The 23 Best Social Media Management Tools for Boosting Engagement

Now more than ever, your social media presence matters.

People turn to social to learn more about your brand, what you do, why you do it, and how your products and/or services stack up to your competitors.

Social media is a major element of any comprehensive inbound marketing strategy. And with so many different social channels to manage — Facebook, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and countless more examples coming and going every year — it can feel like juggling too many balls in the air. Only sometimes, someone randomly adds new balls that are different from the ones you're currently juggling and others disappear on you at random.

All of these platforms are important for effective social media marketing, but keeping track of your channels and regularly posting and engaging on them can take time.

One way to make it easier to handle your engagement across multiple social media platforms is through the use of social media management tools.

Social media management tools allow you to not only keep track of your posting and engagement with prospects; you can also develop social media post ideas and create thoughtful content, schedule your posts across multiple channels, monitor any mentions of your company, track and analyze performance, and much more.

The variety of social media management tools out there can be a bit overwhelming for novices and advanced users alike. How do you choose the best management tool to meet your needs? How do you know what features to choose?

Luckily, some of the best tools don’t require you to pay an arm and a leg to use them. Many social media management tools are free (though most of them offer in-app purchases and upgrades if you so choose).

6 Benefits of Using Social Media Management Tools

You may be wondering if researching, learning, and using social media management tools is worth it. After all, it can take a lot of time and effort to download more tools and figure out how they work. So, why can't you just use your social media apps to post manually every day?

While you could do that, there are a number of awesome benefits to using social media management tools:

They Help You Keep Up with Social Engagement.

It is now easier than ever for customers to connect and engage with their favorite brands. They can ask questions, voice criticisms, or praise the brands they interact with. Many individuals take full advantage of this direct channel to provide brands with feedback.

When you respond to customer messages, it shows that you care about their experience. And the best way to show you care is to not only respond but to respond as quickly as possible. According to data from SuperOffice, "Nearly half of all customers (46%) expect companies to respond faster than 4 hours. While 12% expect a response within 15 minutes or less."

Keeping up with all of your messages and mentions from various social platforms can be tough. Especially when you're trying to meet the expectations of customers who are increasingly used to instant gratification.

Using a social media management tool can centralize all of your messages to make it easy for you to sort through messages and reply in a timely manner.

They Allow You to Manage Multiple Social Pages at Once.

There is no single "perfect" social media channel that will give a business all of the leads it could possibly achieve online. Different audiences will gravitate toward different social networks. This means you likely rely on multiple social profiles and networks, which makes them much more difficult to manage. 

For example, you might need to juggle multiple logins, different posting limitations (like the character limit on Twitter/X), and unique best practices for getting to the top of each platform's algorithm for recommending posts to users.

Social media tools help you keep all of your necessary social media information and messaging in one spot. This saves you the time and effort needed to continuously log in and out of accounts multiple times a day and can even help you navigate the complexities of differing social media platform standards. 

They Help You Manage Customer Relationships.

Every customer you have is special and unique in some way, and you need to treat them as such.

Social media tools can help you keep track of people or organizations that you have interacted with and what conversations you've had so you can personalize each experience with your customers. 

They Help You Monitor Keywords.

Customers who complain or mention your brand may not tag your page directly. Many customers may mention your brand without the expectation that you will respond. 

Helpful social media tools provide you insight into what people are saying about your brand using keyword monitoring. If you were to try to do this on your own and search every possible hashtag and keyword, it would take you an eternity.

Fortunately, social tools deliver important data on trends and keywords in an instant. 

They Allow You to Analyze Social Media Performance.

Planning your social media campaigns and strategies should involve looking at the past to improve in the future. You need relevant data from your social networks to conduct a thorough analysis to figure out what works and what doesn't. 

Social media analysis tools collect key metrics you can use to develop and continue optimizing an effective social media strategy. 

They Help Make Your Posting Schedule More Consistent.

Many social media management solutions allow you to write multiple posts ahead of time and set them up to release at a future date. This helps you keep your social media posts on a more consistent schedule since you can knock out all of your posts for the week or month at one time.

So, you don't have to worry about hopping on three different platforms at 2:15 in the afternoon to hit that ideal publish time for your audience of post-lunch social media lovers. 

Keeping to a consistent posting schedule can even help you grow your social media following. According to Hootsuite: "Daily posting will grow followers 4x faster than posting less than once a week." Using a social media management tool to make a calendar of daily posts for your social channels can help you keep your social media growth on a positive trend.

They Help You Streamline Team Collaboration on Social Platforms.

Working with one large social account or various small social accounts often requires a team to manage them. This can cause some problems if you manage each social media platform separately.

For instance, you may not know who replied to what or who posted what picture and when. This can cause things to slip through the cracks or make it so that multiple people try to reply to the same comment on a social platform.

Using a tool allows you to streamline your work because you and your team members can all work from a shared inbox that displays every correspondence between your team and your customers on social media. This helps to make social media engagement efforts more consistent across all of the platforms you use.

The Best Free Social Media Posting Tools

These free social media management posting tools will help you track and manage multiple social media profiles in a single interface by allowing you to schedule your posts ahead of time. 

Here are some of the best free social media posting tools to help you meet your social media goals:

1. Adobe Express Social Media Scheduler

Source: Adobe

Adobe now offers a content scheduler solution that can help users "Create, plan, preview your content, and schedule posts" across multiple social media channels. The free social media scheduler works with:

• TikTok
• Instagram
• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn

Free plan users can create two scheduled posts per calendar month—which doesn't sound like a lot. What sets this tool apart (aside from the fact that it's backed by Adobe) is that it comes with remixable templates that you can use for your social media posts and a series of tutorials to help you learn the fine art of posting on social media.

Additionally, the scheduler is part of Adobe's free Adobe Express membership plan, which comes with:

• 25 generative credits per month for Adobe features (like Text-to-Image and Text Effects powered by Adobe Firefly)
• Drag and drop video creation features and photo editing effects
• PDF file editor tools
• Animation presets to add motion to text, photos, videos, and other design elements

Adobe Express Upgrade Options

Adobe has multiple plans available for a variety of customers. The upgrade options listed specifically for businesses are:

• Premium: $9.99/month per seat
• Teams: $12.99/month per seat

2. Buffer

Source: Buffer

Like Hootsuite, Buffer has been in the social media management space for a long time.

Buffer is a respectable platform. It allows you to manage multiple social media profiles easily and includes many of the same features as Hootsuite.

This platform organizes your scheduled posts in a queue list format so you can easily scroll and monitor the posts that will go out on your various social platforms. Neat and simple.

It also allows you to schedule content while browsing the web with Chrome extensions. Where Buffer shines is its ability to monitor user activity and then suggest the perfect time to post based on your followers' activity. Pretty cool!

With a basic free Buffer account, you can link three social channels, have 10 scheduled posts at a time per channel, and set up to 100 ideas in their content creation tools.

Buffer Upgrade Options

• Essentials: $6/month per channel
• Team: $12/month per channel
• Agency: $120/month for 10 channels (plus another $6/month for each additional channel)

3. Friends+Me

Source: Friends+Me

Friends+Me is a great platform that supports social platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr on its free plan.

Their free plan allows you to schedule five posts per queue (with two queues, for a total of ten posts scheduled across two separate social channels), and they even offer you standard support services. You can also integrate with Pinterest, but that requires an upgrade to one of their paid plan tiers. 

Friends+Me Upgrade Options

• For Individuals
  • $7.50/month (when billed annually, $9/month otherwise)
• For Businesses
  • Small: $24.17/month (when billed annually, $29/month otherwise)
  • Medium: $49.17/month (when billed annually, $59/month otherwise)
  • Large: $215.84/month (when billed annually, $259/month otherwise)
• Read more about pricing options here. 

4. Zoho Social

Source: Zoho

Zoho Social allows you the flexibility to schedule your posts when your audience is most likely to be engaged and active. They also provide you with an intuitive content calendar that helps you map out all of your posts for maximum organization.

Additionally, you can use it to monitor your mentions in real-time so you can respond quickly. Zoho Social has a free version that offers you limited scheduling and monitoring options for a single team member to manage publishing across seven different channels. 

You can try out one of the paid plans on a 15-day free trial if you want to compare the free tools against the paid version.

Zoho Social Upgrade Options

• For Individuals and Businesses
  • Standard: $10/month billed annually
  • Professional: $30/month billed annually
  • Premium: $40/month billed annually
• For Agencies
  • Agency: $230/month billed annually
  • Agency Plus: $330/month billed annually
• For more pricing information, check out the detailed pricing list here. 

The Best Free Social Media Editing Tools

Didn't get the right amount of light or the proper angle? Here are some free social media editing tools to help you post the perfect pictures and videos every time:

5. VSCO (Phone App)

Source: VSCO

VSCO is a photo editing tool your business can utilize to create captivating visuals for your social media channels.

With this phone-based app, editing images and videos is a breeze. Use any of the many free presets, or create custom color and filter edits to suit your aesthetic.

VSCO saves all the photos you edit into a “studio” for you, so you’ll never lose track of any images you want to post.

The free tier of the plan includes their standard editing tools, 15 presets for helping your work stand out, a recipe for saving edits to an image that can be applied to other images, and live monthly educational sessions for creators.

VSCO Upgrade Options

• VSCO Plus: $29.99/year (free trial available)
• VSCO Pro: $59.99/year (only available on iOS devices)
• Read more about pricing options here.

6. PhotoScape X (Desktop App)

Source: PhotoScape X

As an all-in-one photo editing software, PhotoScape X can do a lot.

Download the app for Mac or Windows 10 to access a full editor right on your desktop. Its editing platform is easy to use and you can see your edits appear in real-time directly on your image. Plus, you can even create animated GIFs – who doesn’t love GIFs?

Create cut-outs, collages, merge photos, clone and remove elements from images – the possibilities with this tool are endless. And it’s totally free!

Photoscape X Upgrade Options

• Pro: $39.99 (Windows only)

7. Adobe Photoshop Express (Phone App)

Source: Adobe

Adobe is widely known for its software solutions for both individuals and businesses. One of these top-notch software programs everyone wishes they had is Photoshop.

But, what if I told you that you can get Photoshop for free? No, this isn't a dream – just head to the app store on your phone and type "Adobe Photoshop Express."

This basic version of Photoshop still has plenty of tools to help you edit and create beautiful images for your social media channels. Use preset filters or create custom edits for cropping, lightening, coloring, sharpening, and blurring your images to achieve the perfect look for your social content.

Looking to spice things up? Easily add textual elements or stickers to your images for a pop of fun.

Adobe Photoshop Express Upgrade Options

• No in-app upgrade options, but you can license Adobe Photoshop
• Learn more about Adobe Photoshop pricing options here.

8. Typito

Source: Typito

Video is a well-established tool for all kinds of marketing campaigns. Typito isn't a social media management tool per se, but rather a video-making tool suite that helps amateur and professional videographers alike. 

It uses a drag-and-drop interface that lets you make videos using images, video clips, and stunning typography.

Typito even gives you formatting options based on each social platform (LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) to ensure you always have the right aspect ratio for the channel you’re posting to. Plus, it recommends what each format is best for (e.g., feed, cover video, story, etc.). 

The free plan allows you to create an unlimited number of projects, with a maximum of five minutes per project and 30 minutes of exported video per month (with a watermark applied). Their paid plans increase the project duration and export limits while removing the watermark.

Typito Upgrade Options

• Solo: $15/month billed annually
• Pro: $29/month billed annually (prices may change depending on the number of seats purchased)
• Read more about pricing options here.

The Best Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

Your social media marketing isn't complete the second you hit "post." You need to engage with your followers and see what they are saying about you.

With the free social media monitoring tools below, keeping an eye on your social media accounts has never been easier. 

9. Followerwonk/Fedica

Source: Followerwonk

If you’re looking for a deep dive into your Twitter/X presence compared to your competitors, you need Followerwonk.

The basic, free version of Followerwork allows you to sign up with a Twitter/X account. View your social authority rankings, search bios, and compare your social graph to your competitors and industry leaders.

You can see who your competitors are following, who is following your competitors, how many followers they have, and even their most active hours on Twitter/X.

With their search bios tool, you can search for related keywords to help your business discover potential customers, employees, or just thought leaders. Additionally, after the API changes made to X, Followerwonk was acquired by Fedica, which added newer AI-driven tools to the platform.

It's a free tool worth trying.

Followerwonk/Fedica Upgrade Options

• Publish: $10/month billed annually
• Grow: $24/month billed annually
• Research: $79/month billed annually

10. Google Alerts

Source: Google Alerts

As the premier search engine provider and a company related to YouTube (the largest video content social media platform) under Alphabet, it's only natural that Google would make this list somewhere! Set up Google Alerts to see where people are mentioning your business.

Add alerts for specific terms related to your brand and industry – when you set them up, you will receive email updates on all the newest mentions at set intervals that you choose. This can help you optimize your social media strategy by keeping you apprised of major events related to keywords your choose.

Google Alerts Upgrade Options

• None: this tool is free for everyone.

The Best Free Social Media Analytics Tools

Make sure your social media campaigns are performing well. Take a look at these analytics tools so you can make sure you're driving engagement and growth for your business. 

11. SmarterQueue

Source: SmarterQueue

Another incredible all-in-one platform, SmarterQueue covers all the bases you need for planning, publishing, and analyzing. 

The free tools they offer include a reporting tool to help you identify your top Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts. The free social reporting tool helps you determine your best types of content, hashtags, mentions, posting times, and more, so you can optimize all your social media marketing efforts.

They also offer an Instagram Top Nine tool, so you can pick your favorite nine posts to share as a collage – these always get lots of engagement at the end of the year.

You can explore their entire platform when you sign up for a free trial. This gives you access to all of their awesome features, including:

• Intelligent scheduling automation powered by queues and posting plans, content categories, evergreen recycling, and content variations.
• A social media calendar to help you visualize all the content you're posting on each channel. 
• A monitoring tool that keeps you in the know on what people are talking about and how they're discussing your brand. 
• A comprehensive analytics dashboard with interactive charts to help you with reporting and optimizing your strategy for each social channel. 
• A social inbox for managing all your communications across each of your social media accounts. 

They also provide features to help you conduct a competitor analysis, so you can see how to outperform other brands in your niche. 

SmarterQueue Upgrade Options

• Solo: $24.99/month when paid annually
  • $19.99 for month to month
• Business: $42.99/month when paid annually
  • $49.99 for month to month
• Agency: $84.99/month when paid annually
  • $99.99 for month to month
• Custom: Starts at $24.99/month when paid annually
  • Starts at $29.99 for month to month
  • Customize the plan with add-ons (extra fees may apply).

12. Google Analytics

Source: Google Marketing Platform

How much traffic to your website comes from social channels? No matter what channels you employ for your social media marketing, without a way to measure your return on investment (ROI), all of your efforts mean nothing. You need to be able to analyze your results and answer important questions, like:

• What pages do visitors spend time on and engage with?
• How much time do visitors from social sites spend on your website?

Google Analytics can give you these answers and a whole lot more. Simply set up analytics on your website to monitor and analyze your traffic. It's a must-have app to see how your social media efforts are bringing in new leads and traffic, and best of all, it's free!

Google Analytics Upgrade Options

• Google Analytics 360: pricing may vary.
• Contact Google for more details.

13. Your Built-In Analytics on Each Platform

Don't forget that a lot of social media networks have built-in analytics tools that track your performance!

Twitter/X Analytics, Facebook Analytics, Instagram Insights, and LinkedIn Analytics are all valuable tools you can use to track your visitors, followers, and engagements.

And, since they're already built into each channel, there's no excuse not to use them!

Upgrade Options

• Varies by social media network. Contact your platform provider for more pricing information. 

The Best Free Social Media Graphics Tools

Visuals are vital to your social media marketing content. With these awesome solutions, you're able to create engaging graphics that resonate with your audience. 

14. Visme

Source: Visme

Visme is a leading name in the visual content creation game. From social media graphics and presentations to printables and beyond, you can develop all your visual content with this user-friendly tool. 

The Basic plan is free, and you can use it for as long as you want for an unlimited number of projects. This is a great risk-free option to explore how you and your team can start creating awesome visuals with Visme. 

One of the best aspects of this platform is the fact that it sets you up for success in using the Visme product, thanks to the organization's selection of educational resources. Their Visme Versity includes an educational blog, helpful videos for tutorials and tips, live webinars, and ebooks and handbooks. 

Additionally, you can save tons of time by using their incredible templates. They provide thousands of themes and templates for any visual content format you need. 

Visme Upgrade Options

• Starter: $12.25/month when billed annually
• Pro: $24.75/month when billed annually
• Visme for Teams: Contact Visme sales for details.

15. Canva

Source: Canva

If you want to create amazing, custom graphics to post on social media, Canva gives you a lot of tools to choose from.

Canva makes it easy to create breathtaking graphics and designs – and, if you'd rather start from scratch and create your own, that works too!

Beyond social media, this design website offers tons of tools for creating documents, flyers, marketing materials, and more. Regardless of what you're doing on social media, you'll probably want to check Canva out.

Canva Upgrade Options

• Canva Pro: $119.99/year
• Canva for Teams: $300/year for the first five people (additional fees may apply for extra team members)
• Learn more about pricing options here.

16. Stencil

Source: Stencil

Like many other graphic creators, Stencil has a simple drag-and-drop tool that allows you to make any social graphic you want.

Search through millions of royalty-free images to use as backgrounds and add fun text to provide context and value to your readers.

Not in the mood to design your own? Choose from any of their pre-made templates and customize it to fit your brand. Once you're done, all you have to do is download it!

Stencil Upgrade Options

• Pro: $15/month OR $9/month when paid annually
• Unlimited: $20/month OR $12/month when paid annually
• Read more about pricing options here.

17. Piktochart

Source: Piktochart

Infographics continue to be a valuable sharing tool to distribute knowledge to your audience. And, if you need a simple creator to make some kickass infographics, Piktochart is one of your best options.

Piktochart features tons of amazing templates you can fully customize to suit your brand, information, and platform.

There are even presentation templates if you plan on creating informational slideshows, LinkedIn SlideShares, and more.

Piktochart Upgrade Options

• PRO: $29/month OR $14/month per member billed annually
• Business: $49/month OR $24/month per member billed annually
• Enterprise: Custom pricing based on needs
• Read more about pricing options here.

Paid Social Media Management Tools You Can Try Before You Buy

Want to try some extremely robust (and popular) social media management tools that don't currently have a free plan tier? Consider signing up for one of the following tools that give new subscribers a free trial period to test their tools out before buying them.

1. Hootsuite (30 Day Free Trial)

Source: Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a paid service for publishing and scheduling posts, curating content, managing campaigns, messaging customers, managing ads, and more. While the service is paid, they offer new users a 30-day free trial period on their Professional or Team plans to allow them to determine if the tool is right for them. They're banking on users getting hooked on platform features like:

• Managing 10 (Professional) or 20 (Team) social accounts at once.
• Unlimited posting and scheduling.
• Social content calendar features
• Publishing time recommendations

After the free trial period is over, the tool switches over to a regular paid subscription.

Hootsuite Pricing Options

• Professional: $99/month
• Team: $299/month
• Enterprise: Custom plan; contact for pricing 
• Read more about pricing options here.

2. Later (14 Day Free Trial)

Source: Later

Later is an easy-to-use platform for businesses working with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, and has a 30-post limit each month for each platform on their Starter subscription tier.

To schedule a post, all you have to do is upload your media and drag the photo or video you want to schedule onto the calendar. Put your caption in the comments section and pick your time to post!

For marketers on the go, Later even has a free app you can download for Android or iOS. A big plus with this app is its Instagram preview feature.

When scheduling your Instagram posts, you can actually preview what they will look like on your existing feed. You can drag and reorder your scheduled posts how you please to ensure your aesthetic is just the way you want!

Later Pricing Options

• Starter $14.47/month (when billed annually)
• Growth $30.00/month (when billed annually)
• Advanced $53.33/month (when billed annually)

While social media can seem daunting, using these social media management tools can help you organize your efforts and keep them focused.

3. Awario (7 Day Free Trial)

Source: Awario

Awario provides you with the powerful analytics you need to track your growth. This social analytics tool helps you to sort your social mentions by sentiments. 

It also allows you to view line charts and maps to help you see visual data and identify trends. Awario has a free trial, but there is no free plan.

Awario Pricing Options

• Starter: $29/month billed annually
• Pro: $89/month billed annually
• Enterprise: $249/month billed annually
• For more information on pricing check here. 

4. Sendible (14 Day Free Trial)

Source: Sendible

Sendible is a social media management platform that aims to help growing agencies truly partner with their clients on social media. They have four tiers of service for individuals, startups, growing agencies, and large, well-established marketing agencies who want "white-label" social media management solutions.

The base tier of their service offers unlimited post scheduling, planning and content idea support, monitoring solutions, and reporting for a single user across six social media profiles. A free trial is available upon request.

Sendible Pricing Options

• Creator: $25/month billed yearly
• Traction: $76/month billed yearly
• White Label+: $638/month billed yearly

5. Sprout Social (30 Day Free Trial)

Source: Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a well-known paid social media monitoring and management solution that provides tracking across multiple social profiles with an "all-in-one" social inbox feature to make managing all of your social media channels faster and easier.

The tool allows you to schedule out posts ahead of time for future publishing, leverage CRM tools, and review AI Assist suggestions to help boost your social media performance even on the lowest subscription tier.

It's a high-cost service compared to some others in this article, but Sprout Social provides a strong value for the price. Wondering if Sprout Social is worth the cost? You can try it out for free for 30 days.

Sprout Social Pricing Options

• Standard: $249/month
• Professional: $399/month
• Advanced: $499/month
• Enterprise: Contact Sprout Social for details

6. BuzzSumo (30 Day Free Trial)

Source: BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a social media management tool that combines research, monitoring, discovery, and more to help businesses increase their reach on social platforms. 

Use cases for the platform include conducting competitor intelligence, creating a content strategy, running a digital PR campaign, and managing influencer relationships to boost your reach to their audiences. 

BuzzSumo offers a variety of plans for marketers, agencies, and internal marketing departments to manage their social media strategies.

BuzzSumo Pricing Options

• Content Creation: $199/month
• PR & Comms: $299/month
• Suite: $499/month
• Enterprise $999/month
  • 20% discount available when billed annually

Note that a lot of these tools perform more functions than stated here, and the more robust and versatile they are, the more beneficial they can be for your business.

For example, Hootsuite, while an amazing scheduling software, can also be a great social mentioning tool!

As you become more proficient with their use, you'll become a much better social marketer and will reap the benefits of this powerful online marketing medium.

Whether they're free or they're paid subscription services, these are 23 tools that can help you build a better brand on social media. But, if you ever want to commit to one of these tools and utilize them to their full potential, there's always room to upgrade!