Tag: social media management

7 reasons why your business should use a social media management tool

Social media management can be complex for many businesses. Tools are the solution.

The more accounts you have, the more you have to stay on top of your posting, engagement and monitoring.

It’s worth the effort, though. About 44.8 percent of global internet users used social media to search for brand information in 2020.

Fortunately, finding the right tool for you can make all the difference in your social media presence. The following are seven reasons why you should use a social media management tool to make sense of your online presence.

Then, check out our 11 suggested free (or almost free) social media management tools.

Social media efficiency

With so many accounts to manage across multiple platforms, it’s very time-consuming to hop from one to the other to manually post (whether you’re scheduling or posting in real-time), converse with followers and engage with related content.

You’ve heard it before, time is money. But the efficiency of having access to all your social media accounts in one management tool goes beyond saving time and helps you be more effective with your posts and engagements.

In addition, the ability to schedule all your posts in one place across platforms saves even more time.

Improved social listening

It’s critical to treat social media as an avenue for conversations and learning, not just as a broadcast mechanism.

Social listening is a huge benefit of using a social media management tool. You’ll be able to easily monitor your competition, as well as what others are saying about you on social media. In addition, social media trends that are relevant to your business and brand are quicker to spot.

Learn more about the difference between social listening and crowdsourcing.

Avoid hashtag mistakes

While the typical “mistake” that happens with hashtags is that it isn’t the right one to generate more reach and engagement on your post, it is possible to go way off the mark. Use the wrong hashtag in an inappropriate way, and social media users with eat your brand alive.

Consider what happened to DiGiorno Pizza in 2014. They jumped in on the trending domestic violence conversation happening on Twitter with the hashtag #WhyIStayed. They tweeted: “You had pizza.” Needless to say, DiGiorno was skewered online. 

While also a lesson on when humor may or may not be appropriate, this could have been avoided with the appropriate hashtag research. And hashtag research is much easier on a social media management tool.

Streamlined analytics

It’s important to prove the return on investment in all your social media endeavors. But it can be a pain to platform hop to gather your metrics and then compile them to tell the story of how your efforts are performing.

Enter a social media management tool, where many can streamline your analytics reporting across multiple platforms. Data can then be exported in a number of formats.

The better you can understand your performance and what’s working or not, then the better you can pivot your social media strategy moving forward.

Scalability

Most businesses have to keep an eye on the scalability of their efforts, even beyond social media.

While one person succeeding at managing one social media platform can be great, that success could diminish once that person is manually jumping around to five social accounts for your brand.

Not only are multiple social media platforms a challenge in quantity, you have to keep in mind that the content and style of posting has to cater to each platform individually.

A social media management tool can make these efforts entirely scalable.

Organization and consistency

Chaos with your content is very easy to fall into when you’re spread then across social media platforms.

Using a management tool helps you view your presence across platforms in one space and stay organized in the process.

Most tools include a visual content calendar scheduling tool, so not only can you see the types of content you’re scheduling, but the overall frequency as well.

Never miss anything

Whether it’s comments, direct messages or other types of engagements or activity, social media management tools ensure you stay focused an on top of everything that’s happening in regard to your brand on social media.

Having your notifications in one place will help prevent you from missing both the little and the big stuff.

As you’re considering all the reasons why you should be using a social media management tool, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

11 free (or almost free) social media management tools

More likely than not, your business has a presence on more than one social media platform.

The more platforms you are on, the harder it is to manually post, monitor and engage within your native social media accounts.

Social media management involves the many moving pieces regarding content publication and online communication on such platforms as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and more.

Dive deeper with our seven reasons why your business should use a social media management tool.

Therefore, social media management tools are intended to consolidate into one space the ability to:

  • Schedule content
  • Engage with your audiences
  • Analyze performance data
  • Potentially create content (depending on the tool)

For even more efficiency, consider these seven opportunities for social media automation.

The following (in no particular order) are 11 free (or almost free) social media management tools that can help you do it all on social media with a limited budget.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that offers a limited free plan in addition to different paid subscriptions with increasing features. The free plan features:

  • 1 user
  • 2 social accounts
  • 5 scheduled messages

This application features “streams” in which you can set up a tab for each of your social media accounts and then a series of streams on each tab that reflect your mentions, scheduled posts and more.

It supports a range of social media platforms, including:

  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube

If you’re looking for unlimited scheduled posts (among other upgraded features), the lowest paid subscription plan is $49 per month.

Socialoomph

Socialoomph has been around since 2008. It also offers a limited free plan in addition to different paid subscriptions with increasing features. The free plan features:

  • 1 social account
  • Access to personal area only
  • Access to basic posting features
  • Unlimited scheduled posts
  • Maximum three posts per hour
  • Cannot add additional social accounts
  • Free support

This social media management tool includes support for bulk uploading, RSS feeds (where you can collect content) and web hooks, among other features. Socialoomph centers itself around the concept of teams. Even with the free single-user account, you automatically have one team, called “My Account.”

Socialoomph supports such social media platforms as:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
  • Discord
  • Mastodon
  • StockTwits

The lowest paid plan is $15 per month, but to be able to connect to more than one social account, you’ll have to go with the Professional Suite at $25 per month, where you can connect up to 10.

Later

Later is a very visual-based social media management tool that offers a limited free plan in addition to its different paid subscriptions with upgraded features. The free plan includes:

  • 1 user
  • 30 Instagram posts per month
  • 50 Twitter posts per month
  • 30 Facebook posts per month
  • 30 Pinterest posts per month
  • Instagram analytics
  • Ability to search and repost user-generated content

While Later allows you to post to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, its main focus is on Instagram support. The visuals are imperative to this application. Most social media management tools allow you to start with a message and then possibly add an image if you want. However, Later requires you to start a post by uploading an image.

Later also features a Media Library, where you can either upload new media to it or reuse media you’ve already uploaded. Notes and labels can be added to individual media items as you like. You also can add a star to highlight any media items.

To do more (such as scheduling videos, Instagram Stories and multi-photo posts instead of just single static images), the lowest paid subscription starts at $9 per month.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media management tool that offers a limited free plan as well. It also has different paid subscription plan levels for increased features. The free plan features:

  • 1 user
  • 3 social accounts
  • 10 scheduled posts

The free plan also supports Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn but not Pinterest (that’s only available through a paid subscription).

To get Pinterest support and additional upgraded features, the lowest paid subscription starts at $15 per month.

While you’re likely focused on the ability to schedule your posts, which is referred to as Buffer Publishing, Buffer also offers two other apps that both require separate subscriptions:

  • Buffer Reply allows you to reply to online conversations happening on the supported social media platforms and offers support from one shared team inbox.
  • Buffer Analyze helps you measure the performance of your social media content and create reports for clients and/or your team.

Fortunately, if you are interested in all three, there is also a Buffer All-In-One option that has all features bundled together.

PromoRepublic

While PromoRepublic does not offer a limited free plan, it does have a 14-day free trial that can roll into a relatively affordable (compared to many other tools) $9-per-month subscription plan.

The “Solo Plan for Solopreneurs” subscription features:

  • 3 social media accounts
  • Social media calendar
  • Library of content suggestions

PromoRepublic is very design focused, which can feel like a merging of Canva with a traditional social media management tool. The designing and scheduling can all happen within PromoRepublic.

Supported social media networks include:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Google My Business

If you’re looking for inspiration, PromoRepublic comes with 100,000 post ideas that cover a variety of topics. The pre-designed graphics can be modified and customized to suit you business and your needs.

TweetDeck

If your social media management is primarily tied to Twitter, you’ll want to consider TweetDeck, which is a free application that allows you to manage unlimited Twitter accounts from a single interface.

The dashboard is completely customizable and follows a similar thought process to Hootsuite’s “streams.” You can control the organization of your modules so that you can efficiently monitor:

  • Your home feed
  • Any lists you create or follow
  • Mentions
  • Direct messages
  • Scheduled tweets

And, of course, more. Everything within TweetDeck is free, so there are no features you’re ever missing out on.

Canva

Largely viewed as a design tool only, many don’t realize that Canva also has social media scheduling capabilities, too.

However, the limited free version of Canva is designing only. To schedule social media content (to seven platforms), the lowest paid subscription (currently at $9.99 per month) is required at a minimum. 

Canva Pro currently supports scheduling for:

  • Instagram (Business accounts only)
  • Facebook (pages or groups)
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn (profiles or pages)
  • Slack 
  • Tumbler

Of course, the power of sophisticated design features coupled with the ability to schedule that content all in the same application might work perfectly for you and/or your business.

ContentCal

ContentCal centers around bringing your team together with such features as approval workflows, joint creation of your content plan and more. The limited free plan includes:

  • 1 user
  • 4 social media accounts
  • 1 calendar
  • 10 posts per month
  • Email support

Granted, the free version lacks the robust team features that ContentCal prides itself on. Supported social media platforms include:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Google My Business
  • YouTube
  • Medium

Keep in mind that ContentCal integrates with more than 2,000 other applications so that you can enhance your workflow by connecting other tools you already use, like Slack or Trello. 

The lowest paid subscription price for enhanced features starts at $17 per month.

Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a social media management tool that offers a limited free plan with:

  • 1 user
  • 1 brand
  • zShare Browser Extension
  • Publishing on 7 social media accounts

The application features a content calendar that helps you visualize the posting timeline and allows you to organize your posts however needed. Supported social media platforms include:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Google My Business

For advanced features, the lowest paid subscription plan begins at $10 per month.

Planoly

Only concerned about Instagram and Pinterest? Planoly might be for you. This social media management tool offers a limited free plan as well with:

  • 1 user
  • 2 social media accounts (one Instagram and one Pinterest)
  • 30 uploads per month per profile
  • Basic analytics

Planoly also features Linkit, which allows you to link to products, resources, websites and so on using the link in the bio.

For more advanced features, the lowest paid subscription plan starts at $7 per month.

See our six expert tips for marketing on Pinterest.

Postfity

Postfity is a social media management tool that only has a 30-day trial period, but it’s lowest paid subscription plan starts at $9.99 per month (or less if billed annually).

The tool supports the following social media platforms:

  • Facebook 
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Vkontakte

The application has a more unique feature of Facebook cover image scheduling, as well as a social media post ideas tool, where you can pull suggested posts from a calendar and customize and publish at will.

Analytics are also an option with the paid subscription plans on Postfity.

It’s possible that to find the perfect free or low-cost social media management tool, you’ll have to experiment over time. That’s OK! Do as much research as you can so that you can know in advance whether the tool you’re considering will truly serve your needs. But don’t stress if you ultimately need to transition to a different tool. 

Still not sure which social media to use to promote your brand? View our guide to help determine the right platform for your business.

While you’re considering your social media management options, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automations, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.