The Best Social Media Management Tools for Business

Are you looking for the best social media management tools for your business, agency or blog?

Recent figures show that around 63% of small businesses use social media as a marketing tool, and it’s easy to see why.

Social media has now become a necessity for many businesses. Companies’ love to find the best solution to handle their marketing campaigns, especially their social media marketing (SMM), regardless of the disadvantages of these SMM solutions.

Various companies are scrambling to find the best solution for their social media presence to become ‘social businesses’. They are looking for solutions that will enable each team member to manage their social profile easily. Agencies are also searching for tools to manage their clients’ campaigns and social channels.

Companies are scrambling to find the best solution to handle their social media presence. Click To Tweet

Your business’s nature and the target audience you’re trying to reach and your social media strategy will determine the social network or social media platform that your company should use. For instance, Google My Business is paramount with some businesses, but not for others.

To effectively manage their social media accounts, businesses get lost comparing various social media management software to find the right one that meets their needs. They often miss the point in searching for the ‘ultimate weapon’ for their social networks. In SMM, it is not the tool that matters per se, but skill is more significant.

Therefore, social media managers need to learn to use these management platforms or browser extensions to manage social media profiles, schedule social media posts and create social media content. These social media management platforms also have their analytics invaluable to measure your social media posts’ performance.

Table of Contents

The Best Social Media Management Tools

Managing your social accounts on various social channels may seem overwhelming if you’re wearing over one hat in your business in addition to being the social media manager. But remember, social media can make or break your business.

Thankfully, many social media tools help you set, meet, and track your goals and growth on different social media channels. And I’ve had the privilege of using some of the best software out there.

These solutions come in all shapes and sizes, and what suits you best depends on your social media network needs and goals. These tools enable you to automate your posting schedule, analyse, better control and dive deeper into your social media accounts.

Some are free, and some cost a few dollars a month, to several hundred dollars a month or a year, depending on their price plans.

What makes great social media management software? With so many SMM apps to choose from, many of them with specific niche features. If you’re not sure which apps to use in the first place, here are some tips on how to choose the best social media platform for your business.

The best social media management tools are the ones that meet your teams’ or social media manager’s needs and help you achieve your goals. Compare them based on costs, user-friendliness, how easy it is to schedule content, the number of social platforms they can handle and technical support.

Some of these powerful tools have a wide range of basic and advanced features, such as:

social inbox
social media dashboard
marketing calendar
collaboration features for larger teams
analytics tools
content library
post scheduling tool
single user/collaboration tools
14 day free trial, and so on.

Some have features like unlimited scheduling that will help you schedule your content in advance, engage with your fans/followers, prepare reports, and more. Some are best for a business owner, others for digital marketing agencies and others for the customer. Some also have browser extensions, so you can use them when browsing other sites to curate content.

They help you manage your social profile and SMM campaigns from a single platform. They allow you to step up your social media marketing game and save time while doing so.

This post will teach you about the importance of social media management tools. You will also discover some of the best options available today. Each of the social media management tools I’ve used has pros and cons. But one thing you need to consider when making your choice is social media management software needs to help you, not hinder you.

I chose the best social media management software based on price, ease of use, platforms, social inbox and more. Some have been able to stand the test of time, and others were not so fortunate.

Social media managers need to learn to use these management platforms to manage social media profiles, schedule posts and create social media content. Click To Tweet

At the moment, here are a few of the notable ones in no particular order: Socialbakers, Sprout Social, Agorapulse, Sprinklr, Oracles Social Cloud, Spredfast, Hootsuite, CoSchedule, HubSpot, Salesforce Social Studio, Oktopost, eClincher, Buffer, Later, Zoho Social, Social Pilot, MeetEdgar, Tweetdeck, Mavsocial, Post Planner, and many more.

The above is not exhaustive, and I will not compare these tools today. Let’s leave that for another day, shall we?

Advantages of Social Media Management Tools

As mentioned before, when selecting the best tool for your business, you need to be conversant with your social media strategy, your goals, and how you intend to measure your ROI.

It is important to note that even if they label the solution you select as an ‘all-in-one platform’, no single software can do everything! So it would help if you integrate it with other tools depending on the core features you seek. Sometimes, you may need to combine two or more solutions for the best results.

The range of features of these tools varies a lot. Some excel in team collaboration, social monitoring, audience engagement, and social media scheduling. For others, their strengths or standout feature may lie in social media contests, social media analytics, social media planning, content calendar or customer relationship management.

Some of these tools are best used by the digital marketing team in your organisation. And some for different people with varying abilities and skillsets.

I chose the best social media management software based on price, ease of use, platforms, and more. Click To Tweet

Some offer a free trial period of various durations from 7-Day Free Trial to 30-Day Free Trial. Depending on the platform you choose, you may have access to either limited features or the platform’s full features.

Disadvantages of Social Media Management Tools

I intend to write reviews of all the tools I have tried to help you select the right SMM solution for your own business.

But be aware that because of various data privacy issues, the functionalities of some of these tools are not as extensive as before.

However, I discovered (as noted earlier) that it’s not the software that it’s important but the skill of the person handling the software. Therefore, my advice for small businesses is to select the SMM solution that meets their needs. And to become as proficient as possible in using the chosen software.

Free Social Media Management Tools

There is a famous saying that you get what you pay for. So if social media is an integral part of your marketing strategy, spend money on the right tools. I’m not saying that free social media management tools are inadequate.

The thing is that many of the vendors offering these free tools have paid versions where they incorporate all the bells and whistles that you need. So in most cases, it’s best to pay for their premium plans rather than the free plans.

Conclusion

Do you use any social media management tools as part of your social media marketing strategy? What features do you find more valuable, and what features are missing? Please share your thoughts with me on Twitter @ademolaabimbola or @mauconline. Catch you later.

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