Best Social Media Management Tools 2021
- Paolo Besabella
- October 25, 2021
Managing a business’s online presence can be a hassle. Hence, the need for the best social media management tools that can effectively optimize your business operations in the media space.
This review will address what social media management software is, how it works, and the average cost and then tell you all about the best social media management software available in 2021.
What's on This Page
What are social media management tools?
The best social media management tools enable you to control and coordinate your online presence across all platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest for publishing content, sharing, scheduling, and performance of social posts.
It also enables businesses to engage in social monitoring, analytics, reporting, and engagement with users on various social networks.
How do social media management tools work?
You can integrate all your social media accounts for control in a single dashboard with a media management platform. This enables you to operate (create and share posts, track their performance and connect to your blogs) all the accounts simultaneously through one application. These applications come as all-in-one tools to control your online presence or as a single solution for a major media network.
How much does social media management software cost?
The cost of a management tool for social accounts depends on certain factors, such as the length of subscription, number of users, features, and platforms you need to access.
The standard price of such a tool for businesses can be as low as $10 and high as $800 per month. Despite free plans and freemium packages, large businesses often find their needed features in the more expensive tools.
Top 5 Rated Products - Employ the best media toolkit to optimize your online brands
eClincher
Best for SMBs & Agencies
Since its founding in 2012, eClincher has found its way to the hearts of many businesses of different sizes as it offers simple yet powerful software to manage their online presence. eClincher’s users pride it as a simplified tool to engage, grow and monitor one’s audience across multiple accounts such as Facebook pages.
The features range from routine publishing and post scheduling through the smart calendar and draft posts management to content suggestion and social monitoring, engagement, and listening. Its analytics and report feature help measure social results across connected platforms.
With no free plan but a 14-day free trial, you get to experience a limited feature. However, the starting price for its paid plans is $59/month with single-user access to 10 major social profiles, while large agencies are required to contact them for a bespoke plan that suits their needs.
Competitor Analysis
You get to make data-driven competitive decisions as eClincher provides you with social data to monitor the performance of your competitors. Through this, you can stay ahead in the industry as your brand and rebrand.
Auto-posting with Queues & RSS
You get to set up queues to keep your best content in circulation while also connecting your blog’s RSS to your account to automate publishing.
Unified Social Inbox
You get to track messages, comments, new followers, and notifications as they drop in any of your accounts through this feature.
StackCompare.com
4.63 (Aggregate Score)
Capterra.com
4.7 (216 Reviews)
G2.com
4.7 (348 user reviews)
Sendible
Best for lead generation
Sendible is one of the major software that has evolved with the growth of various social media networks since 2009. Started as a content distribution facilitating tool, Sendible has grown to add several features that enable their client to publish posts, collaborate, and monitor social listening across multiple accounts.
Who wants to spend forever monitoring their social accounts? You guessed right. Nobody! Its special listening feature will save you real-time as you get alerted on key terms to jump on and schedule posts.
With its array of advanced features and the extensive list of platforms you can use with it, its starter plan offers one user, six profiles, and 100 posts per day for $29/month. Its most popular traction plan is $89/month with four users and 24 profiles and not less than 200 posts per day.
The Scale plan is put at $199/month with access to 7 users and 49 profiles. Larger organizations are required to contact them for their customized plan. All plans have a 14-day free trial, and you get an additional six to seven profiles on every new user added. No crime in a trial first, right?
Social Listening
Keep track of your brand, competitors, and customized key industry terms to optimize your content sharing activity. You are also able to stay abreast of your followers’ comments and respond quickly.
Team Collaboration
You can manage your team members well and create user workflows to approve content before they are published. You can also assign conversations to colleagues to handle.
Scheduling
You can tailor your clients’ posts to each network (including RSS feeds) to boost organic engagement. This feature allows you to share content individually or in batches through queues.
StackCompare.com
4.5 (Aggregate Score)
Capterra.com
4.5 (89 user reviews)
G2.com
4.5 (702 user reviews)
Loomly
Best for large team collaboration
If affordability were a name for a tool, Loomly would contest for a shout as its comprehensive features are arguably worth more than its pricing. It enables you to collaborate efficiently to make your brand a success.
Loomly gives you post ideas based on trending topics, RSS feeds, events, holidays, and more. It also automatically generates post and ad previews for you before publishing.
Although with a 15-day free trial, Loomly’s base plan is $25/month with two users and ten accounts offering unlimited content, core features, and hashtag suggestions. Just as with other tools, the more quid you are willing to drop, the more services you enjoy. It also offers an enterprise pricing option that affords full access to its services.
Campaign Optimization
With Loomly, you can identify trends in social media posts, campaigns, and date-related events, which help you decide optimal posting times to improve productivity.
Team Collaboration
You have access to collaborative review and approval workflow. You also get notifications on every team member’s updates or comments.
Analytics
You get to measure the performance of your posts once published to identify which topics and content attracted more engagement. Consequently, you can loop the information from the result back into your campaign planning process.
StackCompare.com
4.5 (Aggregate Score)
Capterra.com
4.7 (427 user reviews)
G2.com
4.6 (828 user reviews)
Hootsuite
Best for analytics
Old but gold, Hootsuite is arguably the biggest media tool with over 15 million individual users and over 800 Fortune 1000 companies. This is possible as a result of its robust analytical tool and unmatched publishing feature.
Being in the market since 2008 means Hootsuite has hacked the media management industry as it offers all-embracing services. It is an all-in-one software for content curating and scheduling social return on investment measurement and more. Hootsuite has a free plan with one user, three profiles, and 30 scheduled updates.
The more bucks you can pay, the more services you enjoy. With its starting plan, which goes for $29/month, you get one user, ten profiles, and unlimited posting, while its Team and Business plans are pegged to $129 and $599 per month, respectively. Access to its strongest area – analytics – in full suite means you have to shell out more bucks.
Customizable Feeds
You can create specific streams with precise keywords. This enables you to monitor your profiles for mentions, new followers: hashtags, engagement, and more. It also targets users with your business.
Comprehensive Analytics
This helps you analyze trends and engagement against over 200 key performance indicators in real-time. You can also generate reports by exporting them as PDF, Excel, and more.
Educational Service
Through the Hootsuite Academy, you get trained on social media marketing to help arm you with skills to harness tools and your online presence for business growth. However, you need to pay for the certifications.
StackCompare.com
4.38 (Aggregate Score)
Capterra.com
4.3 (2708 user reviews)
G2.com
4.1 (3139 user reviews)
Sprout Social
Best for customer service
Sprout Social is arguably the top product for managing and scheduling social posts through a user-friendly platform. You can operate your networks at once through its simplified dashboard. Its powerful analytics tool enables you to dig deeper into various attributes of your followers, from their demography to geographical distributions.
Asides from its publishing features, it has listening and engagement tools. Its unique quality is its automated messaging options to meet customers’ service, making it the best fit for customer service.
In terms of pricing, the product is on the high side with its lowest monthly rate put at $99 (for a standard plan having one user and five accounts) with no free plan, while the professional and advanced plans (one user and ten accounts) go for $149 and $249 per month respectively. The big perks lay in that all plans have unlimited posts and offer the longest free trial package – 30 days.
Engagement
Besides its brand monitoring and listening tools, the all-in-one smart inbox allows you to seamlessly unify all your media messages into a single stream and incoming messages to provide quick responses. Its message spike alerts notify you of cases of increased message volume to respond timely to crises and other urgent scenarios.
Team Reports
Assess the promptness of users’ response to social messages across divergent periods using presentation-ready reports. You can analyze your team performance through this feature for improved productivity.
Social Customer Relations Management
This enables you to track conversation histories with clients and obtain requisite contact details to meet customer’s needs.
StackCompare.com
4.25 (Aggregate Score)
Capterra.com
4.5 (458 user reviews)
G2.com
4.3 (1482 user reviws)
How to choose the best social media management tools
Comfort and value for money may be the new currency. However, as there are hundreds of social applications, a similar number exists for their management products which you can download and install for personal or business purposes. Swimming in the sea options to get your perfect fit will be laborious and enervating.
We ease this burden by sieving through the many options in the market. We evaluated each product based on compatibility, features, accounts & posts, and value. We scored them each on a scale of 5 to help you decide which solution best meets your needs.
Most products provide access through multiple platforms to ease their usage on various gadgets. At the home, office, or even on the go, users want to log in to their dashboard to attend to tasks. As a result, media management services are made accessible via web, iOS, Android, and extensions of popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.
Of course, the best social media management tools offer content scheduling and publishing features. However, there are additional features such as engagement, collaboration, social monitoring and listening, analytics, and reporting.
The number of social media profiles connected to a media management solution varies, just as the number of social platforms available on them. Besides, while some products allow for multiple users and unlimited posting, others have limits set.
Additionally, the best social media management tools should offer comprehensive features at a competitive price. Highly-rated competitors will provide enticing offers with customized packages having advanced features for various business sizes.
Product Features
eClincher
- Competitor analysis
- Advanced analytics
- Collaboration tools
Sensible
- Multiple campaigns
- Seamless Collaboration
- Keyword notifications
Loomy
- Content suggestions
- Topnotch team features
- Campaign optimization
Hootsuite
- App directory connections
- Strong analytics tools
- Free plan option
Sprout Social
- Customer support
- Powerful analytics
- 30-day free trial
Alternative Options
Similar Services
Frequently Asked Questions
Free software has limited features. However, when it comes to doing the basics at no cost till forever, Zoho Social, Hootsuite and Buffer, are your best bet. With Zoho, you get access to a user with seven accounts and unlimited posts.
Several tools can lay claim to this. However, VSCO, InShot, Later, FilmoraGo, SEMrush, Hootsuite, and SkedSocial are strongly suggested.
With over fifteen million individual users and more than 800 Fortune 1000 companies as its customers, there is no doubt that Hootsuite is worth every cent spent on it. Its extensive publishing, engagement, listening tools, advanced analytics features, and more complement its high price. Besides, the socio-demographic feature of its clients implies a high prevalence of large agencies and small businesses.
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