[lwptoc]
What comes to mind when you hear the term social media? Trending? Reels? Posts? Followers? Call it a global phenomenon or a transformative force that has undoubtedly reshaped the way we connect, communicate, and interact with the world. From building connections to information sharing to business growth, and activism, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and others have revolutionized the way we live and even make money.
Social media has profoundly impacted businesses in various ways, providing numerous benefits that enhance their operations, marketing, and growth strategies. It has facilitated brand visibility, cost-effective marketing, customer engagement, and valuable data insights. Hence, it would not at all be wrong to say that in this digital age embracing social media is an integral part of the success of any business. And here comes Social Media Management Tools which are a category of software and platforms designed to streamline and simplify the task of handling, monitoring, and analyzing multiple social media accounts of any business.
Can’t businesses handle their own accounts? Why are these social media management tools needed? Well, for a couple of reasons. The first is efficiency. With the proliferation of social media platforms, managing multiple accounts manually can be time-consuming. Social Media Management Tools allow users to schedule posts in advance, saving time and ensuring a consistent online presence. Second, audience engagement. These tools provide insights into audience behavior and engagement metrics. This data helps users tailor their content to better connect with their audience, resulting in increased engagement and growth.
Thirdly, social media management tools offer comprehensive analytics, helping users track the performance of their social media efforts. These platforms also provide tools for monitoring competitor activity and trends, allowing users to adapt and innovate. In summary, they empower individuals and organizations to navigate the complex digital landscape efficiently, ensuring a strong online presence and competitive edge. In no particular order, let us delve into the must-try social media management tools for marketers in 2023.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is undeniably one of the must-try social media management tools for marketers in 2023. With its extensive set of features and user-friendly interface, it has become a go-to platform for professionals in the field. Hootsuite allows marketers to manage multiple social media platforms from a single and customizable dashboard. This feature streamlines posting, monitoring, and engagement across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, saving time and effort.
Marketers can schedule posts in advance, ensuring a consistent online presence. Automation features make it easy to repost evergreen content, freeing up time for more strategic tasks. In addition, this social media management tool provides robust analytics tools, enabling marketers to track the performance of their social media campaigns. Detailed insights help in measuring engagement, reach, and conversion rates, facilitating data-driven decisions.
For marketing teams, Hootsuite offers collaboration features, allowing team members to work together seamlessly. Approval workflows ensure that content is reviewed and approved before publishing. Hootsuite also offers content curation tools, making it simple to discover and share relevant content from various sources. To help marketers stay updated with the latest trends and best practices in social media marketing, Hootsuite provides a wealth of educational resources, including articles and webinars.
Its comprehensive features make it well worth the investment for larger enterprises and marketing agencies. The platform offers a free 30-day trial and has different pricing plans that start at Rs 1,915 per month.
Buffer
Buffer is a highly regarded social media management tool that deserves consideration as a must-try for marketers in 2023. Its intuitive interface makes it accessible to marketers of all skill levels, while its simplicity and straightforward design enable quick adoption. The platform says it “helps you build an audience organically.” Being a marketer, you can manage Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and almost every other social media platform all from a single, user-friendly dashboard of Buffer. This helps in streamlining the process of content scheduling and posting.
Marketers can plan and schedule posts in advance by using Buffer’s robust scheduling capabilities and ensuring a consistent online presence. You can track engagement rates, reach, and clicks, and get other valuable insights on your social media campaigns using Buffer’s comprehensive analytics tools. Additionally, this social media management tool simplifies content curation by allowing users to discover and share relevant articles, images, and videos from within the platform. This feature helps marketers maintain a varied and engaging social media presence. Using Buffer’s content calendar, you can get an overview of scheduled posts that will help to visualize your social media strategy and ensure a consistent posting schedule. The platform also offers collaboration features, including user permissions and approval workflows.
Buffer is known for its responsive customer support team, which is available to assist users with any questions or issues. It offers pricing plans suitable for businesses of all sizes, making it accessible to startups and enterprises alike. You can sign up for free and connect up to three channels, making it an attractive choice for budget-conscious marketers. For more channels as well as additional features you can opt from its Essentials, Team, and Agency plans.
Sprout Social
With its comprehensive set of features and user-friendly interface, Sprout Social stands out as a valuable asset for businesses looking to excel in their social media efforts. Testimonials speak volumes about Sprout Social. This social media management tool has helped Trello, one of the leading project management tools, to increase its website traffic by 25% and leads by 15%. Not just Trello, Sprout Social has helped other companies and organizations like UNICEF, DonorsChoose, Basecamp, and many others in increasing brand awareness, and reach and in short, fulfilling their social media goals.
But what makes Sprout Social a must-try for marketers? To begin with, it is easy to use. Sprout Social is designed to be user-friendly, even for marketers with no prior experience with social media management tools. Secondly, it is comprehensive and offers everything you need to manage your social media presence, from publishing and scheduling to analytics and engagement. Next up, it is scalable and can be used by businesses of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Last but not least, Sprout Social offers a variety of pricing plans to fit different budgets. The platform offers a 30-day free trial and has four pricing plans namely Standard, Professional, Advanced, and Enterprise.
All in all, Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool. It offers a wide range of features, including publishing and scheduling posts for multiple social media platforms at once, providing detailed analytics on your social media performance, a variety of reporting features, and others. It makes it easy to respond to social media comments and messages, and even collaborate with team members on responses.
Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a powerful and affordable social media management tool that can help marketers of all sizes save time, improve efficiency, and achieve their social media goals. Its user-friendly interface, comprehensive features, affordability, and excellent support make it one of the top choices among the social media management tools available in the market. Companies like HubSpot, SEMrush, and several others have used Zoho Social to manage their social media presence across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, to increase their brand awareness and generate leads.
One of the many reasons that make Zoho Social a top choice is that it offers an intuitive interface that makes it easy for marketers to navigate and manage their social media accounts efficiently. Marketers can schedule posts across various social media platforms for times when their target audience is most active. Marketers can choose from the platform’s best-time predictions, or create their own publishing schedule. Furthermore, Zoho Social’s intuitive content calendar lets you visualize your content pipeline and organize the posts as per your wish. It has a monitoring dashboard that’s “sticky” and has multiple listening columns to help you stay tuned to everything relevant; and you can even respond in real-time and engage with your audience as often as you like.
The tool offers in-depth analytics and reporting features, enabling marketers to measure the performance of their social media campaigns and make data-driven decisions for optimization. Zoho Social offers a 15-day free trial and offers pricing plans for businesses and agencies with the Standard plan of the former starting at Rs 600 and that for the latter starting at Rs 13,800, both per month billed annually.
SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a comprehensive social media management platform designed to simplify and streamline social media marketing efforts for individuals, businesses, and marketing agencies. Its feature-rich platform simplifies the management of social media accounts, enhances content scheduling, and offers valuable insights to optimize social media marketing strategies. Its user-friendly interface and comprehensive set of features including content scheduling, social media analytics, content curation, team collaboration, and social media automation make it a must-try social media management tool.
Features of SocialPilot include multi-platform support, content suggestions and RSS feeds, robust analytics and reporting tools, and team collaboration, among others. The platform also offers SEO tools, including an SEO content calendar and keyword tracking, to help users improve their online visibility and rankings. Keeping up with the current times, SocialPilot is making use of artificial intelligence to create social media posts effortlessly. With SocialPilot AI Assistant, you can discover a wealth of post ideas and captions, optimize posts tailored for each platform, harness paraphrasing capability, and customize posts for different languages, among others. The platform offers a free 14-day trial and offers pricing plans for agencies, small teams, and professionals.
FAQs
1 What are social media management tools?
Social media management tools are software applications designed to help individuals and businesses manage their presence and activities on various social media platforms. These tools offer a range of features and functionalities to streamline the process of planning, scheduling, publishing, monitoring, and analyzing social media content.
2 Why do marketers need social media management tools in 2023?
Social media management tools are indispensable for marketers in 2023. Marketers need them for several crucial reasons such as efficient content scheduling, multi-platform management, analytics and data-driven decisions, audience engagement, competitor analysis, team collaboration, automation, and campaign management, among others.
3 Can you recommend some popular social media management tools for marketers?
While the choice of the best social media management tool is based on your needs and budget, some popular ones include Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, Zoho Social, and SocialPilot. These tools offer a range of features and marketers can choose the one that aligns best with their social media management requirements.
4 What features should I look for in a social media management tool?
When selecting a social media management tool, consider the following essential features multi-platform support, content scheduling, analytics and reporting, content curation, content calendar, team collaboration, automation, engagement tools, ad management, cost and scalability, and integration, among others.
5 Can I track engagement and analytics using these tools?
Yes, you can track engagement and analytics using social media management tools. These tools offer a range of features to help you monitor and analyze your social media performance. These tools provide key performance metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and follower growth. You can gain a better understanding of your audience demographics, interests, and behavior through these tools. You can further create custom reports and dashboards to visualize your social media data. This makes it easier to communicate your results to stakeholders.
6 How do social media management tools help with content scheduling?
Social media management tools provide a centralized dashboard where you can schedule posts across multiple social media platforms. These tools typically offer content calendar views, allowing users to plan and visualize their content schedule. You can see your upcoming posts, making it easier to maintain a consistent posting schedule. Many tools allow you to upload and schedule multiple posts at once. Users can choose specific dates and times for their posts to be published.
7 Is social media marketing in demand in 2023?
Social media marketing continues to be in high demand in 2023. As businesses increasingly recognize the importance of having a strong online presence and connecting with their target audience through social platforms, the demand for social media marketing professionals remains robust.
