Are you aiming to get better results from your social media marketing in 2023?
If so, then you will need to improve your social media management.
But improving social media management requires getting the right social media management tools.
In this ultimate guide, I will show you the social media management tools that will help your business thrive in today’s social media landscape.
31 Best Social Media Management Tools for 2023: Ultimate Guide
I’ll start by going over the basics of social media management and why it’s so important for your business.Â
Then I’ll summarize the typical costs and what you should expect for those costs.
Then I’ll cover the various roles a competent social media manager must fill, all of which require good tools.
Then I cover the 31 best tools for social media management.
It’s a deep dive! I hope it helps you improve your business’s social media management.
Social media management is the operation of all social media activities for a personal or business brand. If a brand has an active and large following on networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat, they likely have a busy social media manager or management team behind the scenes. These are the people that ensure that each of the brand’s social networks stays updated, each incoming message gets a reply, and each new mention gets an appropriate response. We’ll discuss the responsibilities of a social media manager later in the post. Social media management isn’t just scheduling a few great posts every day on social media and expecting to magically achieve your social media marketing objectives. It encompasses a wide variety of tasks that are all required to ensure that your brand gets the best visibility amongst social media audiences and makes a great impression. Why is having the best social media management processes in place for your brand important? Here is the data on how many people you can reach on the top social networks. In other words, there is a HUGE number of people to reach on social media. The right social media management tools can help you reach them. The cost of social media management really depends on a lot of factors. It depends on: We’ll cover many of these costs in-depth in the following sections, including the costs of social media management and the best social media management tools. Beyond the business owners who DIY it, the following people and firms typically manage social media for personal brands and businesses. The main question is whether you want someone who works only for your company, either in-house or remotely. If the answer is yes, then you will want to hire your own social media manager or (eventually) your own social media management team. If you’re comfortable outsourcing, then you have more options when it comes to social media management. The person(s) responsible for managing social media for your brand is responsible for the following tasks. Competitor analysis is one of the beginning steps in developing a marketing strategy. Social media managers will typically look at a brand’s competition on social media to see where they are finding their target audiences, how well they are engaging with target audiences, and what type of sentiment they are building with target audiences. From there, they will analyze the social media content strategy of the competition. How often do they publish, when do they publish, what do they publish, and what response do they get? They will also analyze any chatter about the competition using keyword searches. Most brands will find customers on top social networks like Facebook. But what about LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and other social networks? Social media managers have to determine which social networks to invest their time and marketing budget into each quarter. Competitor research will help in choosing some social networks. Networks that have public engagement statistics like Facebook, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok make it easy to see where your competitors have large audiences and higher engagement. It gets trickier with networks like Snapchat and Whatsapp, where much of the engagement data is private between the brand and its audience. Since this can have an impact on ROI reporting by the end of the quarter, this choice has to be made wisely. Knowing when to focus on tried and true versus trying shiny and new can be challenging, especially when new networks like Vero and Steemit appear to be gaining in popularity. Not only does social media management entail choosing the right social media network, but it also includes creating the right channels within each social network. For example: Social media managers have to determine which channels on each social network would be best suited for brand promotion. A social media manager for a law firm, for example, may find LinkedIn groups more beneficial than Facebook groups. SEO (search engine optimization) is not just for website owners who want their web pages found in Google SERPs (search engine results pages). It’s for social media management teams who want their brand to be discovered on social media as well. Social media networks have search engines built into them. You want your Facebook page, LinkedIn group, or Twitter profile to be found in each network’s respective SERPs? You need to optimize each respective page, group, or profile for SEO. Social media managers treat each social channel’s page as a web page. It has a title, description, URL, and content. You don’t want to change your brand’s name on Instagram into a bunch of keyword phrases. You do, however, want to have your brand’s main SEO keyword phrases in mind when filling out your social media channel’s description or bio. Networks like LinkedIn that have more fields to fill in give you more chances for keyword optimization. When you see a brand that you recognize from one social network to the next, you know that they have a social media management team that is on top of their game. Social media managers typically maintain a consistent presence for brands across channels. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every brand will have the same description and content on every social network. It’s important for social media managers to evaluate their brand’s audience to determine if their strategy needs to be different on each network for better results. The result? It may include any or all of the following: The best social media managers make a plan for their social media promotions throughout the year to push new content, products, services, and seasonal specials. A good plan ensures that content is ready to go for all campaign launch dates and no social network is left looking abandoned at any given time of the year. In between major social media promotions and campaigns, social media managers have to find and publish compelling content to keep audiences on each channel within each social network engaged. They have to determine: There are lots of different studies that have been done, but the best way to find out for sure for any brand’s social media management team is to start with the information gathered from competitive analysis. Build a strategy. Publish. Review the analytics. Modify. Repeat. The level of difficulty in monitoring social media conversations for a brand is based on the number of social media networks and channels the brand participates in. First, social media management has to monitor direct messages and comments received to a brand’s channels, such as a Twitter profile, Facebook page & group, LinkedIn page & group, Instagram account, and Pinterest account. Then, they have to monitor keyword mentions of the brand that may not have been directed to the brand’s channels using an @ tag or one of the channel’s private inboxes. This might be a positive or negative mention of the brand’s name or a product the brand sells – one that requires a response. Last, but not least, they are also tasked with monitoring keywords for lead generation. Are there questions your brand could answer that could lead to sales? Search public posts on Twitter for keywords in those questions. In the event of a PR crisis for your brand, your social media management team has to be ready to handle a potential flood of incoming inquiries coming in at multiple angles. Based on the size of your brand’s audience, this could be a rapid response situation that requires all hands on staff until the crisis is over. To boost the results of organic social media activities, social media management also handles social media advertising campaigns. Most social networks offer their own self-service platform for news feed advertisements that brands of any size can use to reach larger audiences. Social media advertising campaigns will require the creation of stellar advertising copy, images or video, and landing pages. This will ensure that your advertising budget is effectively used to attract and convert your target social media audiences. To see the results of each social media campaign and determine which social media networks are generating the best results for a brand, social media managers provide social media analytics and ROI reporting. They combine the data provided by their website analytics (usually Google Analytics) and social media analytics tools to report the following. Because social media changes so rapidly, social media managers must keep up to date with the latest social media trends and news on a regular basis. They have to keep up with the latest features being added to the social networks and the social media management tools their brand uses. They have to keep up with the newest social networks that have launched. They have to assess whether they are important to brands and how quickly they should be added to their brand’s social network list. And in case you wondered why social media management cost so much, there you have it. Social media management is a very involved process! Social media management tools — also referred to as social media tools, social tools, social media marketing tools, etc. — allow you to manage specific aspects of one or more of your social media accounts in one place. Social media management platforms will typically offer one or more of the following features for users. Social media content discovery tools – With social media content discovery tools, you get a library of content to select from so you can choose content that has been proven to be engaging with your target audience. Social media planning tools – With social media planning tools, you get a calendar so you can easily plan out your social media campaigns and always see what is coming up on the schedule next. Social media scheduling tools – With social media scheduling tools, you get the ability to schedule posts for your social networks in advance, that way you can spread out a group of updates and publish them at the peak times your target audiences are online. Social media automation tools – With social media automation tools, you get the ability to update your social networks automatically your blog posts, your previous posts (content recycling), RSS feeds, and other sources that provide your social media audience with curated content. Social media inbox tools – With a social media inbox, you get the ability to manage incoming messages (comments, direct messages, etc.) from one or more social networks in one inbox. Social media analytics tools – With social media analytics tools, you get the ability to view insights about your social network growth and engagement. Social media monitoring/listening tools- With social media monitoring and listening tools, you get the ability to create keyword searches to monitor brand mentions and other relevant terms. This would allow you to jump into public conversations about your personal brand, business, products, or services as needed. Social CRM – With a social CRM, you can get insights about your social media audience and categorize them by industry, funnel, stage in the sales process, etc. Social media competitive analysis tools – With social media competitive analysis tools, you get the ability to see where your social media marketing ranks with your competitors. You will be able to compare your social media audience size, posting frequency, average engagement, and additional metrics across multiple networks to see where you can improve upon your social media tactics. Social media contest tools – With social media contest tools, you get the ability to run contests on social networks or on their websites, using social media actions as entries. Social media influencer marketing tools – With social media influencer tools, you get the ability to find social media influencers that have large, engaged audiences that match your target demographic. You can then contact these influencers and set up influencer marketing campaigns to promote your products and services. Social media team management – With social media team management, you can allow more people to manage one or more of your social accounts or social media marketing tasks. Social advertising tools – With social advertising tools, you can manage one or more aspects of your social media advertising campaigns. This includes promoting posts, creating ads, monitoring ad comments, and measuring ad performance. Every social media management platform is unique. Its features may be more or less powerful than those described above. Here are the things you need to consider when reviewing social media marketing tools for your business. Now, let’s dive into 31 of the best social media management tools on the market and see what features they offer, which social networks they support, and how much they cost. Note that not all features may be available on the free or starter pricing plans and a “social profile” may be counted as a page, profile, group, blog, listing, or another service, based on the platform. I hope you have enjoyed this guide to social media management tools. Now it’s time to go out there and get moving on your social media marketing. May your business reap big rewards for your efforts! Please let me know in the comments if you have social media tools you would suggest that are not covered in this post. Good luck!What is social media management?
Why is social media management important?
How much does social media management cost?
Who is typically in charge of social media management?
What do social media managers do?
Spying on the competition
Choosing the right social networks
Creating the right channels on each social network
Optimizing social channels for social search
Maintaining a consistent, branded presence across all social channels
Planning a social media calendar
Publishing social media content
Monitoring social media conversation
Handling communications in crisis situations
Creating social media advertising campaigns
Providing social media analytics and ROI reports
Keeping up on social media trends
What are social media management tools?
How do I choose the best social media management tools for my business?
The 31 Best Social Media Marketing Tools in 2023
Post Planner
Feedly
Crowdfire
Planoly
Later
Quuu
Zoho Social
Canva
Buffer
Zapier
Loomly
Mention
SocialPilot
Hootsuite
Followerwonk
Sendible
Keyhole
Wishpond
SocialReport
Edgar
Brand24
eClincher
AgoraPulse
Audiense
Sprout Social
BuzzSumo
CoSchedule
Falcon.io
RivalIQ
Oktopost
Klear
Conclusion: Time to Choose the Best Social Media Tools for your Biz!