Social media marketing is more than just posting content and hoping for engagements. It’s maintaining an active presence and building a strong brand community. And it’s monitoring conversations to identify and mitigate risks to your brand reputation. That’s why you need powerful social media management tools to help you do all of this more efficiently.
With the right tools, social media management becomes more manageable. You can use these tools to do everything in one place–from scheduling posts to analyzing your performance. It becomes easier to stay on top of tasks with features to collaborate with team members and set alerts.
This post rounds up some of the top social media management platforms in the market to help you decide on the best option for your team. Let’s take a look.
Table of contents:
What is a social media management tool?
A social media management tool is a software solution that lets you manage all aspects of your social media in one place. That means you can perform multiple social media tasks without having to switch to a different platform. This includes tasks related to creating, scheduling, publishing, monitoring, analyzing, engaging and collaborating.
Most social media management tools let you manage more than one social media profile across several networks. As such, they play a vital role in executing your social media marketing strategy.
Best social media management tools to use
The best social media management tool for you depends on what you need. Factors like the size of your operation and the platforms you use will influence this decision.
Agencies may need a tool that lets them manage multiple social media profiles for their clients. Meanwhile, small teams may look for something with robust collaboration features. Others may only need a tool to help them manage a specific social media platform. On the other hand, some may want to focus on automating their publishing.
Based on these unique needs, we’ve handpicked some of the best social media management tools to consider.
- Sprout Social
- Zoho Social
- HubSpot
- Sendible
- Pallyy
- SocialPilot
- Buffer
- Keyhole
- Sprinklr
- eClincher
- Tailwind
- X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck)
- Preview
- PromoRepublic
- Hootsuite
- Coschedule
- MeetEdgar
- Later
Best social media management tools overall
1. Sprout Social
Can’t blame us for giving ourselves the top spot, right? Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool to manage all aspects of your social media strategy.
Sprout offers integrations with all the major social networks. This includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube. So you can work across your entire presence in a single dashboard.
Plus, you can also manage reviews from sources like Google My Business, Trustpilot and Facebook. It even lets you create shoppable posts integrated with Facebook Shops and Shopify catalogs.
Sprout’s Employee Advocacy tool gives it an added advantage over other social media management platforms. This lets you create a curated feed of content for your employees to share across their social networks. So you can take your employee advocacy efforts up a notch and amplify your brand reach.
Features:
- Social media publishing, scheduling, monitoring, analytics, reporting and more in one easy-to-use dashboard
- ViralPost feature to publish your content when your followers are most likely to engage
- Smart Inbox that compiles all your incoming messages from different social media platforms
- Hashtag tracking to identify the most popular and relevant hashtags to boost visibility
- Custom URL tracking to get a more in-depth insight into how your posts are performing in terms of referral traffic and conversions
2. Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a tool that boasts features “built for every social media feed.” The platform allows you to start discussions, share reports, create team roles and encourage feedback. This makes it easy to get everyone on board with your updates, strategies and performance insights.
In addition to scheduling, the platform has its own optimized timing features similar to Sprout. You can customize your content for each network and schedule them to go out at the right time.
The platform’s Inbox keeps track of all your conversations in one place. So you don’t have to switch between multiple platforms to manage your customer interactions.
Features:
- An instant integration with the Zoho CRM and the ability to monitor customer interactions
- Social listening dashboards to track brand reviews, social mentions and branded keywords
- Ability to collaborate with teammates within the platform via chat, audio and video calls
3. HubSpot
HubSpot is a leading customer platform with powerful social media management features. Its centralized social inbox lets you keep track of all your social interactions in one place. You can further gain contextual information on these conversations with a CRM integration. That way, you have the insights to enhance and personalize the customer experience.
The platform helps you organize your efforts by tagging marketing assets and content. So you can associate your posts with specific campaigns and measure their effectiveness.
Additionally, it comes with all the essential features you need in a social media management software solution. This includes tools for publishing and scheduling as well as keyword monitoring and social media reporting.
Features:
- Keyword monitoring streams to identify important interactions and prioritize the right conversations
- AI-powered social media post generator to simplify publishing
- Best time to post suggestions to optimize scheduling
Social media management tools for agencies
4. Sendible
Sendible has done a great job of niching down for agencies and large brands. It offers client dashboards and automated client reporting features for agency users. Collaboration tools and user management capabilities make the platform ideal for multiple users.
Additionally, it offers a number of helpful integrations to make social media management as easy as possible for users.
Features:
- An all-in-one dashboard that makes it easy to see your overall social media performance at a glance
- Collaboration tools that allow your team to create content and then send it to the client or team leader for approval
- Presentation-ready reports to showcase social media ROI to clients
- A mobile app that lets you monitor and manage your social media accounts on-the-go
5. Pallyy
Pallyy is a unique social media management tool specifically targeted at agencies. This software helps agencies plan and schedule clients’ social media posts all in one place. The platform features a Kanban-style workflow and a visual planner where you can plan your grids. Additionally, you can easily access media files from the media and folders library.
Features:
- Integration with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Pinterest and TikTok
- Visual planners make it easy to prepare content across platforms and grids, especially when aesthetics is a priority
- Folders to better organize your media files
- Shareable content calendars where clients can leave comments and approve posts
Social media management tools for small teams
6. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a straightforward social media management solution for those just starting out. It provides all the essential publishing and scheduling features that you need in a social media tool. The platform simplifies content creation with an AI Assistant. This helps you generate engaging captions based on the latest trends and audience preferences.
SocialPilot offers in-depth analytics reports to guide better strategies. The content performance and audience insights help you understand what people are engaging with. You can analyze growth patterns to continue creating great content.
Features:
- Integration with several major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube
- Ability to customize and optimize posts for multiple social networks in a single composer
- Bulk scheduling for up to 500 posts to help you save time
7. Buffer
Buffer is another social media management tool that’s ideal for small businesses and startups. It offers a completely free plan for your first three social media channels. This makes it the perfect option for setting up your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
The platform simplifies content creation with an AI Assistant that generates new ideas. It even lets you store ideas so you can build on them later. A direct integration with Canva, DropBox and OneDrive makes it much easier to import content to edit and share on social.
Features:
- Social media publishing tools that allow you to easily schedule out all the social media content you’ve created for each channel
- A social media engagement dashboard that lets you respond to all mentions or messages online in one place
- Analytics and reporting to give you a bird’s eye view of how your social media efforts are performing
- Landing page builder to create a customized experience
8. Keyhole
Keyhole is unique from most of the tools on this list in that it’s an influencer tracking and marketing software as well. It performs in-depth analytics to help you vet and compare influencers. The profile analytics help you zero in on influencers who manage to drive authentic engagements.
After your campaign goes live, the tool measures the performance of each influencer and their impact on your campaign goals.
Features:
- Automated social media reports that are shareable and presentation-ready within seconds
- Several reporting features, including brand reporting, campaign reporting, hashtag reporting and influencer reporting
9. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is a customer experience management platform with features to manage your socials. It supports your essential social publishing needs with an editorial calendar and a digital asset manager. The engagement dashboard lets you view comments, mentions and messages in one place.
A unique Sprinklr feature is the user-generated content (UGC) management capabilities. You can use it to organize content from fans and repost them to amplify brand reach.
Features:
- Sprinklr AI to speed up content generation
- Custom approval workflows to streamline team collaboration
- Customer service and consumer intelligence integrations for a unified customer experience management
10. eClincher
eClincher markets itself as a social media management platform that highlights a commitment to 24/7 customer support. Like most tools on this list, eClincher features a cross-network social publishing tool. It comes with a visual calendar, a dedicated messaging inbox and a publishing queue. Plus, it features brand monitoring across social, news, blogs and more, complete with sentiment analysis.
Features:
- Provides 24/7 customer support for its users so they can “strategize, optimize and measure ROI”
- Team collaboration with drafts, comments, notifications, tagging and assigning messages
Social media management tools for dedicated platforms
11. Tailwind
Tailwind started out as a tool to address a hole in the market for Pinterest scheduling. So it initially focused on automating Pinterest marketing for brands. It has since expanded to cover Instagram and Facebook. But the platform continues to stand out when it comes to managing Pinterest.
The visual calendar helps you plan and organize all your social media posts in one place. You can apply filters to view only your Pins to see how your Page would look. The platform then auto-publishes these Pins to catch your audience when they’re most responsive.
Features:
- Post ideas to make sure you always have Pinterest content in the pipeline
- Automatic personalized designs to create on-brand posts every time
- Hashtag finder to discover popular and hyper-relevant hashtags to boost your engagement
12. X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck)
X Pro (formerly Tweetdeck) is an X-owned management tool to monitor conversations on the platform. It gives you real-time visibility to monitor multiple timelines on a single screen. So you can easily jump in on the right conversations and engage with your audience.
Since its rebranding to X Pro, the tool is now a part of X Premium subscription. As such, you can access plenty of premium features not available to regular users. This includes the ability to share longer content and download videos among many others.
Features:
- Ability to create longer posts to share in-depth information and messages
- A dedicated Highlights tab to showcase your best posts on your profile
- Reply boost so your responses show up more prominently
13. Preview
Preview is a mobile app that lets you visually plan out your Instagram feed. The tool is perfect for creating a feed that’s based on a specific Instagram feed aesthetic. You can upload as many photos and videos into the app so you can preview your feed before you publish.
Features:
- Upload photos, videos and carousels to the Preview app to get an idea of what it would look like live on Instagram
- Schedule your content right within the Preview app so it’ll publish when you’re ready
- Plan out Reels and Stories as well as your regular Instagram feed so you know how everything will fit together
14. PromoRepublic
PromoRepublic is a unique tool on this list as it markets itself as a local marketing platform. Having a localized social media management tool makes it easier to target local audiences. You can create hyper-localized ads targeting audiences on Facebook and Instagram.
Through its local SEO tool, businesses will be able to grow foot traffic and web traffic. You can even manage customer reviews and feedback right within the dashboard.
Features:
- Best for small businesses, franchises and businesses who want to grow awareness in local audiences
- Dynamic fields to automatically localize content across thousands of local pages
- Content labeling to see what social content resonates in specific locations
Social media management tools for publishing
15. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media marketing tool with powerful publishing features. It comes with a visual calendar to plan out your content and easily fill gaps. If you ever run out of things to post, you can use the tool to generate an endless stream of content ideas. The tool even provides suggestions on the best time to post so you can schedule your posts for the highest engagement.
Check out our list of Hootsuite alternatives if you’re looking to take your social media management in a different direction.
Features:
- Publish and schedule social media posts on a variety of platforms
- Manage incoming messages and mentions and respond to them in a single inbox
- Monitor online conversations around your brand and industry to stay on top of trending topics
16. CoSchedule
CoSchedule began as a content marketing company and has since brought social media management and calendars into its fold. It helps you organize your social media publishing efforts with a social calendar to visualize your entire content plan. The Best Time Scheduler ensures that your posts go out when people are most likely to engage.
Features:
- Social Message Optimizer to craft powerful messages for your social posts
- AI Social Assistant to generate ideas and social messages instantly
- Predefined social sharing templates so you don’t have to create a publishing plan from scratch
- ReQueue automatically creates recurring social posts from your best content
17. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a social media management tool that helps teams automatically curate their social media feeds. This is perfect for solopreneurs or businesses with small teams. Startups, where team members wear a lot of hats, will benefit from the features available with MeetEdgar.
Features:
- Repurpose content and give it new life by automatically republishing it at a later date
- Scheduling tools that let you set the optimal times for MeetEdgar to schedule your content
- Real-time content insights to see what performs best so you can optimize your strategy
18. Later
Later is a social media management tool that assists with publishing and content creation. You can organize your social content strategy with a visual planner and a media library. The Best Time to Post recommendations make sure that you’re reaching your audience at the right time on TikTok and Instagram.
Features:
- User-generated content discovery using tags and mentions
- Instagram Hashtag Suggestions tool to generate fresh and relevant hashtags
- Caption Writer tool to automatically craft powerful social media captions
How to select the best social media management tool for your business
When investing in a new tool for your business, you want something that adds value to your marketing tech stack. So it’s important to carefully weigh your options to ensure that you’re making the right choice. Here are some factors to help you narrow down the ideal social media management software for you.
Integration
The first thing to consider is whether it has a social media integration for the platforms you use. It should integrate with all the major networks so you can manage them all in one place.
Scheduling
Publishing is one of the most vital aspects of social media management, so you need a tool to simplify the process. Look for one that comes with features for scheduling social media posts and best time to post suggestions. Bulk scheduling capabilities are a plus if you have to schedule hundreds of posts each month.
Collaboration
Whether you work with a small team or with clients, you need a tool that supports seamless collaboration. Look for one that has a shared publishing calendar along with multi-user support and message approval workflows.
Social listening
A core aspect of social media management is being able to track and engage with relevant conversions. So you need a tool with social listening capabilities to monitor specific keywords and tags in addition to brand mentions.
AI capabilities
While not a necessity, AI marketing capabilities give you an added advantage. You can find social media tools that offer AI-powered features, especially when it comes to content creation. Being able to generate ideas and captions in an instant will help you speed up the process of creating new social posts.
Reporting
The easier it is to highlight your performance and KPIs, the better. Whether you’re reporting to clients or presenting data to stakeholders, in-depth social media reporting is a must-have.
Additionally, reporting can help highlight what’s working and what’s not in terms of your social presence. So make sure the tool can monitor the social metrics that matter most to your business.
Cost
Whether or not you can get by with totally free social media management software really depends on your business’s size and scope. For solo businesses and up-and-coming agencies, free or freemium tools might serve as a stepping stone toward paid ones.
But oftentimes, “you get what you pay for” rings true. That’s why it’s important to assess which features matter most to your business and what your non-negotiables are.
Take care to consider the overall cost of social media marketing when deciding on your budget for a social media tool.
Adaptability
Another major consideration is how well the tool can adapt to changes in your social media planning. Does it have a built-in editor in case you decide to create more visual content? Can you get hashtag ideas in case you want to start adding more hashtags? Make sure it has all the features you might possibly need so it can quickly adapt to your latest social media plan.
Scalability
One crucial factor is the ability to scale along with your needs. Almost in line with the previous factor, scalability helps you ensure that the tool can support your business growth. At the bare minimum, it should offer the option to add more users and social profiles.
Manage social media like a pro
The right tool helps you manage your social media like a pro. It streamlines publishing and allows you to manage all your social media interactions in one place. More importantly, it enables you to collaborate seamlessly with your team and clients.
After going through our list, take some time to weigh your options before you make the final move. And remember, you can get a first-hand look at Sprout’s automation, collaboration and reporting features with a free 30-day trial.
