9 Social Media Management Tools That Will Change the Way You Work

From Facebook and Twitter to Pinterest and Instagram, it can be an overwhelming task to manage and monitor your organization’s multiple social media accounts. And as the number of channels you’re expected to have a presence on continues to grow, the problem only intensifies.

Luckily there are plenty of tools—free and paid—that can change the way you do your job, giving you more time for effective engagement. A social media management tool should help you build meaningful relationships online. It should not make you feel like you’re speaking into the void.

In addition to engagement monitoring, there are many benefits to using a social media management tool. It can help you:

• Aggregate information to ensure a consistent voice across platforms
• Create greater transparency regarding the people who are connecting with your organization
• Compare the performance of your campaigns across different channels in one place
• Schedule posts ahead of time to stay more organized and reduce errors
• Control authorization of who can post to certain channels
• Better understand your audience and their preferences
• Segment your community into lists for more meaningful engagement

There are a lot of tools to choose from and we want to help you sort through the options. The key is to find an affordable, intuitive tool that can help you manage your several accounts.

The following list of tools stand out from the crowd and provide a well rounded list of features. Here’s what you need to know about them.

1. Hootsuite

Key Features:

• Manage all social networks in one place
• Monitor your audience’s engagement
• Implement security measures, such as permission levels for team members to access certain functionalities
• Integrates with 80 plus apps
• Connects with over 35 social networks, including Instagram
• Collaborate with other team members

Product Plans:

Hootsuite offers Free, Pro ($9.99/month), and Enterprise (request a quote) plans.

They also offer discounts for nonprofits. Your organization could qualify for up to 50 percent off Hootsuite’s products.

What Else You Should Know

Hootsuite Podium is a social media education tool available to anyone, regardless if you are a Hootsuite user. Their tiered program includes a number of free resources as well as more advanced paid courses. This collection of resources and certification programs provide straightforward, action-oriented ways to become a social media all-star and make the most of the Hootsuite dashboard.

More specific to the nonprofit sector is their nonprofit education program. Their Social Media Tune-Up is complimentary to nonprofit organizations and includes an assessment of your current approach and recommendations for improving your social strategy.

Learn more about Hootsuite

2. Buffer

Key Features:

• Post to all networks in Buffer at once
• Add content to your queue as you browse the web
• Access to image designer tools with Pablo
• Works with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, and Pinterest

Product Plans:

Buffer offers a great deal of flexibility in selecting the right plan for you. They have two plans for individuals (free vs. $10/month) and three different plans for teams and agencies, depending on your size (from $50-$250/month).

Each plan offers varied capabilities. For example, the number of social profiles that may be synced and the number of posts you can schedule per profile differs depending on your plan. Unfortunately, the free plan does not work with Pinterest, but all paid plans do.

What Else You Should Know

Buffer also has an optimal timing tool that helps you decide when it is most effective to publish your content. They place a strong emphasis on not just scheduling content, but giving you the right tools to create it. Tools like Pablo (an image creator), and a video and GIF uploader help you stay organized and creative.

Learn more about Buffer

3. Sprout Social

Key Features:

• All-in-one inbox for social updates
• Brand monitoring
• Ability to manage 10, 20, or 30 profiles depending on plan
• Team collaboration tools
• Social CRM tools

Product Plans

While Sprout Social doesn’t offer a free plan, they do offer a free trial of their deluxe ($59/month), premium ($99/month), and team plans ($500/month). Their advanced enterprise and agency plan is available for demo.

What Else You Should Know

Sprout Social also features a Smart Inbox. This inbox aggregates your messages across platforms and makes it easy to tag messages and mark them as complete. You can also keep an eye on certain keywords and hashtags all from inside your Smart Inbox.

Learn more about Sprout Social

4. Everypost

Key Features:

• Focus on content curation from different sources such as YouTube and Flickr
• Team collaboration
• Ability to tailor content before posting across multiple platforms
• Works with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Dropbox, and email
• Posts to WordPress and Evernote via email

Product Plans

Everypost has a Personal plan (Free), Pro plan ($9.99/month), Plus plan ($49.99/month), Advanced plan ($99.99/month) and Teams plan ($199.99/month). These tiered services offer a range of benefits. For example, the Pro plan can connect up to 10 channels and features unlimited scheduling capabilities. However, if group management is a feature you’re interested in, you’ll need to upgrade to Plus for that.

What Else You Should Know

Everypost offers a discount for nonprofits and educational institutions. Your organization could receive 50 percent off Everypost Pro. For information on this discount, Everypost asks that you email them at [email protected].

5. SocialClout

Key Features:

• Monitoring tools to gather insights across different platforms, blogs, and forums
• Works with all major social channels
• Sentiment analyzer to better interpret a donor’s perception of your brand
• Keyword search
• Aggregates the activities across your channels in a single screen
• Ability to sort by geography and demographics
• Tools to identify key influencers
• Campaign management across several platforms

Product Plans

SocialClout offers Free, Starter ($49/month), Value ($99/month), and Enterprise (ask for quote) plans. Their free plan works with up to five social media accounts and each account can have up to 1,000,000 fans. The free plan also provides analytics for two channels, and the benefits build with each plan from there.

What Else You Should Know

When you sign up for their free plan you receive access to Starter plan features for the first 30 days. This is a great opportunity to find out if your organization could really benefit from making an investment in a more comprehensive tool and to see if SocialClout is right for you.

6. Edgar

Key Features:

• Analytics to inform a custom schedule for posting
• Recycles old posts back into your scheduled queue
• Works with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• Can connect up to 10 to 25 accounts, depending on your plan
• Displays your queue of posts for the next two weeks
• Updates are sorted by category

Product Plans

Edgar offers an Individual Starter ($49/month) and Premium ($99/month) plan. They also can give quotes for plans that accommodate higher volumes.

What Else You Should Know

A key differentiating factor for Edgar is that it automatically recycles a number of your posts to social media and puts them back in the queue to be published again. Users categorize their posts when they first write them, and then based on this categorization, Edgar will post the update again when there are no longer any posts in the queue for that category. Users may also schedule content for specific dates and times, but this feature eliminates any need to fill the gaps in your calendar. According to Edgar, most social media posts are only seen by a small percentage of your overall following. They believe that there is an opportunity to “get more mileage out of every update.”

Learn more about Edgar

7. AgoraPulse

Key Features:

• Inboxes for each social media account
• Works with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
• Identifies key influencers and ambassadors
• Custom tags for categorization
• Keeps all prior conversations for future referral
• Unlimited reports via PowerPoint
• Advance keyword searches
• Unlimited campaigns

Product Plans

AgoraPulse offers Micro ($29/month), Small ($49/month), Medium ($99/month), and Large ($199/month) plans. The Micro plan is more geared toward individuals. In order to get access to features such as reporting, you will need the Small plan.

AgoraPulse also allows you to pay for extra features in addition to your selected plan. For an extra $19/month you can add an additional social profile or grant access to another team member.

What Else You Should Know

AgoraPulse also offers a number of free Facebook marketing tools such as Facebook Marketing University and Facebook Page Barometer. These features help you master this social channel and understand how your page is performing in comparison to other similar pages.

Learn more about AgoraPulse

8. Viraltag

Key Features:

• Manages your visual content in one dashboard
• Ability to create content via Canva integration
• Access to stock and user generated photos
• Works with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tumblr

Product Plans

Viraltag offers Pro ($29/month), Business ($99/month), and Brand ($500/month) plans. Prices per plan are reduced when users sign up for an annual plan instead of a monthly. Pro plan users can add 10 social profiles and are granted access to the visual content discovery feature and Viraltag’s visual content library. To add team members though, you will need the Business plan.

Nonprofits and bloggers have access to a special discounted plan with Viraltag: the Blogger Plan ($12/month).

What Else You Should Know

Viraltag claims to be the “best Pinterest and Instagram marketing program.” Compelling visual content is an important part of engaging with your community. If the work of your organization lends itself to visual communications, this may be the tool for you.

Learn more about Viraltag

9. MavSocial

Key Features:

• Focus on visual content management
• Campaign planning and management
• Team collaboration
• In-app stock images for purchase
• Social media inbox
• Bit.ly integration
• Digital assets analytics
• Works with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, and soon Instagram

Product Plans

MavSocial offers a Small Business Edition (Free) and an Enterprise and Agency Solution (request a quote) plan. The free plan is very comprehensive, with the ability to connect six social networks and up to 50 profiles. The free plan also includes analytics and reporting, features generally reserved for paid plans.

What Else You Should Know

MavSocial has a built in photo editor and gives you the ability to repurpose your digital assets. You can also gain access to over 70 million royalty-free images as a MavSocial user.

Learn more about MavSocial

These nine tools are just a handful of the many options available to help manage your organization’s social media accounts. For example, if your organization tends to rely on one social platform heavily, such as Twitter, a tool that focuses only on that channel may be a wiser investment.

Take the time to run a free trial or to start using a free plan. This will help your marketing staff understand which features they find most important and test what tool is the best fit. An investment in a social media management tool is a commitment to a scalable model that can help improve donor relationships, and ultimately, make you more successful at rallying people around your cause.

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Every Campaign. Every Channel. #Winning

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