Compare Social Media Management Tools

Social media management tools can be an incredible benefit, especially when you’re tasked with managing more than one social media profile at any given time. With a good social media management platform, you can better synchronize posts, manage user engagement, curate content, and more. But with so many possible options for social media management tools on the internet today, it’s important that you have the opportunity to properly compare potential choices to see which one would work best for you.

What Is Important When Comparing Social Media Management Tools?

There are many things that social media management tools can do for you as a brand, ranging from the execution of specific social media campaigns to the analysis of specific marketing metrics that can better inform your next step in a competitive environment. We looked at the different factors that contributed the most to the overall value of a particular social media management tool and listed them in our tool to make a comparison between them easier.

Our initial research included a deep dive into the different features and functions of each social media management tool, the prices they advertised to access such features, as well as other additional capabilities like analytics and support.

Here is an overview of the essential points that you can compare with your tool:

1. Posting and Scheduling

Posting and scheduling are one of the most important aspects of any social media management tool as it essentially allows you to manage all your different account’s content under one specific dashboard overview. You can also pre-plan all of your posts ahead of time to alleviate the stress of having to create content posts in relation to relevant holidays or important dates. We’ve analyzed posting and scheduling through the following attributes:

No. of Accounts

This indicates how many social media accounts can be managed with each social media management tool by default and pricing plan. The more accounts one tool can manage, the better your chances of creating a more robust online presence for your brand. It’s often the case that providers offer a specific price to add additional accounts.

Scheduling Posts

Being able to schedule posts ahead of time keeps you ahead of the game by allowing you to set up “always-on” materials, pre-plan holiday posts, and even create limited promotional campaigns that can create better traction for your brand online.

No. of Scheduled Posts

Related to the above, if a social media management tool has the feature to schedule posts, the number of scheduled posts it can manage at any given time will be important to how complex your eventual campaigns can be.

Calendar View

As you schedule posts, it can eventually turn out to be difficult to remember which goes out and when. As such, a calendar view can be incredibly useful to give you a comprehensive view of all your posts with a glance.

Link Shortening

When developing content links, it can be unsightly to see such a long link attached to your content. Link shortening can be a very useful tool to create better-looking links that direct users to appropriate pages and give you additional options to track visitors.

Post Boosting

With so many people competing for the same set of audiences, boosted posts can help you get to the top of the feed. A social media management tool that can manage to advertise like this is useful for those with the budgets to accommodate.

Approval Workflows

It’s increasingly rare to see a brand’s social media page managed by a single person. That’s why approval workflows are key in ensuring that everyone on the team has a say in the content being produced, scheduled, and posted over time.

Image Editor

Each platform has different requirements regarding the type of media that can be posted. Having a built-in image editor can make it much easier for you to be in line with photo measurements to tweak posts as you plan them out.

2. Monitoring

Being able to execute is one thing, but you need to see how well these posts on your different social media accounts are doing in the first place. That’s why we’ve also researched each tool’s capability to capture and analyze different metrics of performance in the social media landscape so that you can better plan your next step. The following are the different attributes we’ve identified that can better inform how well a social media management tool let’s you monitor and report data.

Users

This attribute indicates the number of people that can access the software which can be a great help for those working in teams or owning a social media agency.

Review Management

A brand’s reputation is a careful thing to cultivate, and managing customer reviews can be a big help in maintaining a healthy online image.

Social Inbox

Alongside reputation is the necessity to manage and cultivate meaningful interactions with your audiences. That means collating the different messages received from various social media sources is important to make sure your brand stays relevant and approachable. It also makes it easier for you to communicate since you don’t have to log into each social media platform but can instead reply from one place - your social media management software.

Analytics

Analytics is key to understanding whether your current initiatives are translating toward specific metric benchmarks. Whether it's awareness, impressions, or conversions, having a platform that has robust analytical capabilities is key.

Campaign Management

An overarching strategy is key to moving beyond just singular posts. Manage your campaigns from a single dashboard to see how well your content and social media profiles operate as a whole.

Audience Analysis

Part of analytics is understanding what your audience is like, and good social media tools can help you segment and create personas for your audiences based on their online behavior.

Roles & Permissions

As you work with your teams or outside vendors, it can be useful to have features that allow for additional administrative roles and moderator permissions. You can keep your total account safe while allowing better collaboration between users.

Mobile App

It’s no secret that today the mobile phone has exploded in functionality, and having the ability to continue monitoring your social media platforms on the go can be incredibly helpful, especially during key campaign periods.

3. Pricing

With all these different functions comes the question of the price accessibility of the tools themselves. It can be easy to be interested in a particular software suite and be disappointed to see that you’re priced out of the package entirely. As researchers, we delved into the different pricing plans and usage options of different social media management platforms to gauge how accessible they were from a price standpoint.

Free Plan

Some online software services include a free version in which users can try out the platform before committing to a specific cost. We’ve checked who offers truly free products and who doesn’t and even analyzed each free plan to see which one gives the most value as a free platform alone.

Monthly Plan

The most common option that new users choose is a monthly plan given the lower cost of usage short-term and, therefore, lower commitment to the platform itself. The monthly cost is what we display in our comparison tool at the top for the different pricing plans that providers offer.

Annual Plan

Once a platform becomes a larger part of any particular brand or agency, it can be valuable for them to have an annual plan to save a lot of money long-term when compared to a monthly plan. Usually, the discounts on annual plans are quite generous to make people stick to the software.

4. Platforms

Naturally, a social media management tool should be able to balance and manage different social media platforms without trouble. With the continued growth of the social media landscape, it can be a complex exercise to navigate between the different channels that can make up a brand’s presence online. For all social media management tools, we have checked with which social media platforms they are compatible. Make sure to use our comparison tool to compare social media management tools by the channels you require to find your perfect match. Here you can find a robust breakdown of the different social media platforms we consider.

5. Ease of Use

How good is a tool that makes it too difficult to even use it? A good social media management tool has tailored its platform to appeal to both the experts and the novices that use them. We analyzed customer reviews and performed standardized tests to give each software tool a score so you can compare which platform could take you more or less time to get the hang of it.

6. Support

If things go wrong with any service or product that you use, you likely turn to customer support to figure out what can be done. As such, we’ve done the same with our research into the different social media management software platforms by analyzing their support and comparing the following options to reach staff:

Phone

Some of the most direct help can still be acquired through phone calls. Good phone support can help you explain your problem in a much more detailed way while receiving instant support.

Live Chat

Close to phone support is the live chat support that allows you to attach images such as screenshots to better illustrate your issue. It can also be more flexible to be accessed by most users looking for a quick resolution.

Email

Some more complex issues can be better managed through email correspondence, where tickets and support chains can be better tracked.

How to Compare Social Media Management Tools

Comparing social media management tools through our comparison tool is easy once you know what you’re looking for. Remember, it’s important to understand your own individual needs when it comes to social media management to be better informed about what a tool can and cannot offer you.

If you’re just starting out your comparison journey, you might want to focus on a particular social media management tool’s pricing and scheduling capabilities as well as its supported social media channels to see which providers match your core values. We recommend making a list of your priorities to then cross out one provider at a time.

Your Result of Comparing Social Media Management Tools

Once you have compared all social media management tools, you should be left with one as your conclusion. However, you may also still stand between a few more options. In that case, feel free to check out the Finder Tool to see which platform may best suit you based on our algorithm. You can also visit our overall Best Picks to see how well some of the top platforms performed overall and if your shortlisted providers are amongst them.