The Top Social Media Monitoring Tools
By Ksenia NewtonJun 15
Marketing
Published March 9th 2022
The Top 10 Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses
Managing your social media accounts as a small business can feel intimidating. When exactly are you supposed to post again and wasn’t there a message on Facebook you received last night? And so, instead of being a channel for you to promote your business and acquire customers, social media becomes a burden.
With the help of a social media management suite, you can organize your whole social media presence and communication, and keep an eye on your performance.
But how do you choose the right suite and do you need all the tools that are on offer or maybe just a selection of them?
To help you with your choice, we’ve rounded up 10 of the most popular social media management solutions that are suited for the needs of most SMBs. The suites differ in the number of features they provide, their specific emphasis on how best to manage social media, and of course their pricing.
So, without further ado, here are 10 great social media management tools for small-to-medium businesses!
1. Brandwatch
Overview
The least we could do is toot our own horn before we go head-to-head with our competitors, eh? 😊
The one thing we hear most often from our customers is that they can’t get enough of the look and feel of our suite. And we love hearing this because that’s exactly what we had in mind when we built it; making sure it’s intuitively easy to use.
Just look at that UI below.
Our solution is great for small businesses in need of a solid tool to manage their social media efforts.
The name does not deceive – it includes all the essentials needed to stay on top of your social media publishing, engagement, and performance tracking. But even though social media is a vital part of your to-do list, it shouldn’t take up all your valuable time, right?
That’s the idea behind Essentials: to drastically cut down on time spent on social media. Basically, you can make these solutions to do a lot of the work for you.
Features
The main benefits of the Essentials tool include:
- Cross-publish content to all your social media channels from a single calendar.
- Plan out your month and schedule posts to go out at different time zones.
- Preview your content before you publish to make sure it looks just right.
- Respond to comments, messages, and notification across networks from a single customizable inbox.
- Create message templates to maintain a zero-inbox.
- Export customer conversations.
- Track, analyze, and build reports based on your performance across all channels.
- Create your own dashboard or use our templates.
- Manageable from desktop or mobile app.
2. Sprout Social
Overview
Sprout Social’s suite includes social media listening, publishing, engagement, and analytics tools. An interesting aspect of the suite is that it offers the option to create customer profiles and it can interact with other tools such as Zendesk and Salesforce. For an SMB, the Standard plan may be sufficient, though it does not include the listening and amplification features.
Features
Some of the main features that are available with Sprout Social include:
- Drafting, queuing, and scheduling posts across different networks within one window.
- An integrated inbox that allows you to filter content from different channels and monitor keywords and hashtags.
- Analytics that include performance reports, benchmarking, and comparisons across posts and networks.
3. Socialbakers
Overview
Socialbakers’s tool is backed by AI and they promise that their platform can help companies determine who their personas are, discover influencers as well as come up with content ideas. It also features the standard suite of planning, publishing, tracking, and communication tools.
Features
The following are some of the features that Socialbakers is betting on:
- Audience, persona, and influencer analysis driven by AI.
- All-channel social listening to derive valuable insights.
- Community management to improve customer experience.
Pricing
Plans are $200/month for 10 profiles or $400/month for 20 profiles (+ tax).
4. Hootsuite
Overview
Hootsuite is one of the old dogs of social media marketing and management. In addition to content creation and customer communication tools, Hootsuite also allows teams to communicate with each other and assign tasks. They also offer app integrations that allow users to add new capabilities to the platform.
Features
Hootsuite offers some of the following features and tools:
- Content creation and scheduling, customer communications, and in-team coordination.
- With the Hootsuite Academy, your team can get additional training and certification and stay on top of developments.
- Depending on your plan, features for optimizing ads, proving ROI, tracking trends, and amplifying your content are also included.
Pricing
Plans include: Professional $49/month, Team $129/month, Business $739/month, and Enterprise which is custom (+ tax).
5. Buffer
Overview
Are you familiar with Buffer’s products? Buffer has two main products – Publish and Analyze – that allow businesses to conduct all their social media management activities through one dashboard. On top of that, they also have a few features that help with growing conversions and sales.
Features
Buffer’s platform provides the following features:
- Plan and publish content on all major platforms and collaborate with team members on drafting, reviewing, and approving posts.
- Measure performance, create insightful reports, and receive suggestions on how to increase reach and engagement.
- Use additional features such as first comment, hashtag planner, tagging, and more, to increase visibility.
6. Agorapulse
Overview
Agorapulse offers a host of features that are intended to capture the whole process of managing your social media. This includes capabilities to engage customers directly, publish content, listen to social conversations, collaborate with others, and more. In addition, they also offer several free tools such as a Facebook Ad Report tool and a Twitter Report Card for competitor analysis.
Features
With Agorapulse you can:
- Manage content through a shared calendar that allows you to review your activity, and approve or reject posts.
- Engage your audience on every platform through an integrated inbox and set up rules to moderate the inflow of messages.
- Get better insights into your fans and followers through the social CRM function.
7. eClincher
Overview
eClincher offers solutions for both small and medium businesses as well as enterprises. For small businesses, the platform encompasses the whole range of necessary tools required to manage social media with ease.
Features
Some of eClincher’s features that allow small businesses to manage their social media efficiently include:
- One account to manage all channels, communications, planning, and publishing.
- Automation features to streamline your content and engagement.
- Ad boosting and reputation management tools to increase your visibility and conversions.
8. Coosto
Overview
Coosto is a platform that is particularly well-suited for small businesses. Their solutions span the range of content marketing, PR & communication, customer service, and branding. This encompasses all the necessary tools required by a business to manage its social media presence and attract new followers and sales opportunities.
Features
As an all-in-one solution for social media management, some of the features offered by Coosto include:
- Listen to online conversations, publish and schedule content, engage your audience, and report on your performance.
- Analyze competitors and discover new ideas for your content strategy and opportunities to engage your followers.
- Use heatmaps and engagement reports to adapt your communications and content to shifting interests and needs.
9. MeetEdgar
Overview
With MeetEdgar you don’t need to babysit your social media but can let it do its own thing. One of Edgar’s main features is the emphasis on automation and scheduling that is intended to free up small business owners.
Features
Edgar further offers the following features:
- A high degree of automation, including scanning your content, and suggesting quote-worthy text for you to post on social media.
- Category-based scheduling of your posts which introduces variety and breaks up your content feed.
- A/B testing of your social messaging and weekly reports to assess your performance and set new goals.
10. ContentCal
Overview
If you’re running a remote team, ContentCal may be the platform for you. Like any of the platforms above, ContentCal covers a good part of the spectrum of planning, publishing, communicating, and reporting on your social media marketing.
Features
Some of the things that make ContentCal great include:
- Flexible workflows that allow you to structure and delegate tasks in the most appropriate manner.
- Grammar check to make sure your messaging is clear as well as a notebook to jot down ideas and briefs.
- Collaboration options to get input from different team members and create the most effective message.
Ready to start sailing the marketing seas?
As an SMB it’s important that you manage your social media with ease. Stressing out about responding to messages or double-checking whether you posted today is hardly what you need, on top of your other responsibilities.
A social media management tool can help you avoid all this by providing you with a simple interface that integrates all channels and social media activities. That way, taking care of your social media activity is something you can do over coffee rather than becoming an exercise in patience and self-restraint.
So maybe consider a social media management tool this year as a way to help your operations.
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