Social Media Management Tools: The Fab Five for Effortless Online Success
Publishing and answering comments on social media one by one is — well, a drag. It’s also totally unnecessary, given the number of options available for building your online success on a budget.
Yes: today we’re talking about social media management tools, aka how to spare your thumbs (and your sanity) by keeping all your social media management (SMM) in one app. Whether you’re just starting out with growing your presence or need to update your platform, this article will cover the essentials — what a good SMM tool should do and which SMM apps are the best in the market for building a great brand.
But first, let’s get aligned on why social media marketing is essential for your business.
Social media — A window into your customers’ lives
Nobody can deny the power of Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter to attract and sway an audience. Social media can bring you fame and fortune — even if you’re just a grumpy cat called Stepan. Or they can “cancel” you over one rash tweet.
Brands that know how to use this power for good through social media marketing get significant benefits from it. In a nutshell, here’s what good social media marketing gets you:
Space for marketing research. People love commenting. If you let them express their opinion, they will. So social media marketing is a win-win: customers get satisfaction, and you get an open window into their interests, needs, and lives, and maybe a few nice marketing ideas. Even if you don’t engage customers often, analytics on page visits, likes, shares, and reviews are all useful data.
Wide customer reach and engagement. An estimated 93% of internet users use social media every month. That means you have access to millions of potential customers worldwide, most with multiple social media accounts. What’s more, the variety of platforms and formats means you can post engaging and valuable content for all of them to win their love.
Affordable brand and product marketing. The wide customer reach and affordability of social media marketing make it perfect for promoting your product and brand at a low cost, even if you’re a small company running out of a garage. As an example, think of how many of your friends posted top songs and artists on their Spotify list around New Year. Does Spotify Wrapped cost as much as regular advertising? No. Does it promote Spotify worldwide? Heck, yes!
But all these benefits are only possible if you either have a department of Santa’s elves, each responsible for different social media (how else could you afford things?), or a social media management tool that helps keep everything together. So if you aren’t Santa or his close friend, read on.
What is a social media management tool, and what should it include?
Fundamentally, social media management (SMM) tools are very simple — they help you easily control your social media presence across all your accounts and channels in a single app. To explain what control means, let’s look at the features that come with the best social media management tools.
Support for multiple social media accounts
This is SMM 101: If you’re present on multiple social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and even Pinterest, you want to be able to manage them from one app to be efficient. Otherwise, paying for a social media management app doesn’t make sense: you can manage your accounts one by one with built-in tools instead.
Scheduling tools
This is one of the best things about SMM tools — you can beat the tedium (or even panic) of planning by scheduling all your posts for days, weeks, or months ahead. If you need, you can tweak your posts in line with company news or current events. (No one wants to romanticize a “flood of discounts” in the wake of a hurricane: just ask Airbnb.)
Advanced analytics
If you need to know what works for your customers, analytics is the only way to find out. Good SMM platforms present data in easy-to-understand visuals that take the hard work out of analyzing a ton of numbers. Enterprise social media management tools can also track your competitors’ posts and compare their data, which is a great way to get a birds-eye view of the market and your place in it.
Appropriate pricing
Maybe it’s hard to admit for SMM tool providers, but their apps are pretty similar. Social media policies simply protect their customers from excessive data sharing. So, if you find a noticeably more costly app, double-check that its features are truly unique and useful for your business. If they aren’t, it’s time to look elsewhere.
Easy access to integrations
An isolated marketing effort is usually a wasted one. Good SMM apps integrate easily with other systems like a CRM and support desk to lead your prospects smoothly through your marketing and sales funnels.
These five features are a minimum to get you started. A good social media management app will usually offer other features like a photo editor, smart tips on best hashtags, or an AI-based assistant, but these are optional. Remember: the primary task of an SMM app is to help you publish content, track its success, and communicate with customers across multiple platforms cheaply and easily, much like buying a doner kebab to save yourself from cooking.
Let’s show you what the best apps for this purpose are.
The best social media management tools for your needs
We won’t bore you with a side-by-side comparison of all social media management tools, as they’re all quite similar. Instead, we’ll focus on the essentials — the unique features and cost of the top five SMM apps for different needs.
Time to start the show!
Hootsuite
Hootsuite tops the charts, and no wonder — it has features for every social media marketing need. In addition to the essential points we’ve described, Hootsuite gives you tools to monitor multiple inboxes, run ad campaigns, and plan marketing campaigns. You can also create posts with a photo editor, Canva, Grammarly, hashtag suggestions, and other tools. All in one app!
Hootsuit’s analytics are intuitive yet some of the most complete on the market and range from customizable performance reporting to ROI reporting and social listening.
Still, Hootsuite is one of the most expensive tools out there, and the most advanced features start with the Team package, which costs $249/month for three users. So you should consider whether you need all these features or whether a simpler but cheaper system is the best for you.
Cost of monthly plans: Professional — $99, Team — $249, Business — $739, Enterprise Custom — custom pricing (if billed annually). A free 30-day trial and demo are available.
Zoho Social
Like most advanced social media tools, Zoho Social lets you schedule posts, monitor mentions, create custom dashboards, reply to comments and inbox messages, and analyze performance with intuitive graphs. But what stands out is the collaboration features and user roles that make team management a breeze: your manager can send you posts for approval in just one click.
Zoho Social’s other big draw is its integration with other Zoho tools. Integration with Zoho CRM helps you engage with prospects and generate leads from social media while connecting with Zoho Desk allows you to create tickets from social media for your support team.
All these features are available in the Premium plan. The standard package has fewer cool features but still covers the basiсs, such as scheduling and summary reports for nine social media platforms (one brand).
Cost of monthly plans: Standard — €10, Professional — €30, Premium — €40 (if billed annually). A free 15-day free trial is available.
Semrush
Semrush isn’t strictly speaking a social media management app, as the platform includes 55+ tools for SEO, PCC, content marketing, and competitor research. But it does offer a Social Media Toolkit that includes a social media poster, tracker, and scheduler, plus analytics and ads. Among other useful SEO-style features are recommendations for best-performing hashtags and best times for posting, personalized content creation ideas, and automated email reporting. Moreover, as it’s part of a wider platform, you can easily integrate other Semrush tools to enhance your social media presence.
Semrush is more limited than Hootsuite, but once you go beyond the basic tier, it covers some of the most commonly used features (such as ads and recommendations) at a much lower price.
Cost of monthly plans: Pro — $99.95/month, Guru — $191.62/month, Business: $374.95/ month (if billed annually). All of these plans include a free trial.
SocialPilot
Just like other tools, SocialPilot lets you edit, schedule, and post content on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, and other social media, communicate with customers, and view campaign results using analytics. In addition, it allows you to set up Facebook Ads and boost posts on other social networks. But where SocialPilot shines is with its advanced features for both team and client collaboration. This makes SocialPilot a great choice if you’re managing social media for multiple brands (up to 50).
Granted, while many features, including ads, are available in the minimum package ($25.50 per month), you’ll need the Small Team package to take advantage of collaborative tools. Still, SocialPilot is cheaper than most social media marketing tools with the same features.
Cost of monthly plans: Professional — $25.50, Small Team — $42.50, Agency — $85, Agency + — $170 (if billed annually). A free 14-day trial is available.
Buffer
This list wouldn’t be complete without one of the most popular free social media management tools — Buffer. Buffer is indeed free if a limit of one user, three accounts, and thirty scheduled posts satisfies your needs.
Even if you need more, Buffer is still cheap — you pay $5 or $10 for each additional channel per month in the Essential or Team packages, respectively. This makes it ideal for most small businesses, as you don’t pay extra for social media you don’t use, such as Pinterest or Google Business Profiles.
In terms of features, Buffer is similar to most social media management tools. You get a poster and scheduler, analytics reports, buff.ly link shortener, audience demographics, campaign analysis, calendar view, and more. What makes it more unique is the Buffer AI Assistant, which provides smart suggestions to improve your social media presence. Still, since this is available only in the beta version for now, its effectiveness remains to be seen.
Note: When choosing the package, remember that two different accounts in one social media count as two channels.
Cost of monthly plans: Essential — $5 per channel, Team — $10 per channel, Agency — $100/month for 10+ channels (if billed annually). A free plan and a free 14-day trial are available.
Online success starts with the right SMM tool
There are social media management tools for every need: the only limits are your budget and business requirements. Once you know what to look for and the differences between our fab five platforms, you’ll be well on your way to choosing the right tool for your online success. As they say, buy nice or buy twice, and in the case of social media management, you should definitely buy nice to boost your customer base and save your money in the long run.
