The field of social media marketing has matured significantly over the last decade, with marketers working to create better practices and the tools that support them getting more and more sophisticated.
Of course, with maturity comes complexity. The rise and fall of different social media platforms, the vast array of data available, and a consumer culture that demands an active, supportive social media presence are all taking their toll on marketers.
The right tools can help you harness the power of social by saving you time, helping you reach more people, and ultimately getting you better results from your social media marketing strategy.
Finding the right one for you can be a challenge, so we've put together a list of the top 10 social media marketing tools with a range of helpful features that work across the major social media platforms.
Continue reading or jump directly to each section:
Choosing the best social media marketing tool
Coverage across social media platforms
When choosing a social media marketing tool, you first need to figure out which social media channels are best for your marketing strategy.
You'll want to ensure whatever tool you pick has adequate coverage.
Features that support your social media strategy
At this stage you'll also need to think about use cases and features that will help support them. Social media engagement tools might be helpful for some use cases like scheduling and interacting with your audience, but if they don't also offer the level of measurement you need or the influencer marketing functionality you've been dreaming about you might end up working across multiple tools and tabs.
Budget
Next, work out how much you're able to spend on social media marketing tools. Most tools offer monthly and annual subscriptions, ranging from free to enterprise-level plans.
Making the case for more budget can be tough, but if you're able to show your leaders some of the successes you've had so far and explain how scaling your efforts with a better social media marketing tool can help achieve business goals, you'll set yourself up for a positive conversation.
Your company's social media marketing ambitions
It's definitely worth thinking about how your needs might change as your business expands. It's best to choose a tool that can grow with you, offering more advanced features and higher usage limits, when you're ready to scale your strategy. Some tools will be easier or less costly to scale than others. For example, some tools will charge based on the number of social media channels you connect.
Usability
You'll also want a tool that's easy to understand and use. After all, if a tool's difficult to navigate or hard to get value from straight away, your social media marketing team will likely revert to whatever free tools they were using before.
Remember, the right social media marketing tool for you depends on your specific business needs. Take your time to research and compare different options. It's worth asking for a demo or testing free versions before committing to one.
Best social media marketing tools for 2024
All these social media marketing tools will help you manage your social media more effectively, but they'll have different strengths and weaknesses you'll need to keep in mind.
1. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is one of the most powerful analytics, social media monitoring and social media scheduling tools with some of the best social listening capabilities on the market.
Social intelligence from Brandwatch helps marketers and researchers collect and segment valuable insights from millions of online sources in real time.
On the social media management side, you can monitor the performance of your social accounts in real time and manage all your messages and comments from a single inbox, streamlining your workflow.
Meanwhile, take advantage of customizable dashboards and reports that let you visualize data with charts and graphs – and spot trends easier.
You can monitor the performance of your channels in real time and manage all your messages and comments from a single inbox, streamlining your workflow.
In Brandwatch, marketers can use a built-in link shortener and UTM parameters to track social media marketing campaigns more accurately.
Brandwatch's AI helps users to find insights faster, draft responses more effectively, and analyze performance across competitors with ease.
If you're interested in influencer marketing, Brandwatch also offers an end-to-end tool that covers everything from influencer discovery to campaign monitoring to payment.
Brandwatch is a great fit for mid-sized to large enterprises and agencies, especially those organizations looking to streamline their workflows and centralize their marketing initiatives.
Whether you are new to social media marketing and social listening or experienced in both, Brandwatch Academy offers free, on-demand courses and live events to help you grow your skills at your own pace. And if you ever have questions, Brandwatch's customer support team is here to help, or you can explore the self-service help center packed with useful articles.
2. Sprout Social
Sprout Social offers features that simplify your workflow and help boost your engagement. You can schedule posts across multiple platforms, and the calendar view lets you see all your planned activities at a glance. There's also a smart queue feature that automates posting at the best times.
Sprout Social offers analytics, and you can get detailed reports on your performance, audience growth, and engagement. These insights can help you refine your strategy and improve your results.
This platform is good for collaboration, such as assigning tasks, getting approvals, and communicating with multiple teams within the tool.
With the tool's social monitoring capabilities, marketers can track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and keep an eye on trending industry topics to help them stay on top of conversations and respond quickly to customer feedback.
The mobile app is simple to use on the go, allowing you to monitor and respond to social activity quickly.
On the downside, the learning curve for the tool can be a bit steep at first due to the wide range of features available.
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is another all-in-one social media management tool that lets you manage your multiple accounts across different social media networks from a single dashboard. You can schedule posts, track online mentions, plan your content calendar, and analyze performance – saving time for busy social media marketers.
It's perhaps the most well-known in our list of social media marketing tools, due to its mascot, "Owly"!
Its social monitoring feature helps you keep tabs on brand mentions, while the analytics feature provides you with insights into your social media performance.
Hootsuite offers a free plan for individuals, but businesses will likely need a paid version. It's ideal for mid-sized to large companies managing multiple social accounts, as well as agencies handling social media for multiple clients.
The platform offers team collaboration options and makes it easy for marketing teams to work together on social media campaigns, and its integration with other marketing tools helps streamline workflows.
While it’s a powerful tool, some users find certain features less intuitive, so you might need some time to get used to the interface.
4. Buffer
Buffer is a popular choice for a social media management tool that helps you plan, create, and schedule posts across multiple platforms. You can set custom posting times for each network, which makes it easy to maintain an active social media presence, even when you’re busy with other tasks.
The tool's interface is user-friendly and easy to navigate. You can quickly draft posts, add images or videos, and preview how they’ll look on different platforms before you hit publish.
With Buffer’s analytics features, you can track key metrics like engagement, reach, and clicks to understand what’s resonating with your audience.
This platform integrates with other marketing tools and apps, allowing users to streamline their workflows. For example, you can connect it with services like Canva, Feedly, or Zapier to create a more powerful social media toolkit.
The mobile version of the tool is handy enough to manage basic tasks on the go. You can create new posts, check analytics, or adjust your schedule from your smartphone or tablet.
While the free plan might be sufficient for individuals or those new to social media marketing – covering basic scheduling for up to three social media accounts – paid plans offer additional features and support for larger teams.
One drawback is that Buffer lacks the robust social listening and community management tools that some competitors offer. It’s best suited for small to medium-sized businesses that want an affordable tool to help them manage their social media, such as content scheduling and basic analytics.
5. Loomly
This user-friendly social media marketing tool is designed to simplify content planning and publishing.
Loomly allows for good collaboration with other team members whether you're working together on content or getting approvals.
Inspo-poor social media managers will never run out of content ideas again with Loomly's post suggestions based on trending topics, holidays, and RSS feeds. And you can always use the tool's analytics feature to track post performance and gain insights to refine your social media strategy over time.
The tool also offers post optimization tips, offering advice on how to improve your content for each social platform to boost audience engagement.
Loomly is ideal if you want a simple tool that covers all the basics of social media management.
6. Meltwater
Among the popular marketing tools designed for mid-market companies, Meltwater offers AI-powered insights and media monitoring. It helps brands track social conversations across many platforms, enabling social media marketers to understand audience sentiment, identify trends, and refine their strategies.
With precise sentiment tracking and customizable dashboards, Meltwater allows brands to monitor social media, news, blogs, and more, helping them manage their reputation effectively. This is a good tool for teams needing in-depth media monitoring.
The tool is best fit for PR agencies and teams seeking advanced social listening and PR management capabilities, but not so much for social media marketing teams.
7. Mention
Here's another option that helps you stay on top of your online presence, tracking brand mentions, competitors, and industry keywords across social platforms, blogs, and news sites.
With Mention, you get real-time alerts when someone talks about your brand online, so you can respond quickly to feedback and join important conversations. The tool also offers detailed analytics to help you understand how people feel about your brand.
Like other social media monitoring tools, Mention features Boolean search to help users get more precise search results. This means that you can create complex queries to find exactly the mentions you're looking for and filter them by language, location, and sentiment.
The tool's user-friendly dashboard lets you view all your mentions in one place, making it easy to sort and categorize them and track different campaigns or topics. It also integrates with popular platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram, which means you can respond to mentions directly from the Mention interface, saving you time and effort.
Mention is great for businesses of all sizes that want to keep a close eye on their online reputation, especially in fast-paced industries, where quick responses are key.
One potential drawback is that Mention's more advanced features can take some time to master, but once you do, you'll have an excellent tool for managing your brand's online presence.
8. Later
Later lets you plan, create, and share posts across popular social media networks – Instagram, Facebook, X, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn – from one place.
With Later, you can visually plan your content calendar by dragging and dropping posts and arranging everything just the way you want – making it simple to see how your posts will look together.
One of the benefits of the tool is that it helps you find user-generated content. It's great because instead of having to create a constant stream of original posts, you can search for posts that mention your brand and easily repost them. It's also great for building relationships with your followers, which should be a core part of any social media marketing strategy.
Later provides insights into how your content is performing, such as which posts get the most likes, comments, and shares, and you can quickly understand what content works best for your audience.
Later is good for small businesses, influencers, and social media managers. It's especially useful if you post a lot on Instagram.
9. Zoho Social
Zoho Social is another good tool for managing your presence across different social media platforms, including the ability to schedule in advance.
One of Zoho Social's standout features is its Smart Q. This AI-powered tool suggests the best times to post based on when your audience is most active, helping you improve your engagement rates.
The tool also tracks analytics metrics for each post, such as reach, impressions, and engagement, and you can feed these insights to feed into your social media marketing strategy.
Zoho Social integrates well with other Zoho products. If you're already using Zoho CRM or Zoho Desk, you'll find it easy to connect your social media efforts with your other business processes.
The platform is user-friendly, with a clean interface that's easy to navigate. Even if you're new to social media management tools, you'll likely find Zoho Social very intuitive.
While Zoho Social is packed with features, it may not be the best fit for large enterprises. Its strengths lie in serving small to medium-sized businesses and marketing agencies.
10. Sprinklr
The next entry in our list of social media marketing tools can help you efficiently manage your social media accounts, track the engagement of your social media posts, and analyze performance metrics across most social media platforms.
Similar to Brandwatch, Sprinklr offers advanced social listening features that let you gather insights from consumer conversations and monitor brand sentiment. Based on this data, you can quickly identify trends and tweak your social strategy as needed.
With Sprinklr, you can create detailed reports on key metrics like reach, engagement, and impressions – valuable data to help you understand your followers, discover new audiences, and optimize your content strategy.
Sprinklr's user interface can present a steep learning curve, with a complex layout that can make navigation difficult. As a result, new users may need more training to become proficient.
Overall, Sprinklr is a good choice for organizations seeking a robust all-in-one solution for social media management and customer experience.
Real-world success stories using Brandwatch
Want to see how Brandwatch's social media management tools help brands shine on social media?
Automated Creative
Automated Creative partnered with a well-known fast food brand to boost its ad performance and gain deeper insights into consumer behavior. Using Brandwatch's social listening module, Automated Creative turned consumer feedback into actionable insights. Their approach involved testing various themes from consumer conversations and automating the ad production process based on what they learned.
The results:
- 193% improvement in performance
- 45% cheaper than usually
- Strategic insights for future campaigns and additional savings in production
Glossier
Another success story comes from beauty brand Glossier, who teamed up with Brandwatch to enhance their TikTok presence through their first celebrity collaboration. Glossier used the social media management module and effectively transformed consumer interactions on social media into valuable insights. This strategy paid off:
- 1,002% increase in new fans across social channels
- Highest spike in new fans in brand history
- Improved management of customer interactions
These stories show just a couple of ways you can use Brandwatch's social media marketing tools. With real-time insights, you're always ready to make smart moves on social media.
Take a look at our case studies to see more success stories from different organizations using Brandwatch.
Frequently asked questions about social media marketing tools
What is the best social media marketing tool in 2024?
Brandwatch is the top choice in 2024. It offers powerful analytics and social listening alongside all the scheduling, influencer marketing, and competitor benchmarking features you need.
What social media marketing tools do you recommend for small businesses or businesses on a tight budget?
Hootsuite and Buffer are good options for small businesses looking to schedule posts and track basic metrics.
How do free social media management tools compare to paid ones?
Tools that are free will obviously have some limitations compared to paid ones. You'll likely get much better customer support, analytics, reporting, and scheduling options as well as scope to add higher volumes of channels and more frequent updates if you're willing to pay.
What features should I look for in a social media marketing tool?
This will depend on your situation but we recommend you look for an all-rounder that can cover your analytics, scheduling, competitor benchmarking, and influencer marketing needs.
How beneficial are social media management tools for measuring engagement metrics?
Social media marketing tools are very helpful for tracking likes, comments, and shares. They save you time by pulling data from multiple platforms, making it easier to see what's working. With this information, you can adjust your social media strategy and improve your results.
Why should I choose a social media marketing tool instead of posting directly?
Posting natively on platforms like X, Instagram, or Facebook is fine, but you'll struggle to scale up and plan ahead. It can be really helpful to see all your analytics and plan your posts in one place.
