11 Best Social Media Management Tools in 2024
A house fly will long outlive your social media post.
Last year, post lifespans ranged from 48 hours on LinkedIn to less than 20 minutes on X. Think about that: the lifecycle of an insect is exponentially greater than your social media post.
If you thought publishing content to your social media channels wasn’t a top priority, you’ll want to rethink your social media content strategy in 2024 — starting with social media management tools.
What are social media management tools?
Social media management tools are software that connects to multiple social media platforms, allowing you to execute tasks like scheduling posts from a single, centralized hub.
Think of your social media scheduler like an enhancement of your social media team, not a replacement.
Social media scheduling tools allow your team to schedule social posts across all of your channels, removing the tedious need to post to individual accounts and leaving them more time to actively engage with your audience in meaningful ways through comments and replies.
What makes the best social media management tool?
Remember: Even the best social media scheduler can be less than effective for a company if it doesn’t align with their unique needs.
For young companies, a free social media scheduler may be the best choice to ensure consistent posting without unnecessarily increasing costs. As a company grows, a more comprehensive social media scheduling tool may be worth the investment if it elevates your brand and funnels more prospects to your sales team.
Ultimately, no matter which social media management tool you choose, it must:
Be affordable for your social media marketing budget.
Be easy to use, both for large social media teams and an employee or entrepreneur who wears many hats.
Be designed to not only accomplish your short-term goals, but to also scale with your business and audience as it grows. Consider that while a tool might do the job now, changing tools in future could be painful.
Keep in mind that many social media management solutions may align better with certain social media channels: for instance, you may find the best scheduler for Instagram or X posts from a different social media management software than one that is best for LinkedIn or Facebook scheduled posts.
What does social media management software cost?
Social media management tools range in price, from annual subscriptions exceeding $3,000 to free-to-use basic plans and tools. Price is an important factor, but it’s recommended that you first identify the value that all plan options can bring to your business.
For example, Buffer, SEMrush, and HubSpot all offer free, albeit limited, plans. Using a free social media scheduler is a great way to discover its functions, limitations, and how it serves your needs. Then, you can explore plan options and determine what additional features or social media management tools you feel will bring the most value to your company.
11 social media management tools you should use in 2024
Which social media management tool is best for you in 2024? Take a look at these 11 social media management solutions, including how their pricing, reviews, and communities compare.
1. AgoraPulse
Best for: Mid-sized agencies managing several clients and multiple social media accounts.
Key function: Collaborative work environment
AgoraPulse is a social media management suite that helps agencies and teams handle all their social media operations - from writing to scheduling and publishing - in one place.
AgoraPulse allows you to invite clients to an interface of their own, where they can review drafts and posts before they’re published— idea for agencies that work on the content that needs client approval.
Pricing: From $49/month
Free trial period: 30 days
Reviews: 4.5/5 with 700+ reviews on Capterra
Community: The Social Media Pulse community offers everything from training and resources to news, tips, and networking opportunities with industry professionals.
Source: AgoraPulse
2. Sprout Social
Best for: Large companies and enterprises, particularly data-driven companies thanks to excellent reporting capabilities.
Key function: Advanced reporting features
Over the last decade, Sprout Social has become a fixture in social media management. Sprout Social allows users to generate dashboards and reports showcasing content performance, hashtags, and competitor benchmarks.
Pricing: From $249/month
Free trial period: 30 days
Reviews: 4.4/5 with 550+ reviews on Capterra
Community: The Arboretum, Sprout’s online community, has forums for sharing insights, honing best practices, and sharing product ideas with other Sprout Social users.
Source: Sprout Social
3. Loomly
Best for: Marketers that don’t want to spend too much time creating posts.
Key function: Idea generation based on trending topics, RSS feeds, events, or social media best practices
Advertised as a “Brand Success Platform”, Loomly helps teams collaborate, publish and measure social media efforts under a single umbrella. B2C companies and personal brands can benefit from the platform’s content suggestions, as these are often related to holidays and other mainstream cultural events.
Pricing: From $32/month
Free trial period: 15 days
Reviews: 4.7/5 with 450+ reviews on Capterra
Community: None
Source: Loomly
4. SmarterQueue
Best for: Non-tech-savvy marketers with little time to spare.
Key function: Scheduling simplicity
SmarterQueue is a social media scheduling service that makes it easy to organize and publish content on a regular basis. One significant feature is SmarterQueue’s evergreen recycling that facilitates content repurposing by reposting old posts with a new image or copy. SmarterQueue also organizes posts based on their content and sets recycling rules for specific categories.
Pricing: From $24.99/month
Free trial period: 14 days
Reviews: 4.8/5 with 100+ reviews on Capterra
Community: Yes, an official Facebook Group
Source: SmarterQueue
5. CoSchedule
Best for: Teams looking for a visually appealing, easy-to-use social media management tool.
Key function: Familiar project management Interface
CoSchedule, though identifying itself as a “work management software for marketers”, is essentially a family of agile marketing tools that helps marketing teams organize their social media work in a centralized place. CoSchedule and its kanban dashboard view will look familiar to many project managers familiar with other marketing software platforms.
Pricing: Free basic plan available | Additional plans from $19/month
Free trial period: None, only the free plan.
Reviews: 4.4/5 with 100+ reviews on Capterra
Community: None
Source:
6. Meet Edgar
Best for: Small teams and solopreneurs
Key function: Automation elements for social media management
Meet Edgar is a social media management tool specifically created for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Organizing updates into a searchable library, it automatically recycles evergreen content, pushing it up the publishing queue to generate content by itself.
Pricing: From $29.99/month
Free trial period: 7 days
Reviews: 4.7/5 with 39 reviews on Capterra
Community: None
Source: MeetEdgar
7. MavSocial
Best for: Marketers who work with highly visual content.
Key function: Digital asset management
MavSocial is a fully integrated social media, brand management, and advertising tool for franchises, SMBs, agencies, and enterprises. It allows users to manage all their images and video files in a single system. It also features access to stock photos, an integration with Google Drive, and an embedded image editor to manage your image library in a central hub.
Pricing: From $78/month
Free trial period: 14 days
Reviews: 4.5/5 with 11 reviews on Capterra
Community: Yes, a private Facebook Group for users
Source: MavSocial
8. Buffer
Best for: Small and mid-sized businesses, solopreneurs, and influencers that care about consistency.
Key function: Simplicity in scheduling
One of the leading social media scheduling tools, Buffer offers a straightforward, easy-to-use social media scheduling tool at an affordable price point. It also features an AI assistant for content ideation.
Pricing: Free basic plan available | Additional plans from $6/month
Free trial period: 14 days
Reviews: 4.5/5 with 1450+ views on Capterra
Community: None
Source: Bufffer
9. SEMrush
Best for: Current SEMrush users
Key function: Social Media Toolkit
SEMrush is an online visibility management platform mostly known for its SEO features, although it also offers social media management capabilities. If you rely on SEMrush for SEO, incorporating its social media features allows you to scale your social media management tools without adopting a separate platform.
Pricing: Free plan available | Additional plans from $129.95/month
Free trial period: 7 days
Reviews: 4.7/5 with 2100+ reviews on Capterra
Community: Yes, a Facebook Group and subreddit for users.
Source: Semrush
10. HubSpot Marketing Hub
Best for: Marketing managers who want to tie in social media to the rest of their marketing operations by relying on a single powerful platform.
Key function: All-in-one customer management platform
HubSpot’s social media scheduling capabilities align with diverse user needs. HubSpot is a true all-in-one solution, where businesses can manage anything from social media to email, CRM, and everything in between.
Pricing: Free plan available | Additional plans from $18/month
Free trial period: 14 days
Reviews: 4.5/5 with 5800+ reviews on Capterra
Community: Yes, a community hosted by HubSpot
Source: Hubspot
11. Hootsuite
Best for: Social media specialists
Key function: Brand monitoring
Another heavy-hitter in the social media scheduling space, Hootsuite stands out as a user-friendly platform that is packed with features to manage all things social. Hootsuite is a well-rounded platform for managing every aspect of social media, including organic posts, paid ads, trend research, and analytics.
Pricing: From $99/month
Free trial period: 30 days
Reviews: 4.3/5 with 3600+ Capterra reviews
Community: None
Main differentiator: Focus.
Source: Hootsuite
Social Media Schedulers Comparison
Use our social media scheduler comparison chart to quickly compare the best social media management tools in 2024.
The best social media schedulers to supercharge your posting
The best social media scheduler is one that not only delivers results, but that is comfortable and convenient for you and your team to use. Since Make can connect dozens of apps together, we recommend that you take advantage of free trials available for the following social media management tools.
Best social media scheduler for Facebook: Loomly
For businesses aiming to execute Facebook scheduled posts, Loomly is a great option. It allows you to quickly create and publish posts; perfect for marketing teams who need social media management tools that’ll save them valuable time.
Best social media scheduler for X: SmartQueue
When looking for a simple social media post scheduler for evergreen content on X, SmarterQueue can be easily leveraged. Its recurring evergreen posting capabilities regenerates a post multiple times with new images and copy, keeping your posts fresh in your audience’s feed.
Best social media scheduler for Instagram: Buffer
Buffer is an excellent scheduler for Instagram, specifically because of the inherent cross-platform posting between Facebook and Instagram. You can customize the copy for each post regardless if you’re posting solely to Facebook or posting to multiple platforms like Facebook and Instagram simultaneously.
Best social media scheduler for LinkedIn: Hootsuite
Sync your LinkedIn Page to your Hootsuite account and use this social media scheduler to set up posts individually or in bulk batches. You can also target your LinkedIn audience through professional parameters to ensure you’re reaching the right viewers.
Make + the best social media management tools: Social media scheduling & more made easy in 2024
Discover how Make and the best social media management tools work together to keep your socials active, engaged, and automated:
Retrieve social media records from Airtable, add it to Buffer and send Slack notifications
Send a Twitter message to a new HubSpot CRM contact (if Twitter username is known)
Create social media posts from a published article using ChatGPT - quick version
Bonus: Schedule social media using Airtable and Make
Not sure which social media scheduling tool is right for you? Create your own social media scheduler using Make and Airtable. The template below uses Airtable as a content base while Make pushes your content to your social media channels.
Not only will you save money on social media management tools, but you’ll expand your capabilities as Make connects all of your social media platforms to dozens of social media management tools, CRMs, CMSs, and more.
Make’s templates are simple, reliable, and implemented within minutes, allowing you to create your own social media distribution system, cross-post between channels, or automate each social media channel individually.
Whether you’re purchasing an annual subscription or using a free social media scheduler, enhance your social media management tools with Make. Create your own custom workflow solutions using the platforms, features, and community integrations that you need.
With Make, your possibilities for integrating the best social media management tools of 2024 are endless.
FAQs
What are the best social media management tools?
The best social media management tools of 2024 include social media post scheduler features from Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Loomly. Each of these apps have their own benefits and limitations, but their reputation in the industry, along with user reviews, make them among the best social media management tools of 2024.
What is the purpose of social media management software tools?
The purpose of social media management software tools is to simplify yet enhance posting content across multiple social media platforms. Instead of posting to Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn manually one at a time, social media management software can allow you to set up post scheduling across all of your platforms automatically.
Why are social media management tools important?
Social media management tools are important because your company’s digital identity is critical to your brand’s success. Most posts, regardless of the social media platform, have a low lifespan, which means frequent posting is now a necessity. Social media management tools help you accomplish these goals by allowing you to generate ideas, post content, and recycle evergreen content automatically.
What types of social media tools are there?
There are dozens of social media tools available to business owners; some require a financial investment with others are free to use on a limited basis. A free social media scheduler is one example of a social media tool that enhances efficiency and is available in both free and paid applications.
How do I manage multiple social media accounts?
Managing multiple social media accounts successfully typically requires a software solution that consolidates all of your channels into a central hub. Social media management tools are application options that help you manage multiple social media accounts from one platform.
How do I manage a business social media account?
One of the easiest ways to manage a business social media account is to employ the use of social media management tools. A free social media scheduler, for instance, can help you automate your posting across your channels, freeing you up to focus on other elements of your business.
What is community management in social media?
Community management in social media is the way in which a business engages with its audience across its social media channels. While social media managers actively manage the channel’s output, community managers engage with the community via discussion, outreach, and other interactions.
This article was updated in January 2024.
