Introduction
If you are a social media manager, you probably spend time signing in and out of multiple accounts—Probably for different clients, on different platforms. And so you also know that social media managers have to be extremely organized because they have to create unique posts for each client, remember the distinct preferences of each target market, use the right tone for each platform, and so much more all by themselves.
In a survey by Social Media Today, one social media manager said they manage approximately 40 different social media accounts. When asked about their biggest social media management challenge, one respondent said, “I think the biggest challenges I face are creating content for various accounts and multiple brands. It takes a lot of time to create the content that is needed to maintain a social media
Social media marketers have to manage not only multitasking and time management but, also, the ever-changing world of social media where trends sprout like weeds and vanish like smoke.
Social media management (SMM) tools give you a single, unified dashboard for all your social media accounts. They help you stay productive, make better use of social media, and reduce context switching and distractions.
Here are some of the best tools to help you manage social media accounts
Social media management tools typically provide features ranging from unified dashboards to customer monitoring and listening. We’ve selected five of our favorite networking tools based on their features, supported networks, and pricing.
1. Agropulse
An easy-to-use all-in-one social media scheduling, management, and monitoring platform — makes the tedious task of social media management a breeze.
Agorapulse is a social media management platform. It lets you automate posting, monitor interactions with your account, and gauge your performance—all in one dashboard.
Features and Benefits
Schedule and post to various accounts on social media
A single dashboard makes it easy to monitor and respond to messages and comments across all your accounts.
It can be helpful to know when your brand has been mentioned in social media posts
Affordable scheduling, reporting, and curating
SocialPilot allows social media managers and teams to organize the accounts they manage into groups, curate content for those groups, and automate posting. Built for busy teams that lack time to create and post content, Social Media Updater helps them achieve results—whether that’s sales, engagement, or branding—by automatically posting to social media.
Features and Benefits
- Organize the accounts you handle into separate categories
- You can automate organic posts and paid ads through the platform.
- Access all your social media accounts from a single inbox
- Curate content using customized feeds
Pricing
SocialPilot offers four paid plans: Professional ($30/month), Small Team ($50/month), Studio ($100/month), and Agency ($150/month), and it provides a 14-day free trial. You receive a 15% discount if you pay yearly.
3. Buffer
It is a social media dashboard for small business owners and social media marketers.
Buffer’s social media management dashboard helps you save time and stay productive by giving you a consolidated view of your social media accounts.
Features and Benefits
- Get insight into how you’re performing across all your social media accounts in a single dashboard
- Automate your posts so your messages live at ideal times per channel—Buffer suggests posting when there are fewer possible distractions to the audience (i.e., when there is less competition).
- Unseen messages, comments, or questions? Immediately respond to them on Buffer’s Engagement dashboard.
Pricing
Buffer is one of the more affordable social media management tools, with two tiers: Free and Essentials. It has a 14-day free trial on its Essentials plan (no credit card needed), after which it costs $6 per month. The site also has an optional monthly membership called Team that costs $6 per month for collaboration features.
4. BuzzSumo
An online tool to track and analyze social media — is a content curator.
BuzzSumo helps you find out what sorts of content do well on various social media platforms so that you can create a successful content strategy.
Features and Benefits
- Look out for the content that is getting the most traction in your industry (for instance, if you work in education, you can monitor content related to education to get ideas) and reshare it.
- Look for social media influencers who are achieving good results
- Get content inspiration by checking recent posts across Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
Pricing
BuzzSumo offers four plans: Free, Pro ($99/month), Plus ($179/month), and Large ($299/month), and it offers a 20% discount for annual payments. It also has a 30-day free trial period, with no credit card required.
5. Ripl
Photo and video content creation made interesting
Ripl makes posting and scheduling content a lot easier. Instead of using multiple tools to create, schedule, and monitor content, Ripl lets you do all that through its social tool.
Features and Benefits
- Ripl’s templates make it simple to create beautiful photo and video posts.
- Schedule your posts immediately after you create them
- You can easily access views statistics across accounts within the Ripl dashboard.
Pricing
Ripl charges $14.99 per month for its entry-level plan — with a 33 percent discount for customers who pay annually. Ripl also offers a 7-day free trial for first-time users.
2. SocialPilot