Best Social Media Management Tools in 2024

Technology and business solution firms have begun the move to developing and utilizing social media management software, specialized tools that can help you optimize your social media presence and effectively target people in the best way possible. Yet these tools in themselves have become complex environments to navigate. In an already complex social media landscape, the last thing you need is to confuse yourself further with the options available to you in terms of streamlining and generating better efficiencies for your online marketing efforts.

That’s why we’ve studied dozens of different social media management tools available today to deliver you a concise yet in-depth overview of which platforms we believe are best and the different factors that come into deciding whether a particular social media management tool is the right one for you.

What is a Social Media Management Tool?

A social media management tool is a type of software that assists companies and organizations in managing their social media profiles and interactions. These tools allow users to schedule posts in advance, monitor metrics, interact with followers, and analyze their social media performance. They are also used to manage multiple accounts across different platforms, such as TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more.

What Makes the Best Social Media Management Tool

Good social media management tools can help you better streamline your online marketing efforts as well as create a more cohesive brand image across different platforms. But with so many different social media management tools available in the market today, what aspects of a social media management tool make one stand out as the “best” compared to others?

We’ve collated our in-depth reviews of 44 different social media management platforms to better understand what makes each one different and how these different variables factor into their overall comparative ranking. Through different research methods including interviews with area experts and user data analysis, we have summarized the following criteria as key identifiable factors to a platform’s overall quality.

Posting & Scheduling

One of the first things we looked towards with each social media management tool is its ability to manage and execute different posts at defined schedule intervals. Posting on social media is often a manual process, where you need to use each platform’s predefined posting templates and adhere to their often different media upload guidelines. A well-developed social media management tool can make this process much easier across more than one platform, such as cross-posting between Twitter and Facebook, to ensure that your post reaches the maximum amount of people at any given time.

Scheduling is the other half of the equation when it comes to social media effectiveness. Savvy social media managers know the importance of keeping brand posts relevant to specific times in the month, as well as up-to-date with current happenings. Scheduling can automate specific posts so that certain repetitive posts can be done with much more ease and you can focus on developing your other brand initiatives.

To learn more about how posting and scheduling make up one of the most important parts of any social media management platform, check out this page to see how we arrived at this analytical breakdown and which platform ranked the highest with this variable in mind.

Monitoring & Reporting

The next thing a good social media management tool needs to have is a good ability to monitor and report the effectiveness of any of your posts across different platforms. As anyone in marketing can tell you, the only way to have a successful media campaign is to properly define by what measures you’ll be judging that success in the first place.

Going beyond merely showcasing the entirety of your social media campaign's performance over a given time, good social media management tools help you understand what each metric means in regard to your overall project goal. It’s the best social media management tool that also allows you different methods of expressing this data, from entire spreadsheets to visualized graphs. Check out this page to understand how we came to each platform’s eventual monitoring and reporting score through different sub-variables within this function.

Pricing

Before delving deeper into the different functionalities that can be found within a specific platform, a key element to consider as part of the search for the best social media management tool is the price of the software itself. There are stark differences in pricing for a variety of software platforms online, with each one likely offering different benefits attached to equally different pricing schema.

We looked at two major aspects of the pricing structure commonly found in social media management tools: free and paid plans. There are numerous qualities that affect the useability and overall functionality of a specific social media management platform when discussing pricing. Visit this link to see how we viewed and ranked the different free social media management plans available, and this link to see how we ranked the different paid plans in comparison with each other.

Platforms

Coming back to the different ways a social media management tool can be considered best, prospective users should keep in mind the scope of platforms that any particular social media tool encompasses. There are a variety of different channels that you can choose to build a brand presence, such as the classic Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter ecosystem. But other platforms such as the increasingly viral Tiktok and professional-minded Linkedin are also key in reaching your customers wherever they might be.

We looked at all the different social media management tools in our study to determine the breadth and scope of their platform coverage, what functionalities are available to them, and the different cross-functions that can be done using a particular tool. Click here to learn more about how we ranked these platforms and which one came up on top for having the best platform coverage.

Ease of Use

The best social media management software maintains an in-depth understanding of the different metrics that outline the social media landscape but avoids bombarding its users with too much information. The most effective tools are those that allow its users to freely use the platform with as little handholding as possible.

See this link to learn more about how different tools are ranked based on their useability and overall user experience.

Support

Last but not least is the support you’ll get from each platform. There is definitely going to be a learning curve when it comes to specific platforms so having a dedicated service team to address any concerns is a big plus for the best social media management tool.

Support can come in different ways, ranging from live chat to even direct phone calls. Check out this link here to see how we ranked the different social media management tools based on these specific criteria.

The 10 Best Social Media Management Tools

How to Choose the Best Social Media Management Tool for Your Needs

Choosing a social media management tool for your business, whether it's one based on your own personal brand or as part of a larger organization, has as much to do with the understanding you have of that specific business as it does the capabilities of the platform itself. The first thing you’ll need to do (and do well) is a robust internal assessment of the different needs you have for the brand itself.

It’s important to properly assess whether your overall strategic goal for a particular social media campaign is to further your brand’s reach, develop customer engagement, create more robust omnichannel strategies, or other key brand development initiatives. Understanding the intention behind your brand’s efforts online can help you better decide which platforms to invest in, the kind of posts you want, and eventually the management tool that will work best for you.

You’ll need need to match these prospective goals with the kind of capabilities and functions that each platform focuses on. Some may have better strengths when it comes to multi-platform management, while others might have a more robust reporting system for different social media metrics. If you are using other plug-ins in relation to your social media efforts, you’ll also want to take into account whether your existing tools are compatible with your potential social media management tool.

To better understand whether a specific social media management tool is right for you, check out our Comparison Tool to see how each one stacks up against the other, as well as our Finder Tool to help you locate the right software for you.