, reply to DMs to your Twitter account, and see posts people tagged you in on Facebook.
Get Hootsuite here.
3. Socedo
Socedo is a B2B lead generation tool that allows you to find, engage with, and qualify prospects on social media.
Socedo works by tracking 15 million social signals daily to find the Twitter profiles that are most likely to fit into your buyer persona mold. The process is customizable. It allows you to set specific search criteria based on location, bio, or conversational keywords.
Once you’ve found leads you’re interested in and have approved them, the platform will undergo a chain of automated actions, such as following their profiles and tweeting at or direct messaging them. You can even import contacts, which will enable you to quickly grow your followers and better listen to your audience.
4. Buffer
Similar to Hootsuite, Buffer is considered one of the best social media management tools, allowing you to post to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest. Simply add a post to your queue for Buffer to send it out during the next available time slot for the designated social media platform, ensuring you have a steady stream of content every day.
Its basic offering comes with free access to Pablo, a graphic design tool for creating simple images with text overlays. Since images are important to getting your posts noticed on social media, this additional feature can be a major plus.
Some popular Buffer features include:
- Link shortening
- Analytics to measure post performance
- Posting at pre-set times throughout the day, which you can set based on your analytics
- Ability to manage posts from Buffer’s mobile app
Buffer has three tiers of plans: the free plan (for 3 social accounts and 10 scheduled posts at a time), the Awesome plan (for 10 social accounts and 100 scheduled posts at a time), and the Small Business plan (for 25 social accounts, 5 team members, and 1000 scheduled posts at a time).
5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social offers tools for social media management, social media marketing, and customer service.
Their social media management platform supports popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and LinkedIn. Sprout Social has a single stream inbox feature which allows you to engage with customers in one place, a collaborative calendar which allows team members to draft and queue posts for approval, an integrated analytics suite, and more.
Though more expensive than the other social media tools on this list, Sprout Social is a great option if you take advantage of their numerous advanced features. It also makes working with freelance social media managers easier, as you can approve or deny any post they add.
Known somewhat as a premium offering compared to others on this list of the best social media management tools for business, Sprout Social tends to be used by big brands (and agencies) like Macy’s, Discovery Channel, UPS, and Evernote.
6. HubSpot
HubSpot offers a variety of inbound software for marketing and sales.
With HubSpot’s social media tools, you can easily share blog posts, landing pages, and other content to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn using the same platform you use to build your marketing campaigns. The platform can automatically choose the best times to publish your posts based on available data and make promoting your other content, such as blog posts, easier.
Like other social media management platforms, HubSpot also allows you to monitor social mentions, but its strength really lies in its analytics. With HubSpot connected to your CRM (or if you’re using HubSpot as a CRM), it lets you compare the performance of different platforms, channels, campaigns, and publishing times to make changes as necessary and improve your results.
7. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is designed to be a premium content calendar that allows users to schedule blog posts, social media, and other tasks.
Using CoSchedule, you can manage project management, content organization, and social media scheduling — all in one place. In addition to working with common social sites like Facebook and Twitter, CoSchedule also integrates with apps like Google Docs, Evernote, WordPress, and Google Analytics.
The social scheduling aspect features:
- Social templates, which make scheduling content easily (for example, you can create templates for what social posts will look like to promote blog posts)
- ReQueue, which is similar to MeetEdgar’s automated content queue scheduler, perfect for evergreen posts
- Metrics relating to the best time for posting and other analytics
8. Tailwind
Tailwind allows you to schedule content to Instagram and Pinterest.
Known primarily as a Pinterest scheduling tool, Tailwind stands out amongst the best social media management tools as being one of the top tools for managing your Pinterest account. It automatically repins posts for you using the optimal posting schedule you create based on audience engagement, virality, and traffic — noting how each post or pin is performing.
For businesses who rely heavily on Pinterest, Tailwind is an ideal option for building your following and getting your pins shared.
9. Crowdfire
Crowdfire was initially built to determine who unfollowed you on Twitter, but eventually grew into a social management platform — primarily for Instagram and Twitter. Noted as one of the best social media management tools, Crowdfire helps you optimize your Instagram and Twitter accounts by following the right people, unfollowing the wrong ones, and even keeping an eye on your competitors’ accounts
In addition, Crowdfire allows you to:
- Discover relevant content based on your keywords
- Publish content from your own blog and ecommerce website (such as Etsy or Shopify)
- Easily tailor posts for every social network with a set of pre-made templates
10. Sendible
Sendible is a social media management platform created specifically for agencies.
Some features include:
- A content recommendation engine to suggest content that fits your client’s needs
- An inbox for each client’s social messages
- Comprehensive analytics
- Team collaboration tools
- A CRM to convert social activity into leads
- Social listening tools
Using the Best Social Media Management Tools for Your Digital Agency
Social media marketing is important to businesses, but it can take up a lot of your time — time better spent growing your business. Luckily, all of these social media management tools allow you schedule posts and collect data to become more efficient over time.
But while you manage the social media strategy, outsourcing the day-to-day writing and managing of your social media allows you to scale your business faster.
Not sure where to start with outsourcing? Our Founder and CEO, Mandy McEwen, shared her top 3 secrets to successful outsourcing in a free training video.
