Social Media Management Tools for Agencies: Top Picks and Essential Features

Is there such a thing as social media management burnout? We suspect that in today’s fast-paced digital landscape, being a social media manager might be one of the marketing industry’s most demanding jobs.

Thankfully, the right social media management tool can be a game-changer.

It's safe to say that top-notch social media management tools are essential to prevent overwhelm and stay ahead of the game.

They’ll help your social media and marketing teams keep on top of managing multiple clients, social platforms, and posting schedules.

The most comprehensive social media marketing tools streamline the process, allowing agencies to focus on delivering results and bagging new clients.

Of course, as an agency, you’ll want to make sure that you’re investing in the best social media management software and tools to meet the needs of your social media team – not to mention your clients.

Ask any social media manager and we suspect they’ll confess that they couldn’t live without their favorite social media management tool.

Whether you want to craft compelling social media content, schedule posts, analyze social media performance and data, or engage with your followers, you can do all of that and more with the best social media management tools.

However, with so many social media management tools for agencies to choose from, you might feel a bit stuck with where to begin.

In this guide, we’ll look at the various options available, and share some pointers to help you figure out which tool will be the best fit for your agency's workflow and requirements.

In this article:

• What is social media management?
• Selecting social media management tools
• Top social media management tools
• Capabilities of a social media management tool
• Enhancing social media marketing with tools
• Innovative features in social media management platforms

What is social media management?

Your approach to social media management – and the platforms you use – will vary depending on the type of brands you're managing, their audience, and the goals communicated by the client.

In general, managing the various social media platforms and channels of multiple brands will be a fast-paced and hands-on job.

You might be focusing on producing and publishing short-form video content for one brand while simultaneously managing customer service queries for another.

Before looking at which social media management tools for agencies could help ease this juggle, let's look at the basic role of agencies within this realm, and the key differences between the top social media platforms.

The role of agencies in social media management

As an agency, your primary role in social media management is to help clients build a strong online social media presence, across all of their chosen platforms - and there are a lot out there!

Across a range of platforms, your teams may be providing efficient and attentive customer service, attention-grabbing content around the latest product launches, and perhaps a little bit of quick-witted input into current conversations.

A day-to-day to-do list will involve creating and curating content, engaging with followers, and analyzing data to optimize strategies.

In addition, your teams will hopefully become experts in different social media platforms and their significance – including those that have only recently arrived on the (already crowded) scene.

Different social media platforms and their significance

The first step to nailing your social media strategy is to understand the unique features and functions of each social media platform.

You’re probably familiar with most of them, but it’s worth noting that the most popular platforms have different core offerings and slightly different audiences.

Let’s break down the major social media platforms:

• Facebook: The old guard of social media platforms, Facebook has long been known for encouraging conversation between users and allowing slightly longer form written content. Businesses can create pages or groups and engage with their audience through comments, shares, and reactions.
• X (formerly Twitter): A real-time newsfeed where users share their thoughts, opinions, and updates in short-form messages known as tweets. Often used as a platform for communicating with others with a shared interest, whether that be career or political views.
• Instagram: Originally a platform designed for sharing photos, Instagram has now become better known for its short video content known as ‘reels’. Story content, which disappears after 24 hours, is also a big part of the platform, and appears above the main feed.
• LinkedIn: A professional networking site where users can showcase their career development, look for job opportunities, and share professional or B2B content.
• TikTok: One of the newest and youngest platforms on the scene, TikTok is particularly popular with Gen Z. The platform showcases short video clips that are often driven by trends.

The importance of an effective social media strategy

A well-planned social media strategy should focus on a few different aspects.

There are a few basics to be aware of here, so let’s take a closer look.

Brand awareness

Enticing visuals along with engaging, informative content that's easily shareable will help to strengthen brand presence and establish your clients as credible and worth following.

Target audience engagement

Taking the time to respond to individual comments will give a personal feel to interactions across multiple client campaigns. This high-quality, personable engagement really helps to foster long-term relationships with a clients’ target audiences.

Lead generation and conversions

This is where content around new products and services takes centre stage. By sharing content that showcases clients' newest and most exciting commercial stories, you can bring in new customers, increase sales, and help your clients boost their revenue.

In order to achieve each of these goals, you’ll want to craft a comprehensive strategy tailored to each client's objectives, resources, and audiences.

It’s also important to keep on top of changes and updates to existing social media channels and platforms, as well as new platforms coming up, so you can continuously adapt your approach to suit the current landscape.

Selecting social media management tools

For anyone at a social media marketing agency who has done even the most cursory search on Google, it's clear there are a lot of social media management tools for marketing agencies to choose from.

While the core offerings of each different social media tool may be similar, once you scratch the surface you'll see that different types of software could better suit different kinds of digital marketing agencies and their needs.

Spotting the difference between social media marketing tools

Some social media analytics tools (like Brandwatch Consumer Research or Sprout Social) deliver detailed analytics and social listening to improve social media results and reach new customers, while also keeping a watchful eye on customer sentiment.

Other social media management tools for agencies (like Brandwatch Social Media Management, Hootsuite, or Loomly) may focus on publishing and scheduling features to streamline workflow where social media is a major point of contact for a brand's audience.

Without further ado, we'll take a closer look at some of those key features.

Key features to look for

When selecting a social media management tool for your own marketing agency, think about the features that will matter most to your business and client needs, not to mention your social media managers.

Here are some features worth noting:

• Centralized dashboard: A unified platform for managing all of your client's social media accounts in one place will hopefully help to ease workflow and improve efficiency.
• Scheduling: Look for tools that allow you to schedule the publication times of posts and optimize posting times.
• Analytics: Accurate reporting and detailed insights on audience engagement will be really helpful for strategic decision-making.
• Collaboration: Ensure the tool allows for seamless team communication and task delegation.
• Ease of use: User-friendliness should be a priority so that your team can learn the software easily and then use it daily without frustration. A social media management tool that doesn't deliver on usability could end up being a wasted investment.

Integration with other digital marketing tools

Digital marketing tools can be great, but they will only truly help you and your team if using them doesn’t feel like an endless juggle.

This is where it's time to consider the other digital marketing tools used by your team. If these tools have the ability to sync together, you will have a much better chance of speeding up your team workflows.

As you will have noticed above, your chosen social media management platform or social media marketing tool, can work in harmony with your existing marketing stack, such as CRM, email marketing, or content management platforms.

So, how do you check that the tools you choose will be compatible with each other?

Native integrations vs connectors

One option is to look for those that offer native integrations. This means they have the ability to allow your engineers to build links between your different chosen tools.

Alternatively, some tools offer the use connectors, such as Zapier, to enable cross-platform communication.

Whichever method you choose, this will hopefully streamline your teams' to-do lists and make the most of each individual's working hours. It'll also help you make connections you couldn't previously see between tabs.

We can probably all agree that no one wants to spend hours manually synchronizing information across multiple platforms, right?

Top social media management tools

To help you make an informed choice, here is a brief comparison of some top social media management tools:

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a social suite designed to meet all of your social media management needs, including social listening and social media management.

Along with providing helpful tools to manage multiple accounts, Brandwatch offers unlimited channels plus seamless collaboration, approval flows, and publishing tools across all major social networks.

Meanwhile, it allows you to create unlimited customizable reports that showcase how your clients’ channels are performing which you can share directly with clients.

For those who would like to give it a go before signing up, a demo option is available.

Core features of Brandwatch:

• Clearly defined user collaboration features, including approval flows.
• Actionable social insights, including analytics and social listening.
• Extensive data and network coverage.
• A range of products to suit your goals and top-class customer service.

Hootsuite

Billed as a social media management tool that brings scheduling, content creation, analytics, and social listening to one place, Hootsuite is a popular choice in a crowded market.

Core features of Hootsuite:

• Schedule social media posts according to built-in analytics tools which pinpoint the best time to post for your audience.
• Integration with content creation tools such as Canva.
• Automation and AI integration for captions and hashtags.

Buffer

Originally thought of as a social media scheduling platform, Buffer has grown to become a more complex social media tool.

It is a social media management solution that offers a range of different plans to suit an individual team, small business, or a whole marketing agency, depending on your needs.

Different plans offer different management tools, and that could be anything from simple channel management to scheduling posts, team collaboration, and maximizing engagement.

Core features of Buffer:

• Scheduling posts to multiple social media accounts on a time slot basis.
• Instagram-specific features, like first comment automation and shop grid management.
• A built-in photo editing tool called Pablo.

Sprout Social

Another popular social media management tool on offer is Sprout's social media management solution which focuses on maximizing your social efforts with analytics, tailored and detailed reports, and performance data presented in a form suitable for sharing.

It also offers a wide range of integrations.

Core features of Sprout Social:

• Publishing, engagement, and social listening options.
• Rich social data and user-friendly dashboards.
• Free trial available.

Loomly

An all-in-one platform offering calendar-based planning and automatic scheduling, as well as daily post inspiration to spark new post ideas.

There are multiple collaboration features as well as approval workflows which allow for feedback from bosses or team members.

Great for brands with lots of visual content, as it offers integration with Canva and Unsplash (for image templates and stock photos) as well as an image and video editor.

Core features of Loomly:

• Additional campaign tracking with post labels and campaign-specific reports.
• Visual functionality.
• Offers a 15-day free trial.

Capabilities of a social media management tool

Now that you've chosen and set up the management tool of your choice, it's time to think about the obvious ways it can improve your everyday workflow.

Management for multiple client accounts

Managing multiple social media profiles and accounts for various clients can be a daunting task.

Logging in and out of multiple social media accounts (often multiple times a day) is simply not viable when it comes to posting content swiftly and meeting tough deadlines.

For a brand-new social media manager (or even someone who has been in the job for years), there's also the fear of publishing a post to the wrong client's page, or slipping into a chummy tone for a usually buttoned-up client.

A social media management tool that can easily deal with multiple accounts is a must for agencies, especially if there are a lot of clients on their books.

Making the most of a dashboard

Thankfully, social media management tools for agencies can help to make it easier to deal with many accounts, and avoid slip ups like posting to the wrong account. They'll offer a multi-account dashboard with clear tabs to separate brands.

This allows your social media managers to keep an eye on the conversation across multiple brand audiences and engage with different streams of followers with ease.

Even better, some tools even allow for sorting clients into groups, making it easier to navigate and find accounts quickly.

Advanced analytics and reporting

In the world of social media marketing, it's crucial to track and measure the effectiveness of your strategies.

With advanced analytics tools and reporting features, these management tools help you gain valuable insights and an in-depth understanding of your clients' campaigns.

Furthermore, these tools will offer customizable reports, allowing you to showcase the success of your strategies using visualizations and data tailored to your clients' needs.

Content scheduling and publishing

Staying consistent in posting relevant content is key to a successful social media strategy.

Management tools offer content scheduling and publishing features, enabling you to plan and publish social media posts and organize social media posts across multiple platforms.

This way, you can:

Create and save content draftsSchedule posts for optimal engagement timesBulk upload and schedule content in advanceSet up content queues for evergreen postsAll of these make sure that you tick off your social media tasks, while ensuring that only fresh and engaging content is being shared across different social media channels.

Social listening and brand mentions monitoring

Understanding the audience's perception of your clients' brands is vital in creating effective social media strategies.

That's where social media monitoring, social listening, or brand mentions monitoring come into play.

The benefits of social media listening:

• Monitor mentions of your clients' brands across different platforms
• Track relevant keywords and hashtags related to their niche
• Identify influencers and potential brand advocates
• Gauge audience sentiment and identify trends

Once you have this feedback across multiple social media accounts, you can refine your clients' social media strategies to ensure that they align with the target audience's interests and preferences.

Enhancing social media marketing with tools

Now that you're hopefully comfortable with the basics of your chosen social media management platform, let's look at a few ways these tools can take your social media marketing to the next level.

Creating and tracking targeted social media campaigns

By using your social media tools and marketing tools, you can now create content and manage targeted campaigns with ease.

These platforms provide features to track your audience demographics and interests, ensuring your content reaches the right people.

Additionally, they offer capabilities like scheduling posts, analyzing performance metrics, and generating insights.

This will enable you to refine your marketing strategy to maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Collaboration and teamwork in agencies

Streamlined team collaboration is vital for the success of your marketing campaigns.

Social media management tools offer collaboration features that allow team members to work together harmoniously, assign tasks, create social media posts and provide feedback.

By ensuring that your agency's team members have a clear understanding of their responsibilities, you will increase productivity and the quality of your content – not to mention minimize time spent on social media efforts.

These platforms can support team collaboration in various ways:

• Task assignment: Assign individual tasks to team members, ensuring clarity on responsibilities and deliverables.
• Approval workflows: Review, approve, or reject content before it's published, maintaining quality control.
• Shared content libraries: Give your team a central location to access marketing materials, enabling efficient collaboration.

Optimizing client engagement and interactions

To build a strong online presence, it's crucial to engage with your audience through meaningful interactions.

Leveraging social media management tools, you can monitor and respond to client interactions in real-time.

With the help of sentiment analysis, your team can identify positive, negative, or neutral sentiments and adapt your approach accordingly.

Many platforms provide handy features for optimizing engagement, for example:

• Inbox: A centralized location to view and respond to incoming messages from clients.
• Chatbots: Setup automated chatbots for faster response rates and increased availability.

Innovative features in social media management platforms

So, what's next for social media management platforms? As the digital landscape constantly evolves, so do the offerings of these platforms.

Here are some exciting features that are up and coming. If your chosen platform already has these tools, embracing them could be the thing that takes your social media content to the next level.

AI for social media management tools

Some tools have incorporated AI to help with everything from draft post writing through to analyzing competitor data.

Embracing a social media management tool with this kind of innovative tech included can help agencies save time and potentially find insights they wouldn't otherwise encounter.

All this will help win favor with hard-to-impress clients.

Content creation and media library

Keeping track of different types of content and media across multiple accounts, internal server locations, and devices is a tough job.

The best social media tools will allow you to upload and save all of these elements within a media library, so that everyone on the team can access them from any location.

Furthermore, some social media management platforms have built-in content creation tools to help you develop like-worthy visuals, create snappy text, and adjust your content depending on the social media platform.

A user-friendly media library allows for easy storage, organization, and retrieval of your media assets - regardless of whether you're working from home or in the office.

Some platforms let you:

• Create and edit images, videos, and GIFs in-platform
• Centralize your assets for easy access and sharing
• Organize your library with tags, folders, and filters

Customizable social media calendars

A great, social media scheduling tool or platform should provide a customizable social media content calendar to make the planning process easier for everyone involved.

Typically a content calendar will give you an overview of your scheduled posts, key dates, and campaign deadlines.

It may even allow you to label posts by campaign or content type.

Look out for helpful calendar features, including:

• Display posts in a weekly, monthly, or custom view
• Use color-coding to categorize posts
• Automatically pull in important events and holidays

Streamlined workflow with automation tools

Automation is a game-changer for social media management and marketing agencies.

Streamlined workflow with automation tools can save time, reduce errors, and improve efficiency.

Some platforms offer features that help you:

• Schedule posts in advance and set them to publish automaticallyIdentify optimal times for publishing to maximize engagement
• Set up content approval workflows and notifications
• Use AI-powered suggestions for post captions and hashtags

Make the most of these innovative features, and your agency will be in the best position to take your social media game to the next level.

Hopefully, you'll bring in some glowing client feedback too.