Top 10 Best Tools for Social Media Management in 2021: Ultimate Guide

Discover the top 10 best tools for social media management in 2021 with our ultimate guide. Master the art of managing your social media presence with these top-rated tools.

Introduction to Social Media Management

Introduction to Social Media Management

Social media management has become an essential tool for businesses to connect with their audience, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to their websites. With the ever-changing landscape of social media platforms, it’s crucial for businesses to have the right tools to effectively manage their social media presence.

In today’s digital age, social media management tools offer a range of features to help businesses streamline their social media marketing efforts. From scheduling posts to analyzing performance metrics, these tools are designed to make managing multiple social media accounts more efficient and effective.

The best social media management tools provide support for multiple social networks, including popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. They also offer powerful scheduling tools, detailed analytics, and cost-effective pricing plans to accommodate businesses of all sizes.

As social media continues to evolve, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into social media management tools is becoming increasingly important. AI-powered features can help businesses optimize their social media content and engage with their audience more effectively.

Overall, the best social media management tools are those that offer a comprehensive set of features to help businesses manage their social media presence efficiently and effectively. With the right tools in place, businesses can leverage the power of social media to connect with their audience and achieve their marketing goals.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a complete social media management platform that includes scheduling messages, inbox monitoring, and managing posts. It covers all your bases for social media management needs, allowing you to schedule messages, create and manage potential posts, monitor various inboxes, run boosted post advertising campaigns, and more. It fully supports X (formerly Twitter), and also supports Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. With Hootsuite, you can reply to tweets, keep an eye on your mentions, and see what people are posting about your competitors through your social media management app.

Buffer

Buffer is one of the longest-running social media tools aimed primarily at scheduling posts, although it’s gone through multiple updates, shifts, and iterations to keep up with the times. It now supports Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Mastodon, Pinterest, and Google Business Profile, as well as integrating with Shopify so you can see how your social media posts affect your store. Free users can connect up to three social accounts, including Facebook Pages and groups, though you’re limited to scheduling 10 posts for each channel. While Buffer’s free plan is good enough for small businesses to line up a week or so’s worth of posts, if you want a more complete social media management solution or to control more than three social media accounts at once, you’ll need to pay $6/month per social channel for the Essentials plan. This gives you access to detailed analytics and engagement features, which let you interact with your audience directly from Buffer—just don’t expect to be able to reply to posts on X anymore. (Also, if you want to bring team members on board, Buffer goes up to $12/month per social channel.) In addition to the core scheduling, analytics, and audience management features, Buffer also offers its own “link in bio” service called Start Page. This allows you to quickly create and update a small mobile-friendly website with your latest content or even products you want to sell. It’s not a new idea, but it’s handy having it included as part of your social media management app—especially as it allows you to get real-world results from your social media posts. Like many other social media apps, Buffer has added an AI Assistant. It can generate posts, rephrase your drafts, and otherwise do all the other AI content generating you’d expect. It’s well integrated, though I found it didn’t really take my instructions to shorten things or make things more casual on board. You may find it nice to have, but Buffer has a lot more going for it. With Zapier, it’s easy to link any other service you use to Buffer. For example, you can automatically add new blog posts to your schedule, either directly from WordPress or through an RSS feed, or add new Instagram photos to Buffer. Learn how to automate Buffer with Zapier, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows. Buffer new items in an RSS feed Buffer price: Free plan includes 1 user, 3 accounts, and 10 queued posts per profile; from $6/month per social channel for the Essentials plan that offers 2,000 queued posts per profile; from $12/month per social channel for the Team plan that offers unlimited users.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management tool that offers a range of features to help businesses effectively manage their social media presence. It provides scheduling, monitoring, and analytics tools to help businesses streamline their social media efforts. With support for multiple social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, Sprout Social allows businesses to manage all their social media accounts in one place.

In addition to scheduling and posting content, Sprout Social also offers advanced analytics to help businesses track the performance of their social media campaigns. This includes detailed reporting on engagement, reach, and audience demographics, allowing businesses to gain valuable insights into their social media performance.

Furthermore, Sprout Social provides social listening tools, allowing businesses to monitor conversations and mentions across social media platforms. This can be invaluable for reputation management and staying on top of customer feedback and industry trends.

Overall, Sprout Social is a powerful social media management tool that offers a comprehensive set of features to help businesses effectively manage their social media presence. With its user-friendly interface and robust features, Sprout Social is a valuable asset for businesses looking to make the most of their social media marketing efforts.

Conclusion and Recommendations

In conclusion, the landscape of social media management tools is constantly evolving, especially in the wake of recent changes to popular platforms like Twitter. The six best social media management tools highlighted in this article offer a range of features to help businesses effectively manage their social media presence. From straightforward scheduling to robust analytics and AI integration, these tools cater to a variety of needs and budgets.

For businesses looking for a simple and cost-effective solution for scheduling social media posts, Buffer is an excellent choice. Its user-friendly interface and affordable pricing make it a popular option for small businesses and individuals. On the other hand, Hootsuite offers a comprehensive suite of features, including X support, making it ideal for businesses looking for a complete social media management platform.

Regardless of the specific needs of your business, it’s important to thoroughly evaluate the features and pricing of each social media management tool to find the best fit. Additionally, considering the ever-changing nature of social media, it’s crucial to stay informed about new developments and features offered by these tools to ensure that your business stays ahead of the curve.

In conclusion, the best tools for social media management are those that offer comprehensive scheduling, analytics, and monitoring features. It’s important to choose a platform that fits your specific business needs and budget to effectively manage and optimize your social media presence.