Digital technologies evolve at a rapid pace nowadays.

Online businesses and social media marketing experts have to keep up with the increasing power and number of social media management tools.

You can check for useful features when deciding on the one right for you, such as social listening and automating, but many tools out there have these.

Such is why you should compare the availability of any tool’s features with 3 points when choosing the best social media management tools:

The Cost

Running a small business is tricky enough, with limited resources.

The monthly or one-time expenses of an expensive social media tool may not be the prudent choice for you.

Hence, SM managers must weigh whether the extra benefits match the price they are paying for extra productivity.

Integration Flexibility

Seeking one best social media management tool is, in itself, a tricky task.

Another daunting aspect is finding one that works with every single query and needs that the marketing officer has.

Once they start finding such a solution, account managers are left with few options that offer such flexibility in working with other data sources.

This means the options remaining or a combo of solutions together will be able to satisfy their work needs.

Number of Features

Many tools may pitch themselves as technically superior by offering a barrage of features that may not even be offering actual value to you.

These form distractions or a waste of money once up and running, so keep in mind the actual features that you do require for social media management.

Without further ado, here is my list (in no particular order) of top social media management tools for 2022:

The 20+ Best Social Media Management Tools in 2022

1. SocialBu

SocialBu is a promising platform with support for multiple platforms. (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn)

It has starting price of $8/month and has multiple plans along with free trial.

Designed for teams, one of SocialBu’s most appealing areas is their focus on being an “all-in-one” platform,

Other bonuses are their 24/7 customer support, fully dynamic automation, and the affordability.

There are core features apart from scheduling, publishing, and automation that differentiate it:

Setting up posts to publish directly from RSS Feeds;

Scheduling Instagram Stories and the monitoring of hashtags/keywords on Twitter and Instagram;

I usually use SocialBu to do so. But an Alternative to Buffer is also good for scheduling your posts, content, and videos.

These allow brands to keep a tap on the pulse of the sentiments of their followers at any time.

2. Buffer

A social media management tool that allows brands to post their content on social media platforms without manual effort.

Buffer offers scheduling posts in advance for Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

This is done according to the given schedule through their platform or the browser extension.

What differentiates Buffer from most other social media tools is reviewing posts in one place and working in teams of up to 25 members.

These add to their proven track history of a community with currently over 75,000 subscribers.

3. Hootsuite

Another tool that serves to ease brands in managing all their social media accounts from one point of access.

Hootsuite sets itself apart by allowing managers of small businesses to schedule hundreds of posts at a time.

This is done by an active cloud service, offering large amounts of data to save posts,

Its value proves to be especially beneficial when there is a need for scheduling media-heavy content.

The Chrome extension (Hootlet) allows instant sharing of posts directly to chosen social media accounts.

Their range of subscriptions of Pro/Team/Business provides different levels of functionality.

Prices range accordingly from $29-599.

4. Social Pilot

This tool has garnered a large following with its simplistic design, refreshing to see after bland or complicated UI’s.

Apart from brand management, curation, social scheduling, and the calendar feature are helpful add-ons.

In the calendar, users can drag-and-drop posts to repeat on specific dates.

They can filter to see a particular type of posts, and the reporting mechanism notifies the account manager of any problematic post scheduling or errors.

Pricing ranges on a monthly basis from $25-$83.

5. Social Status

This tool is the most advanced for social media analytics and reporting.

Social Status is a dedicated social media analytics tool so there’s no scheduling or publishing features.

But its focus on analytics makes it the best in the industry for tracking and reporting on Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Apart from providing live dashboards, Social Status also automates social media reports into CSV, PDF, PowerPoint, and Google Slides.

Their Custom Reports feature allows full customization of reports as well as white-labeling for agencies.

Social Status also enables Ads Analytics for tracking paid campaigns, Competitor Analytics for benchmarking against competitors, and Influencer Analytics for tracking and reporting on influencer marketing campaigns.

Pricing ranges from $29 to $599 per month.

6. Sprout Social

A specialist in the monitoring aspect of social media management.

This specialist status comes from features like Advanced Listening.

They provide data regarding demographics, the performance of campaigns, follower sentiment, and post-sharing stats.

These can be used to improve the performance of one’s own company or for comparison with the competition’s social media performance.

Along with this, the social media analytics provide info on multiple networks in the form of engagement.

Facebook Impressions, Instagram followers, or LinkedIn engagement stats are all in one place in the format of reports.

But if you’re looking for a tool to improve content collaboration within the team, it’s always a good time to peek at some Sprout Social alternative tools and see which one works best for you.

7. Meet Edgar

Meet Edgar focuses on content creation by offering a platform for the posts that the publisher wants, and the tweaks needed to keep them fresh.

This can also be done by the grouping of a diversity of content types and randomizing their order, so the variety keeps the engagement in check.

Analytics and split-post testing can tell exactly which of their posts and campaigns are working.

One bonus feature is Natural Language Processing.

This writes social media posts by analyzing the brand voice and provides options to choose from, so the human element also remains intact.

8. Khoros

Khoros helps to build your connection with customers to measure and provide tangible results.

The main functionality of this tool lies in its analysis of customer responses to campaigns.

They also have online communities that seek to foster a climate of constant support.

All this is done in part to increase the number of touchpoints with customers.

9. Commun.it

This tool focuses on being the best social media management tool for a single platform: Twitter. 

This platform eases complexities on the platform by knowing how to handle the complex mentions, replies, and sub-tweets.

This workload can typically frustrate even the most experienced of managers.

Commun.it provides a solution to this by grouping conversations and their posters.

Curating content from top influencers plus reporting bots allows companies to focus only on real followers.

These are classified based on their level of engagement into High value/Influencers/Supporters.

Pricing for businesses range from $20, $25, and customized pricing for brands.

10. Social Oomph

One of the earliest players in the game of social media management tools, Oomph, has a simple layout that integrates social media accounts.

Scheduling, along with RSS posts, automatically provides content relevant to the customer base.

One added benefit is that all posts do not have to be created exclusively for this platform.

Hence, any bulk schedule of posts can be uploaded directly from a computer easily.

Another exciting feature is its self-destructing posts.

These ensure the deletion of old/repeated posts, so any audience isn’t annoyed by seeing them over and over.

11. Sendible

For large digital marketing agencies that need the typical SM features and seamless teamwork.

The teamwork allows multiple brand managers to work on projects that involve collaboration.

Such projects may also require team members from different roles such as sales or QA, so simplicity is key.

The Reports Hub allows for easy communication of campaign performance with management or clients.

This sharing can prove to be exactly what the managers at digital marketing agencies need to leverage, straight to their success.

Pricing ranges from $29-$299/month.

12. Tailwind

Tailwind is one of the best options for brands with a focus on visual content as this tool only caters to Instagram and Pinterest.

With it, media managers can clone, produce, schedule, ‘pin’ or tag posts with ease on both platforms.

Due to restrictions on its API, Instagram is a difficult platform to schedule and post to for tools such as this one, but Tailwind is a verified partner.

Thus, there is no issue while interacting with posts for these platforms.

Visual Feeds can be curated and extracted from multiple sites and sources.

This saves the hassle of moving across different sources manually. A bonus feature is their ability to crop posts and sidestep the Instagram/Pinterest dimensions’ regulations.

13. Planable.io

Facilitates the collaboration process between team members and vitally adds viewing posts, as seen in user feeds.

Often, the conceptualization of posts is done for different platforms at once.

This means posts just don’t look right to the end-user.

The simulation feature prevents this as clarity is provided, and editing mishaps circumvented.

The Planable platform also allows for multiple formats of images such as .gifs that improve the brand’s relatability and ‘fun factor.’

Pricing ranges from $39-$99/Month.

14. AgoraPulse

For smaller agencies and teams, Pulse provides an efficient platform for any social media toolbox.

Features such as Social inbox also show a pile of items that must be reviewed by the team and what is critical/undone.

Detailed performance reports show cumulative or individual analytics from social media accounts.

The reports also provide engagement rates for each campaign plus customer service reports.

Filters of time ranging custom periods will visualize growth or decline in the numbers.

Unlike the others, Agora also works with YouTube, which provides it an edge for companies with strong video-media presence.

Pricing ranges from $79-$99/month.

15. Aritic PinPoint

Aritic PinPoint is a unified marketing automation software platform for marketing operations teams or SMEs. 

With social media integration, you can collect more leads via various groups and communities.

Aritic helps you build your social presence and drive engagement with your B2B leads and customers. It will help you get all your social platforms streaming side-by-side. See what is happening where, what you posted where, and when – all at one glance. Add as many B2B social pages as you need to stream, track and monitor.

200+ brands are using Aritic platform along inbound marketing and sales engagement.

16. MavSocial

MavSocial provides most of the core features of Tailwind but differentiates itself based on their Social Inbox.

It distributes work to each member of the social media team and allows managers to interact directly from there

This prevents wasting time being redirected and going back to each platform to respond.

Built-in photo editing, Stock Images Library alongside an RSS reader allows brand directors to manually curate their stream of content and add it to their accounts via the Chrome Extension directly to a specific calendar date.

17. eClincher

The last tool for this list is one that offers a variety of features and does almost everything it provides exceptionally well: eClincher.

Geared towards no specific user type, it is built for teams, social media managers, agencies, influencers, and small businesses.

The Unified Social Inbox and Live Social Feed aggregate, organize and display social media engagement across all the supported platforms.

For convenience, eClincher offers handy features such as the goo.gl link shortener, an image editor, and Queues of three types: Recycle. One-time and End-date.

These specify the recycling of content by automatically posting according to the queue type.

Reports in .pdf are formed automatically to evaluate their traction.

Pricing starts from $49/month.

18. Postoplan

An intuitive social media and messenger marketing platform for effortless content management and promotion.

Postoplan is a real lifesaver for brands that want to be consistent with their social media strategies. It helps you schedule and publish content when your social media audience is the most active.

Subscribing to Postoplan will give you access to:

• An unlimited number of social media accounts, users, and projects.
• Graphics editors to make your posts more engaging.
• Mass scheduling and posting on multiple accounts.
• Integration with Slack and WordPress.
• Social Inbox, through which you can interact with subscribers.

You can try Postoplan for free with an unlimited number of social media accounts. Pricing starts at a $1.40 fixed fee per month.

19. Falcon.io

Falcon.io is an all-in-one social media management platform. It offers a variety of features, including social media publishing, engaging, listening, advertising, analytics, and benchmarking—basically, everything you need to grow with social.

Falcon.io is geared towards both mid-market/enterprise brands and small businesses. Falcon.io recently partnered with Brandwatch to provide advanced social listening that can help you monitor conversations and mentions of your brand across 100 million online sources.

Other features to note include a collaborative content calendar, a single inbox for community management, and in-depth performance reports.

20. Vista Social

Loved by agencies and brands, this tool has been the first to market for a ton of features (like Reels and TikTok scheduling) with very simple pricing.

With Vista Social, you can do more for less. Connect more accounts, users, and more at a lower cost. Vista Social is designed to match the needs of fast-growing agencies, startups, solopreneurs, and brands.

Take publishing to a whole new level with their advanced uncomplicated scheduling tool. Access organic post targeting, user and location tagging, bulk scheduling, and integrations for all of the major social networks (including TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, OpenTable, and more)!

There are only 2 plan options: free and paid. On the free plan, you can connect up to 3 social profiles with 1 user. After that, it’s only $3/social profile with unlimited users, connected profiles, and post-scheduling.

21. Statusbrew 

Statusbrew is an enterprise social media management tool that unifies your social presence, brings your team together, and helps you create automated workflows.

You can easily schedule content, manage campaigns, monitor your community, and analyze performance.

Intelligent triaging routes the messages to your team and allows you to reply faster by using saved replies.

Customizable permissions, approvals, and user groups help you collaborate better.

Statusbrew’s USP is the ability to hide and delete unwanted comments on your posts and ads. i.e. apply social media moderation. You can also ban spam bots & trolls automatically.

22. Plann

Plann makes it easier than ever to manage your social media presence and take your brand to the next level. Whether you’re a small business owner, marketer, or simply looking to improve your social media strategy, Plann is the ideal solution for you.

Plann is a comprehensive social media management tool that offers unbeatable value for businesses and marketers age your social media presence, schedule posts in advance, analyze performance, and track your brand’s growth. Say goodbye to the hassle of juggling multiple platforms, and hello to a more organized, streamlined, and productive social media strategy.

One of the key benefits of Plann is its affordability. With plans starting at just $12 per month, Plann is accessible to businesses of all sizes and budgets.

This makes it an ideal solution for those who are looking for a cost-effective way to manage their social media presence. In addition to its affordability, Plann offers a wide range of features that are designed to help you get the most out of your social media efforts.

23. SocialBee

This tool has a robust set of features that helps users streamline their social media management.

SocialBee allows its users to add, schedule, and track their content across multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Google Business Profile.

While the AI Assistant generates captions and content ideas, SocialBee’s content categories help users organize their content efficiently and maintain a balanced mix of posts.

The Engage Module enables users to reply to comments and mentions from their social media accounts directly within the platform.

SocialBee offers multiple pricing plans, starting at just $19 per month.

Conclusion

After going through this list and confusion to choose between tools still lingers?

That is completely normal!

What is beloved by the majority may not be apt for your needs, and only through the trial periods of these tools will you find the right fit.

As discussed earlier, you may not need most of the features that certain tools offer.

These will only serve to distract you instead of helping your business.

Accordingly, the best one can only be found through determining the one that aligns with your budget, specific needs, and usage type.

Julian Scott