Social media forms one of the central elements of any marketing strategy in 2024. And it’s no longer enough to just be vaguely active on one or two channels.
Today, brands need to strategically follow an audience that’s increasingly fragmented across channels.
And they need to be ever more specific, to target their customers’ interests exactly and satisfy their needs. This may mean creating different profiles on the same channel. A common example: Regional accounts run by a global brand.
However, managing all of this manually can easily become overwhelming. Especially since most social media platforms are consumer-focused. Hence, they don’t really cater to the needs of business users – other than ad buyers – and they certainly don’t integrate with each other.
That’s where cross-platform social media management tools come in.
In 2023, there’s a massive diversity of solutions to help you manage multiple social profiles, schedule posts, run analytics, and so much more.
To help you get an overview and decide which platform best fits your needs, here are the 10 best social media management tools in 2024.
1 – Sprout Social
Heading this list is Sprout Social, a well-known social media management tool. It’s a comprehensive solution for doing serious business on social.
There’s a single inbox for social messages – and your entire team can easily work with it. In terms of publishing, your team can do everything from planning and creating content to delivering entire campaigns in one place.
Sprout Social doesn’t just deliver reports and statistics. With its Social Listening functionality, it can actually feed social insights such as trending topics right back into your content strategy planning.
Its employee advocacy facilities deserve a special mention. These features makes it a breeze to use your employees to increase your reach and get a serious signal boost.
Sprout Social’s standard plan is $249 a month for a single user and includes 5 profiles. More can be added at little extra cost. Additional users are $199/month each. The “Professional” ($399/month, $299 for additional users) and “Advanced” ($499/month, $349 for additional users) plans include unlimited profiles and a host of extra features, including chatbot automation. There’s also a 30-day free trial.
2 – Hootsuite
Another ubiquitous social media management tool is Hootsuite. It’s one of the most comprehensive and well-known solutions out there and centralizes all the functionalities that businesses need to juggle multiple social media accounts.
Hootsuite offers a central dashboard that gives you a quick overview of your accounts’ key performance metrics, helping you identify your top posts on different platforms and identify trends and audience preferences. It also offers detailed analytics insights to help you craft content that resonates with your followers.
Unlike other options on this list, Hootsuite offers no free plan. There’s a 30 day free trial, though, that allows you to give different features a test spin. After that, pricing starts at $49 per month (billed annually) for one user and 10 social media accounts. The Team plan ($249 per month) includes three users and additional functionalities. Some handy features, like inbound tagging and content libraries, are only available in the Business tier ($739 per month).
3 – Buffer
Buffer is a solid all-round solution with attractive features and convincing pricing options. The platform’s biggest plus point is its straightforward, intuitive user interface – its tagline is “simpler social media tools for busy people.”
In addition, Buffer also earns brownie points with its real-time analytics and seamless Google Analytics integration. One of its niftiest individual features is its “Top Post” functionality. Here, you can compare various types of content across platforms to pinpoint what your audience responds to most.
Buffer offers separate tools for post scheduling, analytics, and engagement. It also recently added a landing page builder. There is a free basic plan for three channels and one user. For advanced features, it’s $5 per month and channel, and $10 per month and channel on its “Team” plan, which also allows multiple users. “Agency” includes 10 channels for $100, with the option of adding more for $5 each.
4 – Zoho Social
Next up, Zoho Social is the social media management tool that comes with Zoho suite, which also includes tools such as Zoho Workspace, Zoho CRM, and Zoho Campaigns. If you’re already a Zoho user, a major plus point of this tool is how well it integrates with the company’s other business platforms.
In itself, Zoho Social is a fantastic way to manage your brand’s multiple social media channels. You can set up a posting calendar, monitor your target keywords, and track your posts’ performance.
What’s more, Zoho also provides collaboration features for your entire marketing team.
Standard plans start at $10/month (when paid annually), which includes 9 channels and 1 user. The Pro plan includes lots more features and runs to $30/month. The recently-added Premium plan gives you 10 channels, 3 users, and all advanced functionalities and integrations for $40/month. Pro and Premium can be extended with more users and brands, too.
In addition, Zoho Social also provides special plans for marketing agencies. These start at $230/month and include features such as brand and communications management for client lists.
5 – SEMrush
In 5th place on our list is SEMrush. Wait. What? Isn’t that an SEO tool?
True. However, SEMrush also includes a range of powerful social media management features for platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google My Business.
SEMrush allows you to schedule posts and manage ads across platforms. Subsequently, you can track their performance and assess engagement. All different in-depth metrics are displayed on a central dashboard.
Furthermore, SEMrush’s social media manager also includes an image editor, UTM builder and a link shortener.
Going further, you can also monitor the performance of your competitors and draw inspiration from their strategy.
Overall, the biggest plus of SEMrush’s social media management tools is that they allow you to directly integrate your social media strategy with your wider SEO strategy. It’s also a fast-moving company, constantly extending its offer.
Pricing starts at $99.95 per month (when paid annually). A particularly interesting feature, “Share of Voice”, is only available with the Business plan, which runs to $374.95 a month.
6 – MeetEdgar
If you’re after maximum automation and workflow optimization, MeetEdgar is the perfect social media management tool for you. This platform helps you design a smooth posting workflow that can help your business or agency save massive amounts of time.
In addition, you can benefit from tools such as category-based scheduling and tailored analytics for maximum engagement and response.
Plus, MeetEdgar has one of the most affordable pricing regimes on this list.
The cutely named Eddie plan starts at $24.91 per month and includes unlimited scheduled posts, though it’s limited to five profiles. To unlock the platform’s full capabilities, you need to opt for its full Edgar plan, at $41.58 per month.
7 – Agorapulse
In seventh place, Agorapulse is a social media management tool that specifically meets the needs of larger businesses and agencies.
Its scheduling tool impresses with maximum flexibility, making it a breeze to (re)schedule posts and bulk upload them. You can also easily reply to all your social media messages in one central inbox.
Plus, Agorapulse has extensive reporting features – including export options from basic CSV all the way to PowerPoint presentations.
Another plus point is that, since it’s designed for larger teams, Agorapulse offers a range of collaboration functionalities.
If you want to give the platform a test run, there’s a free plan that allows you to schedule 10 posts in advance across three profile. The paid plans all come with a 30-day free trial and allow unlimited scheduling. Standard, which is $49/user/month, gives you 10 profiles and basic features. Pro, at $79/user/month, includes 15 profiles and a variety of integrations. The still more powerful Advanced plan starts at $119. For enterprise solutions, ask for a quote.
8 – Sendible
Next in line, we have Sendible, whose stand-out feature is its large potential for collaborative work. In fact, Sendible was designed for teams.
Not only does it offer all the basic features of social media management tools, such as scheduling and queuing posts. It also allows you to optimize content for individual platforms, share a calendar with your entire team, and benefit from content suggestions.
Furthermore, Sendible makes it easy to set up regular reports, including through a Google Analytics integration. If you’re running an agency, you can customize these reports for different clients.
Pricing starts at $29 per month (when paid annually), for one user and six profiles. Sendible’s Traction plan comes at $89 per month (4 users, 24 profiles), and its Scale plan at $199 (7 users, 49 profiles, and custom reports). For anything beyond that, you’ll want a custom plan.
9 – SocialPilot
Next up is Social Pilot, a solid cross-cutting social media management for a wide range of users. Like other entries on this list, it offers a centralized platform to handle scheduling and tracking your posts.
Furthermore, like Agorapulse, Social Pilot comes with a single inbox in which you can keep an overview of messages across all your platforms. In addition, Social Pilot offers browser extensions to make it widely available to users. Not many other alternatives integrate this well into your daily online workflows.
For agencies, this platform also provides team collaboration features, including workflow automation.
One of Social Pilot’s neatest features is that it offers direct integrations with several handy tools such as Dropbox, Canva, and Zapier.
Pricing starts at $21 per month (paid annually) for one user and 10 accounts. Small Team, at $35 per month, gets you 3 users and 20 profiles. The $70 Agency plan includes 6 users and 30 managed social accounts. White Label pricing starts at $140 per month (unlimited users, 50 accounts). The latter three also allow an unlimited number of clients. A free 14-day trial is possible for all plans.
10 – Loomly
Finally, Loomly is another excellent social media management option, especially for teams. It scores plus points through features such as audience targeting, automated publishing, and extensive analytics.
In addition, you can optimize posts in real time, harness customer segmentation, and filter by keywords.
Pricing starts at $26 per month for its basic plan (2 users, 10 accounts). The number of users increases with its Standard ($59, 6 users and 20 accounts), Advanced ($129, 14 users and 35 accounts), and Premium ($269, 30 users and 50 accounts) plans. For still larger teams, contact the company for a quote. There’s also a 15-day free trial.
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