Month: December 2023

2024: 19 Alternatives to Hootsuite for Brand Management

As social media gains more influence, impact, and involvement, it is becoming increasingly essential to have strong tools equipped with the most up-to-date and advanced features.

Consider the recent launch of advanced AI technologies. A report by The Sprout Social Index™ indicates that 81% of marketers have experienced a beneficial impact on their work due to AI. The implication is clear: teams that lack AI-equipped tools are at a disadvantage and are already trailing behind.

With the constant introduction of new platforms and innovations, marketers have a lot to keep up with and their schedules are packed. It’s important to have the right tool for the job. Hootsuite is a leading social media marketing platform, but if you’re looking for an alternative with different pricing options, more specialized features, or just want to explore new options, we can assist you in your research.

Explore this compilation to familiarize yourself with various options to Hootsuite in different categories, and begin your search for the perfect tool.

  1. Best overall Hootsuite alternative
  2. Alternative tools to Hootsuite for scheduling and publishing content
  3. Hootsuite alternatives for social media analytics
  4. Hootsuite alternatives for social listening
  5. Hootsuite alternatives for social customer service
  6. Options for influencer platforms other than Hootsuite
  7. Free Hootsuite alternatives

Areas to focus on when comparing tools and Hootsuite alternatives

Social groups should consistently assess if their existing resources are meeting their goals, or if it’s necessary to experiment with different options. The flexibility of a social team is limited by the capabilities of their technology infrastructure.

Whether you’re curious about Hootsuite alternatives or you just want to see what’s out there before you make a decision, it’s always beneficial to see what other platforms have to offer.

Here are some key areas to look for when researching a new tools for your team.

Quality customer support

Providing excellent customer support is crucial, especially when it comes to social media tools. It’s essential to have a tool that allows for prompt and effective support to be provided. At the same time, it’s also important for your team to have access to reliable customer support.

When sourcing a tool, pay attention to whether they have readily available customer service to help your team. You need to be able to get help quickly to ensure your tool never slows you down.

According to the Index, 58% of marketing teams say they either share social customer care with their customer service team, or they own it but sometimes customer service will step in. Which means you need a tool that enables collaboration between your teams—ideally with AI capabilities to speed you up too.

Strong innovation

Marketing professionals operate at the pace of social media, and the tools they use must keep up with this rapid speed in order to support their efforts effectively.

But making these changes and evolving to keep pace with the digital space takes time. The tools that will most benefit marketing teams are those that prioritize innovation by constantly looking for ways to enhance their roadmap and evolve.

Proven ROI

Proving social media ROI is a key success indicator that social teams must demonstrate. It also happens to be the most difficult.

A powerful social media analytics and reporting tool allows social teams to show and validate their return on investment, as well as grasp the complete effect of their work. This includes providing various types of reports that cover multiple channels, detailed analysis of individual posts, and comparison of paid versus organic metrics.

A robust reporting tool also enables you to demonstrate ROI to leadership and other teams. Your platform should have sharable reports for stakeholders and clear, easy-to-understand data visualizations like charts and graphs.

Best overall Hootsuite alternative

Let’s begin by looking at Hootsuite alternatives that cover all the categories included in this comprehensive list.

1. Sprout Social

We have to toot our own horn a little. Sprout Social is a stand-out all-in-one alternative on this list—especially for mid-size, large and enterprise businesses.

But don’t take our word for it—from AI-powered capabilities that fuel your social strategy end-to-end to high-level integrations with tools like Salesforce and Zendesk that unify your tech stack, check out what makes Sprout the best tool below.

Experience Sprout Social and Hootsuite for yourself with a free 30-day trial and see which one works best for you.

Start your free Sprout trial

Scheduling and publishing

Efficiently plan, schedule and publish social posts from a centralized social media calendar. Features like the campaign planner and tags take the guesswork out of reporting on content and campaign success.

The calendar also enables seamless collaboration with in-calendar notes, content placeholders, drag-and-drop functionality and Approval Workflows that enable internal and external stakeholder reviews.

Sprout’s AI and automation features also act as a virtual data or copy assistant. Suggestions by AI Assist generate captions with tone options in seconds. And Optimal Send Times uses 16 weeks’ of audience data to suggest seven “best times to post” as you schedule.

From our “SproutLink” link-in-bio tool, to URL tracking to measure success in Google Analytics, an Asset library and more, Sprout’s publishing capabilities simplify your scheduling process.

A screenshot of Sprout's publishing calendar and drag and drop capabilities.

Analytics and reporting

Sprout’s analytics and out-of-the-box reports do the heavy lifting of gathering and synthesizing your data for you. This frees you up to focus on the higher-level thinking that requires a creative human behind the wheel, like strategic and creative planning.

Sprout’s analytics offer comprehensive insights that simplify the process of measuring return on investment and comparing performance with competitors to stay ahead. Sprout’s integration with your CRM provides a complete view of your customer and their journey. Additionally, our Tableau integration allows for the creation of interactive reporting dashboards, further eliminating barriers to social data analysis.

Sprout’s analytics and reporting enable you to get a full view of your strategy performance, to benchmark against competitors and helps transform your social media intelligence into shareable business intelligence. Find out more about Sprout’s analytics and reporting capabilities here.

Screenshot of Sprout Social Instagram Competitor Report that demonstrates competitors' followers and audience growth.

Social listening

Sprout’s social listening solution and AI-driven technology offers custom topics, or pre-built topic templates that enable you to perform competitor analysis, analyze brand health, uncover industry insights, analyze campaigns and monitor events in a snap.

Our social monitoring tool enables you to take a proactive approach by understanding the sentiment of your audience towards you and your rivals, discovering influencers for potential partnerships, spotting trends as they arise, and staying ahead of potential crises with personalized alerts and detailed sentiment analysis.

If you want to try our social listening solution, reach out to us for a personalized demo.

Request a demo

Customer service

Sprout’s customer service solution for social media extends past simply replying to comments. Our tools facilitate seamless teamwork and offer methods to enhance the customer experience on various platforms.

Manage conversations yourself, or create a Case for other team members to complete. See in real-time when other team members are responding to comments in the inbox to avoid duplicate work and a disjointed customer experience.

Meet customer needs quickly with Sprout’s copy AI features, or with canned FAQ answers stored in the Asset Library. And further free up your team’s time with a customizable SproutBot that can handle the common inquiries for you.

Utilize Sprout’s customer service tools to directly communicate with customers and view their previous interactions for added context. Our integrations with Salesforce and Zendesk allow you to seamlessly connect sales and customer service, providing a comprehensive view of your customer’s experience with your brand.

A screenshot of the Sprout Social Smart Inbox where several messages are displayed in a single feed from Instagram, Facebook and a post from X (formerly Twitter.)

Influencer marketing

The future of social media marketing involves creators and influencers. According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey of 307 US-based social marketers, over half of marketers are using dedicated influencer marketing platforms to help offset their primary challenge of finding the right influencer for their campaigns.

With Tagger by Sprout Social, we offer a creator and influencer marketing solution to help you ease into the future of social media.

Find genuine and influential creators to collaborate with and utilize Tagger to oversee your partnerships, agreements, campaigns, and more in a single unified platform. Tagger also removes the uncertainty from creator collaborations by tracking the effectiveness of your partnerships.

Hootsuite alternatives for scheduling and publishing

A robust social media scheduling tool is a must to keep your posts timely and accounts consistently active. Yet, 35% of marketers cite their brand’s scheduling tool as their top challenge when planning and scheduling content, according to Sprout’s 2023 Content Benchmarks report.

An effective publishing and scheduling tool should be user-friendly and simplify the publishing process. Additionally, with 43% of social teams feeling isolated according to the Index, features that facilitate collaboration are also important.

Check out these Hootsuite alternatives for their scheduling and publishing features.

A quick note: Our pricing sections highlight “billed monthly” plans, but most of these tools also offer annual plans.

2. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is an end-to-end social media management platform with features that cover inbox and publishing, a unified social inbox, reporting, monitoring and team collaboration needs.

Agorapulse supports publishing and scheduling on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Google My Business and TikTok. And their high “Ease of Use” ranking on G2 is reflected in their intuitive, clean publishing calendar. Communication features enable smooth, real-time collaboration with shared notes, tracked action items and visibility into who is communicating what.

Agorapulse’s calendar offers other staple features as well, including UTMs and an AI assistant. But one unique feature is its grid layout feature to preview upcoming Instagram posts, making Agorapulse an interesting option if you prioritize Instagram.

Pricing: When billed monthly, standard plan at $69/mo, Professional at $99/mo, Advanced at $149/mo and a Custom plan.

A screenshot of Agorapulse's publishing tools.

(Source: Agorapulse)

3. Buffer

Buffer has been in existence almost as long as Hootsuite. Although Buffer may not offer as many features as Hootsuite or Sprout Social, it is well-suited for creators, individuals, entrepreneurs, and small businesses.

Buffer offers a simplified publishing calendar and core team collaboration features, like post reviews and account management. In their analytics, they also offer your best days, types of content and posting frequency to power smarter publishing.

Like many social media management platforms, Buffer has an AI Assistant feature that helps you brainstorm, repurpose and tailor posts to publish across platforms, and will provide suggestions for posts from long-form content. What makes it unique is that, as of the writing of this article, Buffer offers their AI Assistant to all new users, including those on the Free plan. While Hootsuite’s is currently free of charge to its users, that offer is for a limited time while OwlyWriter AI is in beta.

Cost: Buffer offers a complimentary plan, followed by paid subscriptions beginning at $6 per month when billed on a monthly basis, making it a highly economical choice.

A screenshot of Buffer's publishing calendar.

(Source: Buffer)

4. Oktopost

Oktopost touts itself as a tool best suited for B2B companies looking for a full social engagement suite.

The platform emphasizes its calendar’s focus on managing campaigns, with every cross-channel post published categorized with a specific campaign. The calendar is visually appealing and has color-coding and drag-and-drop functionality for quick adjustments.

Similar to other platforms, Oktopost provides a library of assets, UTM tagging, and features for team collaboration such as tracking changes. Furthermore, Oktopost places importance on their brand protection capabilities. Their “prohibited keywords” feature ensures that all users are following the brand’s voice and company guidelines.

Pricing: Custom pricing based on customer needs.

5. Eclincher

Feedback from users commends Eclincher for its user-friendly interface for scheduling tasks, and for having a helpful customer service team.

The platform has many of the key features we’ve talked about for publishing, including an intuitive drag-and-drop calendar for cross-network publishing, link in bio for Instagram, best times to post feature and agencies/team collaboration features. Additionally, it offers a local SEO tool to show how well your business ranks for any keyword, which can help inform content.

Pricing: Eclincher is an affordable solution, with a Basic plan at $65/month, Premier at $175/month, Agency at $425/month (all while billed monthly) and an Enterprise plan at a custom price.

Hootsuite alternatives for social media analytics

The utilization of social media analytics by brands is broadening beyond just the marketing department. Based on The Sprout Social Index™, a majority of 76% of marketers concur that the insights gathered by their team are utilized by other departments as well.

Here are some Hootsuite competitors who are worth looking into for their analytics and reports.

6. HubSpot

HubSpot stands out from the other platforms mentioned because it serves as a “customer platform” that integrates marketing, sales, content, and customer service teams and their activities.

HubSpot enables you to see marketing, sales and service data in one place, breaking down silos with out-of-the-box social reports and analytics. HubSpot’s reports give you a holistic view of how your platforms and campaigns perform.

HubSpot’s ability to integrate with your CRM helps you see your social media efforts in the context of your larger business by: tracking leads, new customers and website traffic—a metric 60% of mid-management social media pros track regularly, according to the Index.

Cost: The cost of their Marketing Hub is determined by the size of your team.

A screenshot of HubSpot's analytics tools.

(Source: HubSpot)

7. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is one of the more specialized Hootsuite competitors on this list. It’s meant for analyzing competitor content and discovering content and influencers with an emphasis on journalists.

For competitor analysis, BuzzSumo can ID the most-shared content and how it performs by network and format. Their Facebook Page Analyzer helps you benchmark and compare up to 10 Facebook pages for content engagement. And if YouTube is your focus, BuzzSumo’s video marketing feature helps analyze and optimize your videos, surface popular video content by topic, ID gaps on competitor channels and more.

BuzzSumo offers a powerful tool for influencer marketing. It primarily targets Instagram, X, and online platforms, assisting you in discovering influencers and content creators who share content related to your brand’s niche.

Pricing: When billed monthly vs. annually, BuzzSumo offers a Content Creation plan at $199/mo, PR & Comms plan at $299/mo, Suite at $499/mo and Enterprise at $999/mo.

A screenshot of BuzzSumo's tools.

(Source: BuzzSumo)

8. Rival IQ

If you’re looking for Hootsuite competitors that solely offer analytics, Rival IQ is hyper-focused on analytics and reporting. Its suite of reports and analytics tools includes solutions for competitive analysis, social post analysis, social media audit tools that you can compare directly to competitor performance, hashtag analytics and social listening solutions.

The tools provided can help identify phrases and topics that increase social interaction with your content, allowing you to improve it. The feature that analyzes post types allows you to view engagement based on various media and post formats. Additionally, customizable dashboards or templates give you the ability to display your data in your preferred manner.

Pricing: They do offer a free analytics plan. For their monthly billed plans, they also offer a Drive plan at $239/mo, Engage at $349/mo and Engage Pro at $559/mo

Screenshots of Rival IQ's analytics tools.

(Source: RivalIQ)

9. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a customer experience management tool made for large companies and enterprise. Their Marketing Analytics feature gathers data across 30+ digital channels. And those insights are added to a dynamic, AI-powered dashboard that unifies your cross-channel data and makes it visible to everyone.

Marketing Analytics allows you to view campaigns, marketing insights, and overall trends in a single, reliable source, eliminating isolated data sets and simplifying data management. Customizable reports can be created to analyze content performance, helping you to identify what is successful.

Curious about how Sprout stacks up? Compare Sprout Social vs. Sprinklr here.

Pricing: You can only request a customized quote.

A screenshot of Sprinklr's analytics tools.

(Source: Sprinklr)

Alternative platforms to Hootsuite for monitoring social media conversations

As social data becomes more impactful and utilized across whole companies, marketers will also need more sophisticated tools to uncover impactful insights. That’s where social media listening comes in.

Social listening unpacks insights about competitors, products, audience sentiment and more. Here are a few Hootsuite competitors for social listening and some of their features.

10. Brand24

Brand24 is among the specialized Hootsuite alternatives that purely handle social listening—not management or publishing. While it features media monitoring, it’s multi-purpose at what it touts as a lower industry price point.

Brand24 provides essential tools that marketers need in a social listening platform. It gathers data from 25 million online sources to aid in social media and media monitoring. The platform can identify influencers, send notifications for changes in conversations, analyze customer emotions, and monitor hashtags. Additionally, it supports 108 languages, making it accessible to a broad audience.

Pricing: Their monthly billing plan offers an individual plan at $99, a Team plan at $179, a Pro plan at $249 and an enterprise plan at $499.

A screenshot of Brand24's social listening tools.

(Source: Brand24)

11. Keyhole

Social listening is just one of Keyhole’s products—they also offer solutions for publishing, influencer marketing, analytics and data, and trends. And G2 reviews often highlight its user-friendly design.

Similar to other social listening tools that we will discuss, Keyhole provides essential functions for conducting industry research, measuring performance against competitors, tracking brand reputation, and managing influencer partnerships. Additionally, their QuickTrends feature allows you to effortlessly discover potential prospects within your sector.

Pricing: Their monthly billing plan offers an individual plan at $79/mo, Team at $149/mo, Pro at $249/mo, Advanced at $449/mo and Enterprise at $833/mo (billed annually).

Hootsuite alternatives for social customer service

Customer service on social media platforms is becoming a crucial element in the marketing strategy. It has the power to strengthen or weaken a brand’s relationship with its customers and their allegiance.

According to the Index, 51% of consumers say that the most memorable brands simply respond to them on social. So you must take advantage of every chance to interact.

If you’re looking for Hootsuite alternatives that are specifically built for customer service, here are a few options to consider, and some of the features they offer.

12. Zendesk

If you are searching for alternatives to Hootsuite that solely focus on customer support, Zendesk is designed exclusively for managing customer interactions and assisting sales teams.

While not social media specific, Zendesk allows your social and customer service teams to deliver personalized interactions, across multiple touchpoints—from social media channels like Facebook and WhatsApp to Slack, mobile apps and your website.

Zendesk offers robust automation and AI capabilities that enable agents to quickly respond and provide self-service articles that Zendesk suggests for you to share. Zendesk also helps you create new help articles on the fly—write a few bullet points and the platform will help turn it into a customer service hub article. And their Content Cues help you understand what gaps exist in your help center articles.

Pricing: Zendesk comes at a high price point, but has a lot to offer. Their monthly billing plan offers a Suite Team at $69/agent/month, $115/agent/month, $149/agent/month and Suite Enterprise, which is a custom price.

A screenshot of Zendesk's tools.

(Source: Zendesk)

13. LiveAgent

LiveAgent focuses on providing customer support solutions for social media. They offer a comprehensive customer service tool rather than multiple separate products, making it a cost-effective choice.

LiveAgent also highlights its social media monitoring and customer service platform as part of its software, further bridging the gap between customer service and social team workflows.

Pricing: LiveAgent’s monthly billing plan offers a Small business plan at $15/agent/month, Medium business plan at $35/agent/month, a Large business plan at $59/agent/month and an Enterprise plan at $85/agent/month.

14. Hiver

Hiver stands out among Hootsuite competitors because it was specifically designed for Google Workspaces and, as they describe it, it can “turn your Gmail into a multi-channel helpdesk.”

Hiver enables agents to manage support channels, like email, live chat, phone and beyond, directly in their Gmail inbox. Agents can add color-coded tags and automated rules that help categorize business communication emails directly in their inbox to sort by priority.

It promotes itself as easier to use and cheaper than Zendesk. The catch is that Hiver only supports WhatsApp when it comes to social media.

Cost: Hiver provides a monthly billing option with their Lite package priced at $19 per user per month, Pro package at $49 per user per month, and Elite package at $69 per user per month. For companies requiring more than 50 licenses, they offer personalized pricing options.

Hootsuite alternatives for influencer marketing

According to a Q3 Sprout Social Pulse Survey of 300 marketers, 81% of social marketers describe influencer marketing as an essential part of their social strategy.

Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly significant, with more than 50% of brands utilizing specialized platforms such as Tagger to overcome the obstacle of identifying the ideal influencer for their promotional efforts.

Here are a few platforms to consider for influencer marketing.

15. CreatorIQ

CreatorIQ offers a database of over 17 million creators from all niches. Their platform offers robust search tools to help you unearth the right creators to partner with, including enriched creator profiles that highlight brand affinities, and AI-powered advanced search that helps you search by metrics, keywords, hashtags and more. They also offer creator recommendations that uses a helpful proprietary scoring system that helps automatically and quickly narrow your search.

The company provides a comprehensive selection of 13 different solutions, which include tools for finding and managing creators, a creator relationship management system, competitor analysis, and collaboration tools for teams.

Pricing: They prompt you to sign up for a free demo and to request pricing.

16. Heepsy

With a free plan complete with 360 monthly creator search results and core filters that help you surface relevant creators, Heepsy is among the most budget-friendly options.

Heepsy provides a platform that allows users to find and source creators from Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube regardless of their payment plan. The platform places emphasis on the discovery aspect of influencer marketing, offering tools for locating influencers, accessing their statistics, and creating lists of potential partners. Additionally, Heepsy offers an authenticity analysis feature to help users identify and collaborate with reputable influencers.

Pricing: Free Plan, then their “billed monthly” plans are as follows: Starter Plan at $49/mo, Plus Plan at $169/mo, Advanced Plan at $269/mo and Heepsy services or Enterprise plans that prompt you to talk to their sales team.

A screenshot of Heepsy's creator tools.

(Source: Heepsy)

17. Influencity

Influencity offers a robust community of influencers to choose from at 200 million influencer profiles worldwide to search through in their library. And the emphasis they provide on their site highlighting their high G2 rating makes them a stand-out.

This service provides a wide range of options and services, ranging from finding influencers to managing relationships and tracking campaign progress. This positions them as a comprehensive solution for locating and overseeing influencer collaborations.

Pricing: Influencity plans range from Basic at $168/mo, Professional at $348/mo, Business at $698/mo and a custom plan, making them a great option for mid-market and large enterprise businesses who want to expand their influencer marketing strategies.

Free Hootsuite Alternatives

Free tools will always be the most budget-friendly option, including the aforementioned Buffer. However, free tools also have more limited features and options—like limited profiles or no analytics options.

However, if you’re in search of free alternatives to Hootsuite, consider exploring these tools.

18. Social Champ

Social Champ is a full social media management platform that provides a calendar, publishing capabilities, analytics and an inbox solution.

Social Champ’s free plan enables one user to connect up to three social accounts and have 15 scheduled posts active in their queue at a time. While you have access to sentiment analysis, you can only use their AI Imaginator and AI content wizard tools three times in total.

Social Champ’s complimentary plan includes a strong selection of content recommendations, GIFs for content, and reports. However, your reports only collect information from the past two weeks.

All-in-all, this is a solid option if you want to try Social Champ out, or if you have a handful of social accounts.

A screenshot of Social Champ's publishing calendar.

(Source: Social Champ)

19. SocialBu

SocialBu is an all-in-one social media management solution specifically geared towards small businesses. It’s also a newer tool, having launched in 2018.

The Free plan offered by SocialBu allows you to link up to two profiles, with options including Facebook, X, or Mastadon. You have the ability to post up to 40 static updates monthly, and you can access hashtag recommendations, create designs using Canva, and find content on the platform. It’s important to keep in mind that an inbox feature is not included in the Free plan.

When it comes to your tech stack, it pays to do your research

Your tech stack is your lifeline. And in the social media marketing world, it has the power to make or break your workflows, strategy and ability to grow the entire business.

Selecting the appropriate tool for managing your social media presence, including content posting, audience interaction, influencer partnerships, and data analysis, is essential.

When it comes to new tools, it always pays to try before you buy. Check out Sprout Social’s different plans to evaluate which is right for you. Then try our platform free for 30 days, or reach out to us for a personalized demo.

The post 19 top Hootsuite alternatives for your brand in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, businesses are increasingly turning to social media management tools to help them manage their brand presence. Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management tools, but there are a number of other options available. In this article, we’ll explore 19 alternatives to Hootsuite for brand management in 2024.

1. Sprout Social: Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

2. Buffer: Buffer is a social media management tool that helps you manage your brand’s presence on multiple platforms. It offers analytics, content scheduling, and team collaboration features.

3. Agorapulse: Agorapulse is a social media management tool that helps you manage your brand’s presence on multiple platforms. It offers analytics, content scheduling, and team collaboration features.

4. Sendible: Sendible is a social media management platform that helps you manage your brand’s presence on multiple platforms. It offers analytics, content scheduling, and team collaboration features.

5. SocialPilot: SocialPilot is a social media management platform that helps you manage your brand’s presence on multiple platforms. It offers analytics, content scheduling, and team collaboration features.

6. Zoho Social: Zoho Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

7. CoSchedule: CoSchedule is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

8. SocialFlow: SocialFlow is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

9. MavSocial: MavSocial is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

10. Crowdfire: Crowdfire is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

11. Everypost: Everypost is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

12. SocialBee: SocialBee is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

13. Tailwind: Tailwind is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

14. eClincher: eClincher is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

15. Falcon Social: Falcon Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate with team members.

16. SocialOomph: SocialOomph is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers a wide range of features for managing your brand’s presence on social media. It provides analytics, content scheduling, and customer service tools, as well as the ability to collaborate

Source: sproutsocial.com

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Tools for Social Media Branding for Businesses in 2024

Social media marketing can be a powerful tool, but it requires a significant investment of time. Determining what content to share, choosing the optimal time to post, and interacting with followers all demand attention. Without proper management, these responsibilities can lead to burnout and stress. However, utilizing social media tools can assist in simplifying your social media management and conserving time.

This guide presents a selection of top-notch tools that can enhance your social media presence. Whether you’re looking for cost-free options or AI-powered solutions, we’ve got you covered with the finest social media tools for your brand in 2024.

Table of contents:

  • What do we mean by social media tools?
  • What you should look for in a social media tool
  • Best all-in-one social media tool
  • Free social media tools
  • Social media tools for scheduling and publishing
  • Social media tools for analytics
  • Tools for creating content on social media platforms
  • Social media tools for content ideas
  • AI social media tools

What do social media tools refer to?

Social media tools are tools used for performing various activities related to social media. This includes scheduling, publishing, analytics, content creation and even automation. The term “social media tools” encompasses different kinds of tools dedicated to all these aspects of social media.

What you should look for in a social media tool

With so many options available in the market, it can be overwhelming to decide on the right tool. To guide your decision-making, here are a few things to look for in a social media tool.

Boosts your ROI

This instrument should enhance your social media return on investment. For instance, a tool that aids in creating effective content in large quantities will increase your ROI. Likewise, a tool that assists in generating more interactions and exposure is a wise investment.

Improves efficiency

Saving time and improving social media efficiency are two of the biggest reasons why people turn to social media tools. So you should be looking for tools that let you automate or simplify certain tasks.

Gives you performance insight

It is essential to be aware of the effectiveness of your current efforts when crafting a strategy that yields outcomes. Social media tools should assist you in this by offering crucial performance insights to guide your strategy. Seek out a tool that includes strong social media reporting and analytics capabilities to comprehend your performance.

Best all-in-one social media tool

Let’s face it–it would be so much easier if we could manage all our social media activities in one place. No more confusion, no more switching between multiple tools. That’s why you need an all-in-one social media tool that supports everything from publishing to analytics and monitoring.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media platform that helps you do it all.

This platform offers a comprehensive solution for managing your social media presence, with tools for creating and timing posts, interacting with your followers, monitoring social media conversations, overseeing campaigns, and analyzing your online performance.

Sprout’s visual calendar helps you plan your social media content and strategically diversify your posts. You can set up posts to go live automatically and even maximize audience engagement with Optimal Send Times. This tells you the best time to publish your posts based on 16 weeks of audience data.

Speaking of engagement, Sprout’s Social Inbox helps you manage all your social comments and messages in one place. From here, get crisis notifications and automatically detect which messages to prioritize. Sprout even helps you enhance your responses using AI Assist,

Sprout’s extensive capabilities are ideal for businesses and agencies. The platform offers team approval processes and message categorization to simplify your social media management. Plus, you’ll receive reports that are ready for presentation without any extra effort.

Sprout Social publishing calendar monthly view showing content cards for different days of the month

Free social media tools

Sometimes, the additional investment in tools can eat away at your marketing budget. Startups and solopreneurs don’t always have the extra money to spend on expensive platforms to support their social media goals. Fortunately, there are several free social media tools that are just as capable (albeit with a few limitations).

2. CapCut

CapCut is the perfect social media tool for crafting stunning video content. This comprehensive video editing software is available at no cost and offers a variety of effects, filters, music, and stickers to transform a basic video into something special. With a vast selection of templates to choose from, you can easily personalize them to produce captivating video advertisements.

Ideal for creating Reels and TikTok videos, CapCut provides advanced tools to support smart video creation. It lets you convert text to speech and vice versa, remove backgrounds and enhance video quality in just a few clicks.

Capcut editing window previewing a YouTube video of a person in a snowsuit looking at the Northern Lights in a snowy terrain

3. Canva

A personal favorite, Canva is a free social media tool to create original graphics. It lets you create social media visuals in just a few clicks with hundreds of pre-designed templates. These are templates optimized according to each platform’s recommended social media image sizes. So you don’t have to worry about cropping and resizing the graphics after creating them.

The advantage of using this tool is that it provides a variety of templates based on current social media trends. You can discover templates for popular themes like “camera roll dump” or “#WithMe” posts. This allows you to produce content that is current and appealing, which can help you connect more effectively with your followers.

Canva templates page showing options for Facebook Covers, Facebook Ads, Your Stories, TikTok Videos, Pinterest Pins and Featured Collections below

4. Wistia

Another one for video marketers, Wistia is a free platform for creating and editing videos. It lets you record your screen and webcam, making it ideal for creating educational and how-to social videos. You can even add background music and customize the player controls to make videos that are on-brand.

Wistia recording window showing a sample Chrome screen with "Flower Care 101" and a person with a mustache smiling in a smaller camera window below

Social media tools for scheduling and publishing

Effective social media marketing depends on strategic posting. It’s not only about sharing high-quality content, but also about sharing it at the optimal time. Therefore, you require tools for social media scheduling that can assist you with automated publishing.

5. CoSchedule

CoSchedule offers a social media calendar to help you visualize your social media publishing strategy. You can create predefined social sharing plans and reuse them as templates to simplify your publishing efforts. The ReQueue feature lets you continuously publish your best content to keep your calendar filled.

It supports automated publishing across multiple social networks. Not only that, but the Best Time Scheduler optimizes your send times to reach your audience when they’re most active.

coschedule calendar with an expanded view of a "Social Campaign" and a few content cards below

6. Post Planner

Post Planner streamlines the process of publishing content across various channels by allowing you to craft multiple posts at once. You can customize each post to fit the specific requirements of each social media platform to maximize their effectiveness. Additionally, the tool enables you to save commonly used phrases like hashtags and calls-to-action for easy repetition in future posts.

Post Planner supports one-click scheduling and lets you reuse your top-performing posts. It allows you to randomize the order of posts to keep things varied and interesting.

postplanner calendar with a few posts selected and set to recycle 8 times and a smaller window below showing post ideas

7. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar makes it easier to manage social media by offering an unlimited library of content. The platform stores all your posts, allowing you to reuse them when you need inspiration. With the ability to schedule an unlimited number of posts, you can ensure your content is published at the right time without having to do it yourself.

MeetEdgar dashboard showing two separate images of smiling women and an expanded calendar below to schedule a post

Social media tools for analytics

Social media analytics tools offer you a variety of data. They show how well your posts, as well as campaigns, are performing, what your competitors are doing and track keywords.

8. Rival IQ

Rival IQ offers the ability to immediately benchmark your own post and profile performance against others. It’s great for tracking what your competitors are doing and what strategies are working for them. This tool highlights where your competitors are focusing their efforts. It even compares profile attributions such as a bio or about statement.

Rival IQ dashboard with a sample analysis of Kiehl's social posts and an overview of posts per day, engagements, top posts, and posts with a hashtag

9. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the perfect tool for tying your social media efforts to your website performance data. You can use it to track how many visitors you’re attracting from social and from specific campaigns. This helps you figure out how your social media efforts are contributing to your larger business goals. Check out our guide on Google Analytics for social media to get started.

Google Analytics user acquisition report showing acquisitions from different channels

10. Audiense

Audiense is a consumer intelligence platform that gives you a better understanding of your audience. It goes beyond demographic data and uncovers insights about their interests and personality. It even helps you identify the influencers and brands that they follow. This allows you to craft more impactful social campaigns and messages that resonate with your audience.

Audiense showing a sample report of apps your audience is interested in with a list of offline and online channels

Social media tools for content creation

If you’re producing videos or unique graphics, utilizing social media tools can enhance the visual appeal of your content. Leverage these tools to craft posts that perform well, regardless of the content type.

11. Animoto

Animoto helps you easily create videos from your phone or desktop. Using your own media or their stock library, adding elements like music and text has never been easier. The company also provides templates, plenty of tutorials and the option to customize for your brand on the paid plans.

sample presentation on animoto titled "how to submit your expense report" and a thumb cursor selecting the option to change text color

12.  Venngage

With Venngage, anyone can become an expert at creating infographics. It provides a wide range of customizable infographic templates and a powerful editing tool. You’ll be able to quickly create presentations and graphics suitable for social media. This tool is ideal for those who require business graphics.

venngage editing window showing multiple editing tools and a headline saying "Pricing Model"

13.  Unsplash

Unsplash offers professional photos for free, thanks to a community of photographers who donate their work. With over two million hi-res images and a robust search engine, even the smallest of brands will find something to use here. The Unsplash image license grants both commercial and non-commercial use. And there’s no need for attribution (although it’s appreciated).

Unsplash search window with several sample stock images shown below

Social media tools for content ideas

Finding the best content to share for your brand is a balancing act. The following tools do the heavy lifting on content curation by surfacing trending topics and articles. Trendspotting for social media content curation is an important portion of a marketing strategy.

14. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a potent tool created specifically for content marketing, helping you uncover ideas for content creation. With its comprehensive research features, it equips you with the essential data to determine the best content and keywords to concentrate on. BuzzSumo not only reveals the popularity of a link but also offers insights into who shared it and the platforms it was shared on.

BuzzSumo media database showing different results for journalists and performance metrics

15.  Google Trends

Google Trends is a search engine that focuses on current and recent trending events. Using data from Google’s search engine, it documents keywords that are trending in any particular location. When you enter a keyword, you’ll find historical data and be able to plot them against other keywords.

Google Trends report showing a list of topics in the Trending Now tab including Steelers, Hanukkah 2023, Game Awards 2023 and Bucks

16. Feedly

Feedly helps you read the Internet. Subscribe to any website that has an RSS feed and organize the feeds into different topics. With Leo, the AI research assistant, you can train it to focus on the topics and keywords you want. Paid plans offer the ability to follow newsletters and annotate articles for your fellow team members.

Improved? The integration with Sprout Social allows you to select and read the article within Sprout, and also share it as a post, all from within the Sprout application.

Sample report on Feedly showing topics trending today in Insurtech

AI social media tools

AI marketing tools add speed and accuracy to your social media efforts. From content creation to brainstorming, these AI tools let you automate different aspects of your social media.

17. FeedHive

FeedHive has an AI Writing Assistant that helps you fine-tune your social media posts for optimal performance. With over 3,000 idea templates, you can easily come up with content ideas in a matter of minutes. The platform’s AI makes predictions on how your post will perform and gives you suggestions on how to improve your posts. Additionally, FeedHive suggests the best times to post based on how active and engaged your followers are at certain times.

expanded view of Feedhive's performance prediction with a bar chart report

18. Flick

Flick utilizes artificial intelligence to enhance your social media content and scheduling approach. The AI Assistant creates a plethora of content suggestions for you to select from, ensuring you always have something to share. One of the standout features of this tool is the caption writing function, which allows you to automatically produce distinctive captions that match your brand’s voice and tone.

Flick AI content lab preview with a window to add a prompt and window to search for content ideas

19. Ocoya

Ocoya speeds up social media content creation with AI-powered writing. The AI Assistant lets you generate social media text posts in 26 languages. You can then use the platform’s pre-designed templates to create eye-catching visuals to accompany your text.

ocoya window inviting you to "create your first post" and a cursor highlighting the button to "Create with AI"

Test out a new social media tool

The role of a social media manager encompasses much more than just posting content. They also act as a graphic designer, content creator, salesperson, and customer service representative. To effectively manage all of these duties, utilizing social media tools is essential.

Finding the right tools that fit within your workflow and proving your investments via ROI is a delicate dance. Make the decision process a little easier by signing up for a Sprout Social trial.

The post 19 social media tools for your brand in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social media has become an integral part of any successful business’s marketing strategy. With the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, it is important to stay up-to-date with the latest tools and trends in order to maximize your brand’s reach and visibility. As we look ahead to 2024, here are some of the top social media tools that will help you to effectively brand your business.

1. AI-Powered Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots are becoming increasingly popular as a way to interact with customers and provide them with personalized experiences. These bots are able to respond to customer inquiries quickly and accurately, allowing you to provide a more efficient customer service experience. Additionally, AI-powered chatbots can be used to collect data about customer preferences and behaviors, helping you to better understand your target audience.

2. Augmented Reality (AR): Augmented reality is a technology that overlays digital content onto the real world. This technology can be used to create immersive experiences for customers, such as virtual product demonstrations or interactive tours of your business. AR can also be used to create unique marketing campaigns that stand out from the competition.

3. Social Media Analytics: Social media analytics allow you to track the performance of your social media campaigns and gain insights into how customers are responding to your content. This data can be used to refine your strategies and optimize your campaigns for maximum effectiveness.

4. Video Content: Video content is becoming increasingly popular on social media, as it allows brands to tell their stories in an engaging and visually appealing way. Video content can be used to showcase products or services, introduce new campaigns, or simply entertain viewers.

5. Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is an effective way to reach a large audience and build brand awareness. By partnering with influencers who have a large following, you can leverage their influence to promote your business and gain exposure.

By utilizing these social media tools, you can effectively brand your business in 2024 and beyond. By staying up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies, you can ensure that your business remains competitive in the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.

Source: sproutsocial.com

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