Tools make reaching social media marketing goals possible. Whether you’re a soloprenuer or a multinational enterprise, it’s nearly impossible to manage a social media marketing program without using 3rd party tools.
During your journey through the 3D chess of social media tool options, you’ll have many decisions to make: Which tool should you start with? Should you use specialized or multi-purpose tools? What features distinguish basic from intermediate to advanced and when should you upgrade?
With the help of Emeric Ernoult (CEO of AgoraPulse, which is included in the list), we’ve updated our list of social media marketing management tools to help lead you in the direction of answering those questions. The list below contains information on 22 of the best social media marketing management tools, platforms and services to help manage and scale your online marketing efforts on the social web.
How to use the list: To help you navigate the list, we’ve split it into two segments:
- Self-service tools (between $10 to $200 per month, many of which offer free trials)
- Enterprise tools (typically starting at $1,000 per month, that require a demo with their team to get started)
Which is the best tool for you? Typically, self-service tools are best suited for small and medium businesses and enterprise tools are best suited for large organizations. However, there are exceptions to every rule, so we urge you to research and tools that best meet your company’s needs.
SELF SERVICE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TOOLS
1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social provides great reports for social accounts and shows social content and monitored keyword searches in one stream. You can schedule content on all your accounts with a convenient publishing system and manage your Social messages on the go with a mobile app available on iOs and Android. Supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Pricing starts at $59/user/month.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the leader in the Social Media Marketing Management space. It offers everything a Social Media manager needs from publishing, to monitoring, including reports and team collaboration features. Contrary to Sprout Social, it displays all your Social Media accounts in multiple streams. Some users prefer the unified stream approach of Sprout Social and Agorapulse, some like the multiple stream approach. Really a matter of personal preference. Hootsuite also provides a mobile app to manage Social streams on the go.
Hootsuite offers a free plan, paid plans start at $9/month.
3. AgoraPulse
Agorapulse is a social media management toolkit for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, supporting contest applications, monitoring, CRM and one-click, customizable ppt reports. All social content is funneled into an ’email-like’ inbox feature and syncs accounts in real time while retaining past conversations and social data from fans & followers.
Pricing starts at $29 per month.
4. Buffer
Buffer is the pioneer of Social Media publishing. It was the first software to introduce the queue publishing system allowing its users to schedule content accross most social networks without having to individually schedule them. It covers all Social Networks except for Instagram, and is definitely the best publishing system out there. Buffer offers a free version.
Paid plans start at $9 per month.
5. Sendible
Sendible is a Social Media marketing platform supporting 30+ networks with services for accounts/profiles, messages and social content, social contacts, content discovery, engagement, blog content and promotion, monitoring, and analytics. Sendible also provides a white label version for agencies.
Pricing starts at $59 per month.
6. Post Planner
PostPlanner is a publishing solution for Facebook and Twitter. It allows to schedule posts at specific times or add them to a queue. The most unique feature of PostPlanner is its “viral content” feature. In a nutshell, you can see the most viral photos, videos and linked from pages in your industry and use them on your own Social accounts to increase your engagement.
Pricing starts at $9 per month.
7. Edgar
Edgar is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to recycle categorized social media updates and re-post them later automatically to reach more fans & followers.
Pricing starts at $49 per month.
8. Rignite
Rignite is an all-in-one social media management platform, covering daily posting, goal-based campaigns, and analytics data. Its unique staple†is the campaign based posting feature that allows you to set a specific set of posts to promote a product, an event or a promotion and track the results of that campaign.
Pricing starts at $28 per month.
9. ScheduGram
Schedugram is an Instagram post scheduler, with support for multiple accounts and bulk uploads. Schedugram is one of the very few apps that make it possible†to schedule posts on Instagram via a web interface.
Pricing starts at $20 per month.
10. Oktopost
Oktopost is Social media management platform for B2B marketers, focused on delivering and measuring clicks and conversions for lead generation campaigns.
Pricing starts at $55 per month.
11. Communit
Communit is a Twitter CRM that provides support for community management, influencer identification, customer communication, multiple profiles, tweet scheduling, and more.
Pricing starts at $25 per month.
ENTERPRISE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SOFTWARE & TOOLS
12. Shoutlet
Shoutlet manages social media marketing communications- building, engaging, and measuring, support for multiple accounts and platforms, social CRM and e-commerce for Facebook, and email marketing.
13. Spredfast
Spredfast is an enterprise social media management system for managing, monitoring, and measuring across multiple social media channels, with a white label option for agencies. Recommended for large enterprises and large agencies.
14. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is a Social media marketing platform and consulting service for marketers and agencies in B2B and B2C markets. It provides social media audience research, acquisition, content promotion, and measurement tools. Recommended for large enterprises.
15. Oracle SRM
Oracle SRM is Social Relationship Management platform offering a suite of tools- Oracle Social Marketing Cloud Service, Oracle Social Network, and Oracle Social Data. Oracle SRM was started after the acquisition of Vitrue and Involver by Oracle. Recommended for large enterprises.
16. Janrain
Janrain is a customer Identity Management platform that supports customer acquisition across multiple devices, recognizes customer profiles wherever they are, and provides accurate customer data for highly targeted marketing campaigns. Recommended for large websites needing to manage social logins at scale.
17. SocialFlow
SocialFlow is a social media management platform that handles content publishing schedules, goal-oriented social advertising, and intelligent reporting and licensing. Recommended for mid-size enterprises.
18. Engagor
Engagor is an enterprise class social media management solution, which enables posting and scheduling on every major social network, real-time monitoring, team performance tracking, legal compliance assurance,†and analytics. Recommended for mid-size enterprises.
19. Falcon Social
Falcon Social includes the usual social media management features, along with team tracking and permissions, competitor listening, and more. Designed for large enterprises.
20. Viralheat
ViralHeat is a content marketing and social media management platform, supporting digital marketers with social media monitoring, publishing, analytics, content intelligence, and reporting.
21. Conversocial
Conversocial is a Cloud-based solution for managing social media customer support across multiple networks through multiple teams as part of a larger customer service channel. Recommended for mid-size enterprises needing a solid social media customer service tool.
22. Sysomos
Sysomos is a social media business intelligence tool, monitoring social networks, blogs, and forums to analyze how brand and products are portrayed in them. Recommended for large enterprises needing a comprehensive listening solution.
Getting Started with Social Media Marketing Management Tools and Software
Although the most robust platforms – the ones with every kind of tool imaginable – might seem like the best, that’s not always the case. Tool selection should be entirely dependent on the unique needs of your organization.
What social media marketing dashboards, software and management tools from the list above have you tested or used? Reviews, observations, insights and questions are greatly appreciated!
Obviously, tools are only as good as the expertise of the people using them. TopRank Marketing is always interested in helping companies develop their social media marketing strategy and as part of our consulting services, we can help identify the right tools for implementing a successful social media marketing program.
If there is an enterprise level tool dedicated to social media marketing management that you feel we’ve left out, please be sure to share it in the comments.
Top image via Shutterstock
