Social media can be pretty overwhelming sometimes.
Especially if you’re running an agency or managing the social media accounts of other businesses.
How do you juggle and manage the many hats you need to wear as a social media manager?
Creating content, scheduling shares, engaging with followers, repurposing content, sharing others’ content, community management… This list could go on forever.
The only way to effectively manage social media at scale is with the use of social media management tools that can improve your efficiency, and over time get you better results.
The tools we discuss below help you do that. Many of them have similar features, however they are all different in terms of the BEST way to use them. Choose the ones that fit your your needs and give them a whirl.
Here are 17 of the best social media management tools available;
Hootsuite is an enterprise level social media management tool used by over 10 million professionals. They can help you schedule and analyze your social media marketing campaigns.
Furthermore, Hootsuite has a number of team tools to help your team create content for social networks. Compare: Hootsuite vs Buffer.
Agora Pulse lets you schedule content for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all in one place. Plus, Agora Pulse has dynamic reports for all three social networks. You can market content and run promotions from Agora as well.
SocialOomph helps you schedule content on Facebook and Twitter on an automated schedule… It’s one of the most powerful social media management tools on the market. Additionally, you can create welcome messages on Twitter. Socialoomph has a number of premium options that allow you to schedule photos, use Facebook, and LinkedIn.
4. EveryPost
EveryPost lets you curate visual content, schedule customized posts, and share content to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr. This is useful for posting from your Android and iPhone devices.
5. Bit.ly
Bit.ly is a url shortener and click reporting tool all in one. It’s great for Twitter with short posts, and also tracking the clicks to help you understand how well your content converts traffic to your website.
6. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is the complete social media management tool for social media agencies because you can use this premium social media management tool for multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts.
7. Crowd Booster
Crowd Booster is a social media analytics tool to help you optimize your social media marketing decisions. Instead of doing the analytics manually, get it automatically updated on a consistent basis. You can even create custom reports that can be useful for clients. Finally, use the reporting information to schedule Tweets for optimal times.
8. Edgerank Checker
Edgerank Checker, from Social Bakers, helps you understand the best ways to optimize your Facebook content. You can create custom content that increases engagement and optimizes your newsfeed response.
9. SocialBro
SocialBro is a Twitter marketing tool. SocialBro helps you with all of your Twitter needs from scheduling content, to reports, to creating ads on Twitter.
10. Tailwind
Tailwind is a comprehensive tool to help you with your Pinterest marketing efforts. This is the official partner for Pinterest marketing.
Tailwind helps you create multi-board pins, bulk uploads, and calendar scheduling. They can also help you optimize the best times to send your pins to get the highest engagement.
Finally, Tailwind was designed to help teams manage multiple accounts. This makes it an ideal tool for agencies providing social media services.
11. Buffer
Buffer is a great tool to schedule social media posts from links you share across the web. You can share posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest.
12. Oktopost
Oktopost is a social media management tool focused on generating leads for businesses. This is in comparison to what they believe is lacking with Hootsuite – Hootsuite helps businesses schedule content, whereas Oktopost helps businesses gain money.
13. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar recycles your posts, so you can reach a larger percentage of traffic from recycled content later.
14. IFTT
IFTTT is an automation tool that is simple and easy to use. You just select the recipe you want in order to market your business on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
15. Tweepi
Tweepi will help you find targeted users on Twitter, and then stay connected to them by interacting on a regular basis.
16. Socedo
Socedo is an automated social media lead generation tool that works with Twitter and LinkedIn to help you find the right leads from social media. Find qualified leads and then add them to your sales funnel.
17. SocialFlow
SocialFlow helps you manage paid, owned, and earned social media campaigns in one place. Social Flow recommends specific posts, pins, or tweets for you to promote. Then you can use keywords and segmentation to analyze these campaigns.
Final thoughts
Choosing the right social media management tools for your business requires you to have a good understanding of what your needs are. While a lot of the programs here seem very cool, you might not need all the widgets and doo-dads to succeed.
Instead, your business needs to focus on which tools can improve what you are already doing on social media currently. When you do that, you have a much better chance of using the right social media management tool for your business.
Guest Author: As Founder and Director of Shout Web Strategy, Michael Jenkins is at the forefront of social media marketing. Since it’s inception in 2010, Shout has built a strong reputation as Australia’s leading social media agency.