#MarketersToolbox - Top 5 Social Media Management Tools

Over the past few years Setup has collected and reviewed marketing tools in a number of  categories. From tools that help benefit social media efforts to tools that increase productivity, Setup is on the case to help improve your life as a marketer.

Social media can often be overwhelming and hard to master. A perfect post requires proper preparation, approval, coordination, and scheduling. Thankfully there are a dime a dozen of social media marketing platforms to help organize social strategies.

With so many social media management tools to choose from, we’ve selected and reviewed a handful of stand-outs for you to consider!

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is the world’s most widely used social media management platform. It has an easy-to-use interface and integrates with multiple networks including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest.

That is not where the integrations end, however. In an effort to improve customer relationship management (CRM), security, and resource access, Hootsuite added integrations with Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, SharePoint, Yammer, ZeroFox, and other platforms.

Hootsuite’s features include scheduling, monitoring, content curation, analytics, team management, security, and boosting. The social media management tool works to improve social in several departments - post sharing, engagement, campaigns, ads, and analytics.

Hootsuite does most everything in social planning and would benefit most any marketer for an affordable price (though add-ons do increase the price significantly).

2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is one of the best social media management platforms because of its focus on connecting users with their customers by providing powerful and insightful analytical reporting. This suite has a clean, user-friendly interface with in-depth, collaborative features regarding messaging, tasks, feeds, publishing, and reporting and connects to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Analytics, and Feedly.

The CRM features help track leads, the social listening (including keyword monitoring) and influencer identification features help engage customers, the image editor helps publishers present their best work, the Group Report helps quantify and digest data easily, and the competitive analysis features include tracking the user and their competitor’s engagement/influence over consumers.

Potential users can request a personalized demo or sign up for a 30 day free trial. The social media suite itself offers three pricing plans (Premium, Corporate, and Enterprise) with advanced features at each level. This tool, according to PDMag, is best for small to midsize businesses.

3. Buffer

Buffer is a publishing-first social media management tool that is continually improving its audience reporting features. The publishing features allow social content to be shared easily and are some of the best compared to other platforms. Buffer integrates with multiple analytical and publishing tools and connects with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The Buffer Extension works with Chrome, FireFox, Safari, and Opera.

Buffer offers standard posting features like link shortening and tracking, scheduled posting, and mobile app support. The data capabilities are elementary compared to other platforms but still resourceful. Posts’ popularity and follower reach/engagement and influencer behavior is tracked. “Re-Buffer” is an additional feature that saves successful/popular posts for reposting - saving time and energy for marketing coordinators.

Buffer provides excellent social media publishing, summary reports, and analytics with a few features left to be desired at a fair price. Users can test the tool on a trial run or use the free option with limited features. The quality of output as a full-time social media management tool makes Buffer perfect for smaller business.

4. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a social media management tool useful for customer relationship management (CRM), post scheduling, behavior monitoring, and analytical reporting. This platform has a user-friendly dashboard and connects with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

The engagement feature captures opportunities to interact with consumers, the listening/audience features track and monitor influencers/followers talking about the brand, the reporting feature tracks success with unlimited report downloads and informs future marketing strategies, and the publishing/team features put a collaborative content calendar in one location.

Agorapulse has four price plans depending on the size of the company and need and users can trial the tool for up to 15 days. According to G2Crowd, this tool would best service small to midsize agencies, businesses, and marketers who don’t need a an extensive monitoring service.

5. Socialbakers

Socialbakers is social media marketing suite powered by AI that assesses target personas, influencers, social media, and content.

Socialbakers offers features that uncover the behaviors, interests, and preferences of the company’s audience. Based on this analysis, it creates a detailed buyer persona and collects content that resonates with the audience. Other features include measuring the engagement rate and success of content and even optimizing it more efficiently for search. Socialbakers reports everything on a single dashboard to track which social posts are performing best.

Other features that Socialbakers offers helps companies find influencers, conversations about their brand, and opportunities to streamline workflow efforts.

According to G2Crowd, this tool would serve any sized brand or agency.

Which social media marketing tools have been the most helpful to you? Are there any we are missing? Comment below!

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