5 Best Social Media Management Tools You Should Consider Today!

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Not a single day is spent without using social media. Be it Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, we are constantly scrolling through our feeds connecting with family, friends & businesses through our mobile phones, while on the go.

According to research, there are more than 3.2 billion social media users around the world with Facebook having the highest number of consumers.

Why Social Media is Important for Your Brand?

Social media channels are the driving forces for effective marketing of your business. They play a pivotal role in increasing visibility & driving traffic to your blog or online store. With the right marketing strategy & engaging content, you can bring success to your business by attracting new audiences.

The problem is; users are not available at one place. People are using Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and many other popular platforms on their phones; thanks to optimized browsing and app usage.

Thankfully there are a variety of social media management tools available allowing you to manage popular channels at one place.

Why Use Social Media Management Tools?

Managing social media channels manually can be challenging. Consider uploading a video on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms manually. This task alone would waste a lot of time hence decreasing productivity. Here, we can use tools which are efficient in managing business profiles, build relationships with customers as well as monitor performance.

Let’s Discuss Tools

There are hundreds of specialized tools with the aim of helping in social media marketing & management. We will be discussing five tools which you can consider for your brand:

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is perhaps one of the most commonly social media marketing tools available. They provide a free version with the paid one (which might seem a bit expensive for small businesses or startups but still worth the cost).

If you are planning to post content on multiple social media channels but wasting time by doing one by one, then this tool will make your life much easier with automated scheduling. Some features include:

• Managing multiple social media profiles at one place
• Publish your content in multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn….)
• Collaborate with team
• Receive free analytics reports via email to understand how your published posts are doing
• Cooperative support team
• Create your social content calendar (without worrying to put up a tweet at midnight)
• Above all, the free version is good for basic management of your marketing goals with 30 posts per month & 3 profiles.

2. Sprout Social

Next in our list is Sprout Social. It is a perfect tool for medium to large enterprises that are looking for scheduling of posts with reports in much detail, along with keywords related information. Although the features provided are much similar to Hootsuite but Sprout Social provides in-depth analytics reports and additional options for social media listening. Some distinctive features include:

• User friendly interface, easy to use
• The tool works smoothly without any hitches (bugs are non-existent)
• Integration with common tools such as Dropbox, Bitly, Google Analytics & Drive
• Customer support via phone calls
• Dashboard is less-cluttered

Sprout Social is a complete package ideal for your enterprise but it comes with a cost, that too a heavy one. They do not provide a free version but the value provided is worth the cost.

3. Canva

Wondering why a design tool is even in this list? Well Canva is certainly ahead of the game. If using too many tools seem cumbersome and your needs only revolve around content scheduling for your social media channels then Canva Pro can certainly help you. Most of the people use Canva to design flyers, Facebook posts, announcements or a photo collage. They can set the schedule of these posts using Canva’s content planner. It is cheaper as compared to other tools and much simpler as per needs.

Here’s how to do that:

Click on Content Planner option available at the left-menu. A calendar will be displayed as shown below. Click on date.

You can either choose existing design or create a new one:

Here we selected Choose a design option. Click on ‘+’ to add your profiles where you would like the selected design to be scheduled for posting.

Following are the current available options:

It is a great feature to schedule your designs to be posted on specific date and time without the hassle of being on your phone all the time.

4. Buffer

Buffer is a simple to use social media management tool allowing you to seamlessly schedule your posts across multiple channels. They offer a 14-day trial period and their product is considered as affordable for a small to medium sized company. Perhaps the most perfect feature which makes it stand out is the browser extension. You can easily integrate it to your Chrome browser and post content while browsing the web. Some features include:

• Learning curve is quick, especially for non-techies
• Customization of posts for different social media channels. You may need fewer characters for twitter and more hashtags for Instagram; you can do this in Buffer while creating a single post.
• Robust analytics
• iOS and Android apps
• 100 posts can be scheduled for basic package with $15 per month (2000 for higher plans)
• If you are a nonprofit then Buffer provides 50% discount

5. SocialOomph

Last tool in our list is Socialoomph (we wished they named it much simpler though). It is easy-to-use with pretty basic UI helping you to manage your social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn as well as blog activities. Some features include:

• Generate content streams from RSS feeds
• Prompt customer support
• Bulk tweets option via single text file
• Access to personal and team areas
• Customization option for different posts
• Blog posting automation

Final thoughts

Social media presence is certainly important for your business. From planning to designing your posts, it takes up a lot of creativity & time. With the help of these tools you can worry less about posting online, hence become more productive. If you are just starting out with your business then try out the basic/free versions.

Which is your best social media management tool? Let us know in the comments below.