Social media management tools for business owners.

Are you always frustrated about the numerous tasks that you have to do to effectively manage your social media platforms? Does running your social media platform feel like another full-time job? If you are running your own business, you may not have enough time to carry out the core tasks that directly lead to the growth of your business, leave alone time to create content, and keep on top of social media trends.

You may be wondering, why do you need to invest in a tool that helps you manage your social media accounts while you can just log in to your accounts and post content free of charge? The fact of the matter is that the tasks are unending, from content creation and publishing to analytics and reporting. It can get very overwhelming! Even if you decided to delegate all this to someone else, you will still be faced with the daunting challenge of ensuring that the new person in charge gets everything right and does not do anything to harm your brand.

The tools that we share in this article will help you manage all your accounts from one place. Additionally, they allow you to schedule posts days, weeks, or even months beforehand. When you decide to delegate some of these duties to someone else, these tools act as a layer of security. That is, the person you are delegating it to does not have to know your log-in credentials since the tools act as an intermediary. In the case where you have to share your passwords, we advise that you use password management platforms like Lastpass to ensure that your credentials are secure at all times. It does not stop there — these tools give you analytics that helps you make critical decisions for your business regarding social media marketing.

But which tool is the most suitable for your business? This will of course depend on your business goals and the targeted audience.

We thought to showcase some of the best social media management tools that can help you get started. If you do not already have a social media presence and are wondering how to go about it, check out this blog post about social media platforms for business owners for some great tips on how to select the best platforms for your business.

The tools are not arranged in any particular order and they are all great in their own unique ways.

1. Buffer.

The best aspect about Buffer is that it has a better mobile experience compared to the other tools. Its mobile version does not have limited features. You can schedule posts to go up at different times with Buffer; this will ensure that you do not have to work overtime and that posts go up at the time when your audience is most active on the platforms. If you are using Buffer and you come across an interesting post that your LinkedIn connections and Twitter followers would love, you can easily post on both platforms by just clicking on a button. Even better, Buffer is very intuitive to use and their customer support is friendly and prompt.

Buffer is also very affordable. It has a forever free plan which does not have scheduling or social analytics features. It also has $15, $99, $199, and $399 per month. All these premium plans come with a 14-days free trial. It is important to note that none of these plans offer social media monitoring or customer service features.

2. Hootsuite.

Hootsuite is one of the oldest social media management tools and it is used by over 15 million people worldwide. There is a good reason for its popularity. It is a comprehensive platform with features that are very easy to use and it allows you to monitor and post to all your social media accounts from one place. It provides you with custom and scalable features that help you tackle the ever-increasing demands that come with social media every other day. For example, with Hootsuite, you can bulk-schedule your social media posts and connect with over 35 social networks.

Hootsuite has a free plan, $29, $129, $599 per month, and enterprise pricing with a 30-day free trial for all the premium plans. The differences in the pricing are because of the different features available and the number of people that can gain access and help you out with Hootsuite.

The downside of Hootsuite is that it is comparatively difficult to use as compared to the other tools.

3. Facebook creator studio.

Almost every business owner has a Facebook account and this is justified since Facebook has the biggest numbers. In order to take advantage of these numbers, business owners should employ the latest tools to help them out. Facebook creator studio was made to help you manage your content and it is within Facebook.

This tool helps the social media manager in charge of the page to properly manage content, track performance, and connect meaningfully with audiences. This tool will definitely make your work easier. The icing on the cake is that you can use it for Instagram too!

Facebook creator studio is available free of charge.

4. Sprout Social

Sprout social has an intuitive workflow that makes social media management easy. To further make social media management easier, the Sprout Social team has put a lot of effort into streamlining team collaboration. For example, you can use their bot builder to create a Facebook bot that will reply to customer inquiries around the clock.

With Sprout Social, you can manually set post times or you can use it special algorithm to optimize your post time for maximum visibility. Additionally, it combines several social media tools into one platform- from social media scheduling to monitoring, to reporting. Did you know that Sprout Social has such amazing reports that social media managers do not have to edit them at all?

Interestingly, Sprout Social is one of the few social media management tools that provides customer relationship management (CRM) features. These features make it possible to have a complete profile of your customers which in turn helps you serve them better and build stronger relationships with them.

The prices for Sprout Social are $99, $149, and $249 per user per month with a 30-day free trial.

5. Planoly.

Planoly is a visual planning tool that has features that allow Instagram users to schedule posts, create calendars to plan their content, curate and repurpose content from other users, analyze engagements, grow the number of followers. Planoly was made to make handling Instagram easier for you. The best thing about Planoly is that it is an official partner of Instagram. This means that your Instagram account is safe and it is not susceptible to loopholes that allow in hackers.

The prices for Planoly are $29 per month or alternatively, you can pay an annual payment of $279. The Planoly app is also available for free with limited features.

6. Everypost.

Everypost is an affordable and simple tool that provides the basics of social media management to its users. Its features allow social media scheduling and posting in addition to collaboration on posts.

It is worth noting that Everypost does not offer features such as analytics or post-approval processes. It has a free plan, every small business owner will need to purchase the $9.99 a month pro plan to make the tool more viable

7. Social Pilot.

Social Pilot is very intuitive to use and it was made specifically for small business owners who have little knowledge about social media management. It allows you to set up and start managing your social media platforms within no time. It is also very budget-friendly compared to the other tools. Some of the perks that you get from using Social Pilot are that it allows for seamless team collaboration and it curates content that is trending. It also allows you to converse with your audience in real-time.

Its pricing plans range from $10, $24, $40, $80 per month, and enterprise pricing with a 14-day free trial.

8. Rev.

Most people on social media watch videos without the sound on, to mitigate this you should add captions to your videos. If the captions are captivating enough, you may convince your viewers to put the sound on. Rev offers transcription and captioning services. All you need to do is make your videos and Rev will in turn add all the captions for you. Rev uses real humans to do the transcriptions, therefore you are assured of quality and understandable captions.

Rev offers a $10 off voucher for their new users and only charges $1.25 per minute for very accurate captions. If you aim at saving money, you can also get the first 3 or 4 minutes transcribed for $3 or $4 instead of the whole video with the hopes that your viewers will have switched on the sound by the end of those minutes.

9. Loomly.

Loomly is an all-in-one social media tool. Not only can you use it to manage organic posts but also ads. You can use it to promote your brand and position yourself as the leader of your industry. It describes itself as a brand success platform. Loomly comes in handy when you want to collaborate, publish, and measure your company’s social activities.

Remember every customer count and if your impress one customer then chances are high that they will refer you to more in their circle. There is no better marketing than that of word of mouth.

Loomly has a wide pricing range. Starting with the base package which costs $3 per month with 2 users and 10 social accounts. Then there is the standard package that goes for $76 per month with 6 users and 20 social accounts. The advanced package goes for $159 per month with 16 users and 35 social accounts. The premium package goes for $332 per month with 26 users and 50 social accounts. The enterprise package requires you to contact the Loomly team for pricing. It supports more than 51 users and10 social accounts. Core features and unlimited content comes with all plans. Additional enhancements are added with each higher plan. There is a 25% discount for annual payments

10. Meet Edgar.

Meet Edgar is a cloud-based social media management tool. It comes in handy when organizing and publishing content across multiple digital platforms. Its features include image/video support, link tracking, email updates, content library, and automation. Meet Edgar is particularly known for its efficiency in queuing and scheduling.

It is also very cost-effective. Its pricing package includes $19 per month and $49 per month. The differences in prices are due to the different offers in the packages. All the packages come with a 7 days free trial.

11.Sendible.

Sendible is a social media management tool that allows you to collaborate with your team and clients, to post and measure the success of content on every social media platform. With Sendible you will be able to keeps tabs with content that has the most engagement, you will also be able to bulk schedule posts for your social platforms easily.

The pricing packages include a creator package for $29 per month with 1 user and 6 social media accounts. A traction package for $89 per month with 4 users and 24 social media accounts. A scale package for $199 per month with 7 users and 49 social media accounts. An expansion package for $399 per month with 15 users and 105 social media accounts.

12. Tweetdeck.

TweetDeck is a social media management dashboard for Twitter accounts. TweetDeck allows you to manage and monitor multiple Twitter accounts from one platform. You can tweet, retweet, reply, favorite. and send direct messages. You can also follow accounts, mute or block, and even view Twitter profiles. Additionally, you can be able to schedule your Twitter content using TweetDeck.

Tweetdeck is free and available to anyone who owns a Twitter account. It was designed to help people with multiple accounts be more organized and keep up with new trends.

In conclusion.

Every business has its own special needs and in order to successfully harness all the benefits that social media platforms offer, the business owners need to do their homework. They need to outline all the goals that they aim to achieve and compare them with features offered by the different tools available.

Hiring a social media manager with experience will make all this work much easier for you. Some Runnovate virtual assistants are highly skilled social media managers. You can get one today by filling out this ‘get started’ form.