We’re here to provide you with a list of the best free social media tools for 2018.
We’ve curated this list based on our own experiences and recommendations from other industry experts. We hope this helps you find the right tool for your needs!
What are social media tools?
Social media tools are programs and applications that help you manage your social media accounts more effectively. Some of them focus on scheduling posts, while others help you monitor engagement and identify trends in your audience. Some even allow you to create content directly within their platform!
Why should I use social media tools?
Using a social media tool can save time, help you identify opportunities, and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. For example, if you’re trying to schedule posts in advance but have trouble remembering when they’re due, a scheduling app can remind you. In addition to being able to post more often, this will also help boost engagement because users will see your content more often (since it’s already scheduled).
Free Social Media Tools 2018
With 2018 upon us, whether it be eating more vegetables or finally using that overpriced gym membership, you’re probably in full goal-setting mode. New Year’s resolutions are meant to be broken, right?
Perhaps when it comes to personal goals, but for marketing goals, now is the time to tackle your strategy with full-force.
best free social media management tools
Organization is one of the keys to success in marketing, so if you are not managing your social platforms with a social media management tool, that needs to change today!
Not only will using a social media management tool make your life substantially easier, it doesn’t need to go through rounds of budgeting approval – because there are many robust free tools out there to help you accomplish all of your social marketing goals in 2018.
Social management platforms will help you manage multiple social profiles in one place, schedule posts in advance, run contests, track analytics across platforms, and the list goes on. These tools really are game changers for your social strategy!
And lucky for you, I’ve rounded up a list of the 9 best free social media management tools to incorporate into your 2018 strategy, starting with my personal favorite, Hootsuite!
1: Hootsuite
Hootsuite has a special place in my heart, likely because it’s the first social media management platform that I used at my very first job as a Marketing Assistant. At the time, I was managing the company’s social strategy before social advertising had really taken off. I can still remember the hours upon hours I would spend putting together a posting content calendar and setting reminders for myself to tweet at certain times. This was until I discovered Hootsuite and my life as a frantic Twitter bird instantly changed.
hootsuite free social media tools
So what does the Hootsuite free plan include? The free plan is decently robust with the ability to:
Manage 3 social profiles in one place
Schedule 30 posts in advance
Generate leads with social contests
The free plan also includes basic analytics for tracking followers and various growth and content statistics and two RSS feed integrations. Not too shabby!
2: Buffer
Next up is Buffer. Similar to Hootsuite, Buffer has been in the social media management space for quite some time, and they are a respectable platform that allows you to manage multiple social profiles with ease.
With many overlapping features to Hootsuite, some of my favorite Buffer features include the ability to easily schedule content while browsing the web with their Chrome extensions. Buffer also suggests the perfect moments to post based on follower activity – pretty neat!
buffer social media free plan
While there are a variety of options for larger organizations and agencies, the free plan just may suit your social media management needs. Buffer’s free plan includes the ability to manage three social profiles, schedule up to ten posts, utilize their browser extensions and mobile apps (iOS and android) feature, and create and schedule content using their image creator and GIF/video uploader.
Unfortunately, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan in order to access link shortening and tracking, as well as their RSS Feed feature. Their paid plans range from $10 to $399 per month.
3: TweetDeck
If Twitter is the bread and butter of your social media strategy, then TweetDeck is likely the best social management platform for you! TweetDeck will allow Twitter birds to use custom timelines, create and manage Twitter lists and searches, and add team accounts. It is also free for Twitter users!
tweetdeck free twitter management tool
While TweetDeck may not be the all-in-one platform you’re searching for, it is the perfect tool for social marketers managing multiple Twitter accounts where these live conversations are critical for business success.
4: SocialOomph
Not only do I love the name of SocialOomph, I’m quite impressed by the wide range of features they offer for multiple platforms – ranging from the typical features like scheduling and analytics, to some interesting ones like keeping your DM Twitter Inbox clean to help with increasing followers. They definitely offer a wide variety of unique features for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest management, as well as the ability to manage and schedule blog posts.
While SocialOomph does indeed have a free plan, the features are limited and mostly lean towards Twitter management. On the free plan you can do things like schedule tweets, track keywords, shorten URL’s, and manage up to five Twitter accounts, but some of the more sophisticated features require a paid plan. If you’re looking to manage multiple social platforms aside from Twitter you will need to pay to play.
5: Friends+Me
Friends+Me is another prime player in the social media management tools family. While Friends+Me puts the highest emphasis on Google Plus features, many other social platforms are supported. Friends+Me appears to get rave reviews from users, and has a beautifully designed website with plans available based on the size of your business. And yes, there is a free plan!
While the free plan is not super robust, it still allows for two queues (which is a destination to publish posts), the ability to schedule three posts per queue, link shortening, browser extensions, an integration with Zapier, as well as standard support. The free plan can also be used for a variety of social platforms like Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Pinterest and Instagram are supported as well, but you will need to upgrade. Plans range from $7.50 to $259 depending on if you decide to utilize monthly or annual billing.
6: Likeable Hub
Likeable Hub brands itself as a social media automation platform with a wide range of advanced social media management capabilities to simplify your life. Upon visiting their website, don’t be intimidated by the long list of expensive paid plans. While they offer many sophisticated features for larger organizations they also have a robust app.
top free social media management tools
The free Likeable Hub app with help you schedule content, generate content creation ideas, generate leads, refine your strategy, and measure results. The app will empower you to do this all while on the go, making Likeable Hub the perfect solution for busy marketing managers.
7: Social Pilot
If you’re an agency in need of tools for social media management, Social Pilot may be your best bet! This social media management tool will allow you to do manage multiple client social media profiles at once and do things such as bulk schedule posts in various queues, collaborate with team members, manage clients, utilize browser extensions, etc. Their free plan includes 3 connected profiles, 10 posts per day, and 30 posts per queue.
free social media management apps
If this doesn’t sound like enough for your agency, start a 14-day free trial with one of their more robust plans, which range between $100 to $800 per month.
8: Post Planner
Are you struggling to get followers and engagement on your social posts? Perhaps you are even doubting whether or not social media makes sense for your marketing strategy? Post Planner believes you’re going about it all wrong!
Their science-based tool will help you find the right content to engage your audience, plan posts, collaborate with team members, recommend viral photos, top content, and GIFs, and the list goes on. While they don’t advertise a free plan outright they do have a free Pro app that is worth checking out. Their plans also start at only $3 month and go up to only $49/month at the high end.
9: Zoho Social
Whether you’re a growing business or an agency, Zoho Social will help you manage multiple profiles, research relevant keywords, work with team members, and of course schedule posts from one dashboard.
2018 free social media tools
Zoho Social has many of the same tools and features that the other platforms have, but they also have Facebook lead ads, advanced reporting features, a SocialShare browser plugin, and CRM integrations. Zoho Social caters to agencies as well so marketers have the choice of choosing between the business or agency plans. Pricing for the paid plans ranges from $8.33 to $125+ for larger agencies. Zoho Social’s free plan allows you to manage 1 brand, and includes the URL shortener and SocialShare browser plugin.
I know, I know there are a lot of options here! Luckily, they all have free plans so you can experiment and find the platform that works best for your social strategy. At the end of the day you can’t go wrong moving onto a social media management tool – it will likely save you time, grow your social presence, and possibly even make you some money!
best social media management tools
How do you stay on top of all your social media marketing tasks?
From creating and publishing content to analytics and reporting, it can be pretty overwhelming to think of all the jobs social media marketers have to complete every day.
Thankfully, there are a bunch of awesome social media management tools available to help. These tools can streamline your workflows, help you save some time and even ensure your content reaches the right audience at the right time.
But how do you decide which product to use?
With so many great social media management tools out there, we thought it would be great to showcase some of the top ones to help you pick what’s best for your business.
Here are 25 of the very best social media management tools out there.
Best Social Media Management Tools
The 25 top social media management tools and platforms
The list is broken down into two sections:
Tools more suitable for small-to-medium businesses and
Tools more suitable for enterprise businesses (Click here to skip to this list.)
The distinction is largely made based on the price and isn’t clear-cut. If you are a small-to-medium business, a tool on the second list might suit you, and vice-versa.
The 15 top social media management tools for small-to-medium businesses
The tools are not arranged in any particular order and they’re all great in their own unique ways. If there’s a reason you love a tool and I didn’t mention it, feel free to give it a shout in the comments section to help others understand more about that particular tool.
Compare the tools easily with this spreadsheet
To make it easier for you to compare the tools, I’ve created a spreadsheet with the following information of each social media management tool:
The prices
Free plan or free trial?
Product offering
Social networks supported
Unique value
Let’s look through each tool!
- Buffer
The platform for successful social media management
Prices: Forever free plan, $5, $10, add $10 per month per social channel connected (with a 14-day free trial).
Description: Buffer is an intuitive, streamlined social media management platform trusted by small businesses and individuals to help drive meaningful engagement and results on social media.
We have a suite of products for publishing, engagement, analytics, simple landing pages, and team collaboration. Our products are carefully considered and highly refined in order to help social media marketers and teams work more efficiently and effectively.
Unique value: What we’ve heard from our customers is that they love how clean and intuitive our tools are, how friendly and timely our customer support is, and how helpful our content is.
Want an independent Buffer review? Check out this post.
Once you’ve researched all your options and if you think Buffer might suit your needs, we would love for you to give it a try and see the difference it can make for your social media management.
- Hootsuite
Manage all your social media in one place
Hootsuite
Prices: Free plan, $29, $129, $599 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Hootsuite, probably the biggest social media management tool, is used by over 15 million people and more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies.
There’s a good reason for their success: it’s an all-in-one platform that allows you to curate and schedule content, measure your social ROI, run social media ads, and more.
Unique value: Being such a comprehensive platform, there are several things that people love about Hootsuite: being able to monitor multiple accounts and keywords, connect with over 35 social networks, and bulk-schedule social media posts.
- Sprout Social
Real people. Real brands. Real connection.
Sprout Social
Prices: $99, $149, and $249 per user per month (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social combines several social media tools into one platform — from social media scheduling to monitoring, to reporting.
Sprout Social is one of the few social media management tools that provides customer relationship management (CRM) features. Having a complete profile of your customers help you serve them better and build stronger relationships with them.
Unique value: The most common praise I’ve heard about Sprout Social is its amazing reports. Many social media managers found the reports so great and beautiful that they would download and send them to their managers or clients without editing them.
- Agora Pulse
Social media management simplified
Prices: Free, $79 per month, $159 per month, plus enterprise options
Description: Like the social media management platforms mentioned above, Agora Pulse is also an all-in-one social media platform with scheduling, responding, and reporting features.
Unique value: Unlike the rest, Agora Pulse has several unique features such as competitor analysis and Facebook contest apps at a very affordable price point.
- Sendible
The #1 social media management tool for agencies
Sendible
Prices: $29, $99, $199, $299 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 30-day free trial)
Description: Sendible is a social media management tool built specifically for agencies with several clients. On top of most features that social media management tools provide, Sendible allows you to customize your dashboard according to your branding to attract new clients.
Unique value: Sendible has some impressive integrations such as the Canva graphics editor, royalty-free image search, and YouTube search. It also provides some automation for those who want to save time on repetitive tasks.
- eClincher
Best in class social media management tool
eClincher
Prices: $49, $99, $199 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 14-day free trial)
Description: Like most social media management tools, eClincher allows you to schedule and publish posts, respond to social messages, and analyze your social media performance.
Unique value: What makes eClincher different from other tools is that it enables you to auto-post with smart queues and RSS feeds, has a media library for your images, and lets you search for social media influencers.
- Social Pilot
Simple & cost-effective social media management tool for teams and agencies
Social Pilot
Prices: $10, $24, $40, $80 per month, and enterprise pricing (with a 14-day free trial)
Description: I like how Social Pilot fit many of the social media management tools (such as scheduling and analytics but not monitoring) into a simple dashboard and offer it at very affordable prices. With its client management feature, I believe it’s great for agencies that work with several clients.
Unique value: Social Pilot curates and suggests content from several industries (such as tech, education, and health and fitness), which is great if you want to find relevant content easily.
Another valuable feature is its white label reports, which are especially handy for agencies.
- CoSchedule
1 marketing calendar
CoSchedule
Prices: Starting at $0 – 20, $40, $60, $210, $300, $1,200 per month (with a 14-day free trial)
Description: CoSchedule is more than a social media management tool; it’s a powerful calendar to manage many aspects of your marketing. With CoSchedule, you can manage and collaborate with your team to create your social media posts, content, events, and tasks.
Unique value: CoSchedule is great for marketers who want to organize all their projects (social media, content, events, emails, etc.) in one place.
Their ReQueue feature helps you automatically find optimal posting times and fill gaps in your social media schedule with your best posts.
- MavSocial
Streamlined social media management
MavSocial
Prices: Free, $19, $78, $199, $499 per month (with 7-day free trial)
Description: MavSocial is a social media management tool with a focus on visual content. For the higher-priced plans, it seems that you can also manage your Facebook ads with MavSocial.
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Unique value: On top of the common features (such as scheduling, monitoring, and reporting), MavSocial has a digital library where you can manage, use, and edit your multimedia for your social media posts and a search engine where you can browse through millions of stock photos.
If you wish, MavSocial can also help you repeat your social media posts for a specified duration.
- Friends+Me
Share to anywhere
Friends+Me
Prices: Free, $9, $29, $59, $259 per month (with a 15-day free trial)
Description: Friends+Me has a strong focus on Google+ but also allows you to schedule your content to the other major social platforms (except Instagram).
Unique value: Friends+Me supports scheduling for Google+ profiles, collections, communities, pages, and even GSuite Google+ and allows you to set up automations to re-post your Google+ posts onto your other social media accounts, which is great for marketers who focus on Google+.
- Crowdfire
Social media management, simplified
Crowdfire
Price: Free
Description: Crowdfire has been adding new features over the years. Besides scheduling content, it also allows you to manage your Twitter account (follow and unfollow) and suggests articles for sharing.
Unique value: Crowdfire stands out from most social media management tools in that it lets you connect your blogs, YouTube channel, and online shops and will create social media posts for every update you have on your sites.
- SocialBee
Seamless social media posting for all your profiles
Prices: $19/ $39/ $79 per month (with a 14-day free trial)
Description: SocialBee is a social media management tool that promoses to bring you more leads with less effort. Its core functionalities allow its users to add, organize, and share content across several social channels from one place: Facebook (Pages, Profiles, Groups), Twitter (Profiles), LinkedIn (Profiles, Pages), Pinterest (Boards), Instagram (Profiles), and even on Google My Business. And it even integrates with Buffer.
Unique value: Oneof SocialBee’s most-loved features is the possibility to recycle evergreen content while keeping it fresh by using post variations. You can use SocialBee to posts consistently, while having an overall balanced mix of content in each category. More than that, the quality of support and is another valued asset of SocialBee.
- Post Planner
Smarter social media management
Post Planner
Prices: $3, $11, $24, $59, $129, $299 per month, and enterprise pricing
Description: Post Planner wants to help social media marketers with three key jobs: find high-quality content, plan the perfect publishing calendar, and post consistently. It curates and rates content suggestions and allows you to create a content-type-based schedule (more below).
Unique value: With its Find tool, Post Planner makes it super easy to find content that has proven to engage people.
Also, instead of just picking your time slots in your schedule (to form your sharing plan), you can select the content type for each time slot and Post Planner will fill the slots with your chosen content accordingly. (You can also schedule posts outside of this plan.)
- Tailwind
Smarter visual marketing
Tailwind
Prices: Free trial with limited features, $9.99, $799.99 per month, and enterprise pricing
Description: Tailwind is a social media management tool for Pinterest and Instagram. Apart from helping you schedule posts, monitor conversations, and measure results, Tailwind provides recommendations for improving your Pinterest and Instagram performance.
Unique value: Tailwind is great for Pinterest and Instagram marketers as it provides a range of features that are specific to these visual platforms, such as Pinterest content promotion and Instagram UGC content management.
- Later
1 marketing platform for Instagram
Later
Prices: $9, $19, $29, $49 per month, and enterprise pricing
Description: Unlike most social media management tools, Later focuses mainly on Instagram (though you can also connect your Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter profiles).
Unique value: The strength of Later is its visual content calendar, where you can easily drag-and-drop images to schedule them. It also has a free link tool that you can use on your Instagram profile to link to a shoppable Instagram feed or various websites and blog posts.
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The 10 top social media management tools for enterprise-level companies
If none of the tools above suits your social media strategy, perhaps you need something that is more comprehensive.
Here are several social media management tools that are generally designed for larger, enterprise teams.
(Most of these tools do not list their prices on their website but they do offer you a free demo to learn how the tool can help you.)
- Sprinklr
Reach, engage, and listen to customers – at scale
Sprinklr
Sprinklr Social Cloud is part of Sprinklr’s suite of products to help enterprises connect and serve their customers across any channel at scale. It enables teams in enterprises to collaborate effectively and to reach, listen, and engage their customers on more than 25 social channels. - Oktopost
Social media management platform for B2B enterprise
Oktopost is a social media management platform catered for B2B marketers who want to generate leads through social media and quantify the business value of their social media efforts. From social media management to promotion to employee advocacy, Oktopost has all the tools most B2B marketers would want. - Falcon.io
The platform for every kind of social media marketer
Falcon.io combines all the things social media marketers would need in one single platform: social media management, engagement, and analytics, customer experience management, and DIY landing page builder. - HubSpot
All-in-one inbound marketing software
HubSpot
HubSpot’s social media management tools are part of their all-in-one marketing software, which starts at $1,120 per month. As HubSpot integrates all your marketing efforts (such as social media, email, SEO, and CRM) into a single platform, you can easily compare your results across your marketing channels and measure your social ROI. - Salesforce Social Studio
Your social media marketing platform
Salesforce provides probably the most comprehensive set of products for enterprises. Its Social Studio, a part of its Marketing Cloud platform, can help you strengthen your customer relationships by aligning your marketing, customer service, and sales efforts on social media. - Social Hub
Smart social media management software for your team
Social Hub is a social media management software built for businesses, agencies, and governments. Based on its target audience and customers, I believe it provides a solution that is efficient, scalable, and secure. - Spredfast
The platform for enterprise social
Spredfast
Spredfast is a social media software that’s used by some of the world’s biggest companies, such as Patagonia, LinkedIn, and Johnson & Johnson, to handle all aspects of their social media management. - Likeable Hub
Easy & effective social media for your business
Starting at $299 per month, Likeable Hub provides you with thousands of content ideas, helps you generate referrals and leads, allows you to amplify your social media reach, and more. - Social Flow
Data-driven social media management, marketing, and publishing
Social Flow is a social media publishing and advertising tool used by many top publishers such as The New York Times, National Geographical Channel, and Fast Company. Using Social Flow, Fast Company was able to increase their Facebook shares by 30 percent! - NUVI
The world’s most stunning social media marketing suite
NUVI
NUVI provides real-time data visualization and social media insights to help you make decisions on your social media strategy. It also provides you with the tools to publish and engage on social media efficiently.
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What’s your go-to social media management tool?
Social media management tools come in all shapes and sizes, and what suits you best depends on your social media goals and needs. I hope I’ve managed to mention at least one tool that might suit your needs.
I’m sure this list only scratched the surface of the entire ecosystem of social media management tools. If your favorite tool is on the list, I would love to hear what you love about it. If I’ve missed your favorite tool (sorry!), please give it a shout out and share why you love it.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
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