- October 16, 2023
- by admin
- Social Media Marketing
- 0 Comments
One of the most potent resources for today’s businesses is social media. It can help you attract new customers, increase site traffic, and maintain interest among your current clientele. However, it should be used cautiously, as should any other powerful instrument. Managing several inboxes across five different applications, posting the same things on all the other platforms, and staying on top of everything can be a massive time sink. Still, at least you won’t accidentally cut off your thumb. It’s tricky to do with common consumer apps. You need a social media management app to do it well.
The most effective social media tools consolidate your social media management into a single interface. Automating, analyzing, and managing social media accounts frees you up to concentrate on making content that really resonates with your target audience.
Here are the top five social media management applications after I tested dozens of them.
- Buffer
Although it has undergone numerous upgrades, twists, and modifications to keep up with the times, Buffer is one of the longest-running social media programs whose primary purpose is scheduling posts.
In addition to Google My Business Pages, it now works with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. With the free plan, you may schedule up to 10 posts for each social media platform, but you’re limited to connecting up to three accounts.
Start Page is Buffer’s answer to the “link in bio” problem, and it’s available with the platform’s standard scheduling, analytics, and audience management tools. Create and maintain a small website that is optimized for mobile devices with your most recent content or even things to sell.
It’s a familiar concept, but building it into your social media management app is helpful, especially if you want to see tangible outcomes from your online activity.
The Good
- All of your social media posts may be scheduled with no effort.
- Small businesses will appreciate the reasonable pricing and generous free tier.
The Bad
- Buffer has a history of abruptly adjusting both its prices and its features.
- SocialPilot
The ability to outsource social media management is typically costly in this category of apps. However, SocialPilot’s Small Team plan (including two more team members and up to twenty social media accounts) starts at just $50 monthly. This is 80% cheaper than Hootsuite.
SocialPilot has a somewhat simplistic UI, but it’s fully functional. It can be used with a wide variety of social media platforms for marketing, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and even Tumblr.
You may arrange information from RSS feeds, configure your team and client setup, run advertisements, and manage your posts and accounts from the tabs on the sidebar. The software has all the functionality you’d expect from a social media management app, but the Team features are where it shines.
Roles can be allocated to team members based on their desired responsibilities. For instance, you may require all content creators to submit posts for approval before they go live, or you may allow managers to edit and schedule material while retaining final approval rights. Giving your coworkers more responsibility without ultimately handing over the reins is a great way.
The Good
- Provides excellent team features at a lower cost than the market average.
- Doesn’t scrimp on extras like time management, email tracking, and performance metrics
The Bad
- This web app needs more sophistication.
- Hootsuite
Hootsuite will be a one-stop shop for all your social media management requirements. It does everything you could want from a social media management app, including scheduling messages, creating and managing potential posts, monitoring your various inboxes, and running boosted post-advertising campaigns.
It works with most platforms and provides some of the most user-friendly stats I’ve seen in the apps I’ve used. Although the entire set of analytics tools is only available with the more expensive subscriptions, they help gain insight into the success of your social media profiles.
Hootsuite also compiles data from comparable companies, allowing you to gauge your standing in the market. Hootsuite’s “Streams” feature lets you create a custom social media dashboard that displays your feeds, keywords, and rivals’ feeds in the best way for you.
You can obtain something elsewhere, but the information is more clearly presented and, at least for marketers, may be easier to use. Hootsuite is designed for companies that can profit from social media marketing. Adding premium apps can make it one of the most expensive options.
The Good
- Scheduling messages, keeping tabs on inboxes, and managing posts—that’s what this social media management platform is all about.
- Plans with more money can do better in analytics and social media monitoring.
The Bad
- Expensive
- Loomly
Suppose you want to post to nearly any site as part of your social media management. In that case, Loomly is an excellent social media platform with one absurd distinguishing feature: the ability to establish a unique social network. This feature alone is enough to put it on our list, although it also covers scheduling, a multi-service inbox, and some rudimentary analytics.
Loomly allows you to have several calendars for all your social media scheduling needs. Each schedule also has the option to include a Custom Channel in addition to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok.
Zapier is the backend service that makes the Custom Channel function. You can use it to do anything, including posting on Reddit or emailing your boss. I won’t even pretend my mind is that creative to imagine all the possible applications.
There are other options for automating tasks like Reddit posts or emails to the boss. The fact that you can integrate Loomly with your other social media accounts is what makes it so intriguing. You can simultaneously publish to Twitter, Instagram, and your private network without switching between different apps.
The Good
- Post to any channel you can think of with Zapier’s custom social network capability.
- Every social media platform might have its own schedule.
The Bad
- If you’re looking for the most sophisticated and cutting-edge app, go elsewhere.
- MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is like having a personal assistant for your social media profiles. It’s compatible with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram, and it does a lot of the heavy lifting of modifying and producing posts for multiple networks for you. However, this is not an analytics tool but rather a scheduling one.
MeetEdgar’s unique selling point is the extent to which it streamlines processes. The program can extract quotable text and images from the links you provide and use them to construct updates. MeetEdgar will generate four different updates based on the content you pasted once you click the Suggest Variations button.
Even better, it can repurpose content that has already been effective by creating variants on earlier updates that have done well. This allows for the reuse of content without fear of plagiarism.
MeetEdgar only offers a little in the way of analytics tools. Still, the app does support A/B testing to see which posts perform best with your audience, and you can utilize the ed.gr link shortener right in the app to monitor engagement. It’s adequate for tracking popular pieces of information but needs to provide a comprehensive picture.
The Good
- The capability to “suggest variations” on existing information helps maintain interest and ensure that social media messages are appropriately formatted for each platform.
- Allows for the automatic scheduling of posts
The Bad
- Can’t do much more than set up appointments
Final Thoughts
There is no silver bullet for social media management; instead, it’s about finding the approach that works best for your company. The major social media networks restrict these programs’ access to their users’ data. Therefore most social media management solutions have very similar capabilities. Try out the free demo versions of the promising apps before committing to one.
