Between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat and more, keeping track of all of your brand’s social media accounts can feel like herding cats (and it’s not nearly as cute).
But you don’t have to go at it alone. There are lots of apps, platforms and websites out there for properly managing multiple social accounts.
This includes schedulers, reporting tools, and social media management software that ensures you’re engaging with your followers regularly (and that no post, comment or direct message is missed) — and more.
With these tools, including some free social media management tools, you can gather up those kitties in no time. Let’s start right meow.
Bonus: Read the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.
What is social media management?
Social media management is the process of handling your presence on all the social media platforms your brand uses. It’s not just for big corporations either — small businesses and solo creators need to manage their social media as well.
Managing social media includes planning and scheduling posts, interacting with followers, answering queries, keeping up with current trends, and analyzing your performance.
If that sounds like a lot — that’s because it is! Using technology (a.k.a. social media management tools) to manage social media can help you:
* Create and schedule social media posts in advance
* Answer comments and DMs from multiple profiles in a single inbox
* Track your analytics across accounts and platforms from one place
* Generate and share comprehensive performance reports
* Automate audience and industry research (through social listening and brand monitoring)
* Keep your creative assets organized and available to your whole team
* Improve your social customer support processes, response times, and customer satisfaction scores
A social media management tool can be anything from a simple photo editing app to a one-stop, do-it-all dashboard (*cough* like Hootsuite).
The big takeaway here? Social media marketing tools help marketers, business owners and content creators spend less time on the operational aspects of managing social media (i.e., clicking through countless tabs to keep up with profiles on different networks) and more time on creative and strategic work.
These tools are also essential for maintaining a healthy work-life balance while handling social media.
21 of the best social media management tools for 2023
Here are the greatest tools out there for managing your social media.
Social media management tools for scheduling and publishing
Ask any social media manager, and they’ll say the hardest part of the job is not being online 24/7.
Scheduling tools that automatically post content, even when you’re not online, are essential for an uninterrupted workflow (and that much-needed unplugged time).
1. Hootsuite’s Planner
We’re a big fan of Hootsuite’s content planner (shocker). This intuitive calendar works as a social media scheduler, but it’s not just for creating a posting schedule.
It also provides insights into the optimal time to do so — when your audience will be most active (and most likely to interact with your content).
Hootsuite plans start at $99 per month.
2. RSS Autopublisher
This platform will automatically publish RSS feeds to your social (so, for example, you can set it up to automatically share a blog post to Facebook and LinkedIn the moment it’s published on your blog).
Source: Synaptive
It’s about $7 a month but free with Hootsuite’s Enterprise plan.
3. Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish
Best Time to Publish is a feature that lives within Hootsuite Analytics.
It shows you personalized suggestions for the optimal days and times to publish your posts (on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn) based on a detailed analysis of your past performance.
The Best Time to Publish feature can be dialed into your specific goals.
The times suggested will vary depending on whether you want to build awareness, increase engagement, or drive traffic.
Hootsuite plans start at $99 per month.
Social media management tools for analytics and social listening
It’s all about the numbers: tracking your analytics and using the data to improve your social performance is a game changer.
Here are the apps to help you do it.
4. Hootsuite’s Analytics
Surprise, it’s Hootsuite again! Our analytics tool allows you to view stats on all your social accounts in one place.
The platform also provides users with ways to optimize the data — to build awareness, boost engagement, drive traffic, etc.
Hootsuite plans start at $99 per month.
5. Sprinklr Social Listening
Although it’s one of the most expensive social media management tools out there, Sprinklr offers some powerful social listening capabilities. They’re only available for enterprises with a big budget, though.
Sprinklr customers can listen in on millions of conversations every day using AI-powered social listening software. Monitor keywords, phrases, hashtags, and more to gather actionable information about your brand or industry.
Note: You can perform many of the same social listening tasks with Hootsuite Streams and Hootsuite Insights (powered by Brandwatch). Plus, Hootsuite costs much less than Sprinklr.
6. Panoramiq Watch
This Instagram monitoring tool is ideal for businesses looking to take their socials to the next level—it’s all about keeping an eye on your competitors.
You can use it to watch specific hashtags, compare analytics and manage posts.
Source: Synaptive
Panoramiq Watch has two plans. Under the standard plan, you can monitor up to 10 hashtags and 10 competitors for $8 a month. With the professional plan, you pay $15 a month to monitor 20 hashtags and 20 competitors.
The tool is free with Hootsuite’s Enterprise plan.
7. Panoramiq Insights
This platform offers an in-depth look at your Instagram analytics, including stats on your followers, activity, posts and stories.
Panoramiq Insights even offers downloadable PDF and CSV reports if you really want to geek out.
Source: Synaptive
This platform has a standard $8 a month plan that includes insights for two Instagram accounts. Each additional account costs an extra $4 a month.
The tool is free with Hootsuite’s Enterprise plan.
8. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a digital consumer intelligence platform that gives historical and real-time data relevant to you and your brand.
It analyzes images to recognize figures that you might care about and can compare the interests of different groups in your audience.
Source: Brandwatch
Brandwatch starts at $1,000 per month, and it’s ideal for folks who are all about the numbers—it’s very data-heavy, as opposed to visual.
Hootsuite offers a free Brandwatch integration for all Enterprise and Business plan users.
9. Hootsuite’s Streams
With Hootsuite, you can create streams (custom feeds that show up in your dashboard) to track all the important conversations in your field.
Stay on top of your business — and one step ahead of the competition. You can filter by keyword, hashtag, and location. Streams are laser-targeted to your needs.
Hootsuite plans start at $99 per month.
9. Cloohawk
Cloohawk monitors your Twitter, then suggests “hacks” for better engagement and growth, plus tips on how to get you there.
It’s like a Tweet doctor: diagnosing issues and prescribing fixes. A fix might be using the right hashtags, posting trending stories or reposting your old posts.
Bonus: Cloohawk’s bot will auto-retweet anything deemed relevant to your brand.
Source: Cloohawk
Hootsuite offers a free Cloohawk integration for all users.
11. Nexalogy
This app is a social media monitoring and discovery platform. In other words, it takes data from social media that can help you develop a marketing strategy.
Nexalogy can extract summaries with information, including objects, foods, events and people from images, and has an interactive timeline so you can see when folks are most active. It’s useful for identifying crises in both politics and business.
Source: Nexalogy
And it’s free!
12. Archivesocial
Have you ever had a social post just disappear on you? Archivesocial records all the action on your platforms, so you’ll never lose a post, like or comment.
It’s especially useful for legal reasons—online recordkeeping is notoriously fickle, and apps like these ensure evidence is preserved.
Archivesocial’s most basic plan is $349 a month.
13. Statsocial
Statsocial supports marketing initiatives by providing market data (from a database of 300 million humans) to help inform your strategy.
The platform can identify key influencers in your industry, identify your audience’s interests and target specific individuals with surveys.
Source: Statsocial
Statsocial is free through Hootsuite.
Social media management tools for customer service
Okay, so you’ve got your followers’ attention. Now it’s time to keep it.
Stay on your audience’s good side by providing first-rate customer service with the help of these tools.
14. Hootsuite’s Inbox
Our platform’s social inbox is one of the best (totally unbiased, we promise) social media customer service tools.
It organizes all your social conversations in one place, so you’ll never miss a question, comment or share. It sure beats clicking in and out of apps all day.
Hootsuite plans start at $99 per month.
15. Heyday
Heyday is an artificial intelligence chatbot for retailers that integrates with Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and many retail-specific tools (like Shopify, Magento and Salesforce).
Heyday’s smart technology can answer customer inquiries instantly and recommend products. If the query is too complicated for a robot, it will automatically go to a human instead.
Source: Heyday
Heyday starts at $49 per month.
16. Sparkcentral
Sparkcentral gathers all your social conversations in one dashboard. You can answer inquiries or reply to comments on multiple social platforms from one centralized dashboard — alongside emails, text messages, and other, more traditional, customer service interactions.
You can easily automate, prioritize and delegate using Sparkcentral. The platform keeps data on your success so you can see how much of a difference it’s making.
Learn more about Sparkcentral and book a demo.
Social media management tools for content creation
Strategy aside, good quality content goes a long way. Keep your images, text and video up to snuff using these apps.
17. OwlyWriter AI
Starting off this category strong with one more from Hootsuite. (What can we say? We’re the best at social media management).
OwlyWriter AI is Hootsuite’s built-in social media caption writer and idea generator. Just give it a few words, and it’ll generate captions, hashtags, and content ideas for you in seconds.
18. Copysmith
For writing support, Copysmith is your hero. This platform can get your product pages ranked higher online and your posts a larger audience on social media. (After all, SEO and algorithms are technology, and so is this software: bot game recognizes bot game). This platform is ideal for brands with big marketing teams.
Copysmith’s Starter plan is $19 a month and comes with 50 credits, 20 plagiarism checks, in-app support, and integrations. Its Professional plan is $59 a month and includes 400 credits and 100 plagiarism checks.
19. Adobe Creative Cloud Express
Adobe Express’s social-friendly templates make designing eye-catching, engaging posts, videos and stories easy.
Awesome visuals are an essential part of any strategy, and this is one of the best apps out there for photo and video editing.
Source: Adobe Express
This social media tool has tons of free stock images, templates and effects.
The basic plan is free. Premium (which includes more images, branding options, millions of stock images and 100GB of storage space) is about $10 monthly.
20. Fastory
Fastory can up your mobile advertising game with templates for short games you can customize for your brand.
Their game catalog includes swipe quizzes, running games, photo contests and polls. This adds an interactive element to your social media and can increase your follower’s engagement with your posts.
Source: Fastory
Fastory’s pricing starts at $499 a month.
21. Later
Later is a social media management platform similar to Hootsuite (you can compare Later and Hootsuite here).
One major difference is that Later has historically focused mostly on Instagram. That’s why Hootsuite tends to be the preferred solution for brands looking to manage profiles across many networks.
However, if you want to give your Instagram feed a little razzle-dazzle, Later has some neat extras. They offer an Instagram feed planner that lets you visualize exactly how your Instagram grid will look after you post. It’s a nice way to give your grid a quick rebrand.
Social media collaboration tools
Teamwork makes the dream work, right?
Social teams typically have a ton of balls in the air at once, and communication technology helps to make sure nothing gets dropped.
22. Slack
If there’s one thing this app doesn’t do, it’s, well… slack.
Slack is a secure communication tool that’s super useful for teams. You can divide group messages by topic, send DMs, and even message yourself notes.
Slack also supports video and audio chat. You can even collaborate on group documents within the platform (and send GIFs, a requirement in any hip fun workspace).
Source: Slack
Slack’s free plan has all the basic features, including 10,000 searchable messages, 10 apps and integrations and video calling.
The paid versions start at about $7 USD per team member per month.
23. Airtable automations
This tech is like magic — you can program in your workflow and automate certain tasks.
Airtable has integrations for Google workspaces, Facebook, Twitter and Slack. You can do things like automatically email a team member when a specific spreadsheet field is updated, and get real-time status reports on every project.
While this software may sound complicated, it’s user-friendly and great for beginners. The automations can grow more complex as you learn more about the technology.
The basic plan is free. The Plus and Pro plans are $10 and $20 per month, respectively.
24. Trello
Trello is the ultimate to-do list.
The platform’s boards, lists and cards help to manage and assign tasks and keep your team on track. Checking off items using this app is extremely satisfying.
Source: Trello
Trello is free to use.
Save time on social media with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can manage all your accounts, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.
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With files from Britny Kutuchief.
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The post 24 Social Media Management Tools for Great Results in 2023 appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.
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