EXPERT INSIGHTS
Aug-12-2022
Jackson Kushner, Senior Content Writer
As of 2022, 4.62 billion people around the world use social media, with 424 million new users in the last 12 months. Because of these high user numbers, businesses can leverage social media to attract more customers, get customer feedback, create a great online experience, build brand loyalty, and so much more.
However, implementing and managing a successful social media strategy can be overwhelming for any brand, no matter the size. This has led to an increased need for advanced social media management tools.
A social media management tool lets businesses create a comprehensive social media strategy they can execute from one central place. It centralizes social media capabilities like customer engagement, brand protection, campaigns, social listening, customer response, and more. The best social media management tools on the market allow enterprises to build custom strategies and track detailed performance metrics.
Social media management tools benefit businesses of all sizes, from smaller B2C companies to larger enterprises. To choose the best one and to get the most out of the investment, leaders must understand the needs of their teams and customers.
Many businesses understand the importance of social media management tools, but with so many options out there, it’s difficult to know which one to choose. For businesses to truly reap the benefits of this technology, they should look for a tool that provides a holistic view of all their social accounts. Businesses should have the following features on their social media management tool must-have list:
Ease of use
Social monitoring and listening capabilities
Customer response capabilities
Management of social media campaigns and advertising
Accessible insights and reporting
Diverse technology integrations and managed social media platforms
Collaboration capabilities
We looked at social media management tools that leverage these features to create this list.
Khoros is a unified platform that helps large enterprises with diverse needs develop a strategic vision to improve their digital customer experiences. Perhaps the best part about Khoros is their partnership capabilities. They offer in-house social strategy expertise with Khoros Strategic Services. This team is composed of experts in both social media strategy and the Khoros platform. This service is available to Khoros customers as a full-service or a special ops extension of an enterprise’s in-house crew — brands can tailor it to their needs.
Easy to configure and use
Provides a unified view of performance insights
Prioritizes customers and user-experience
Allows for publishing automation
Includes social strategy expertise and product coaching
Allows for real-time conversations
Social listening and reporting capabilities
Collaboration, planning, and management of social campaigns
Centralized control over account access
Promotes a consistent brand voice across social platforms
Includes dashboards and data exports to show business value
Includes free visibility, planning, reporting, and optimization of ad spend
Must contact for pricing. Request a demo to learn more.
Meta
TikTok
YouTube
Enterprise level companies
For enterprises with diverse needs across departments that don’t necessarily have shared goals, Khoros is a good fit. - the Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q3 2021
Khoros is named a Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q3 2021
Khoros ranks #1 in the Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q3 2021 strategy category, where all vendors are evaluated on product vision, execution roadmap, onboarding and account management, supporting services, performance, and commercial model.
Sprinklr helps brands protect their online reputation with a global compliance framework that helps eliminate risky off-brand engagement. The compliance framework includes approval, governance rules, and moderation processes.
Includes AI-powered social media automation
Intuitive and easy-to-use
Plans, manages, and measures brand content across multiple social channels
Enables cross-team collaboration to deliver social experiences
Ensures on-brand business voice
Transforms consumer insights into conversion-driving assets
Includes account level permissions and governance
Streamlines social content creation and publishing
Allows for fast social engagement
Social media monitoring capabilities
Must contact for pricing
Meta
YouTube
Enterprise level companies
Zoho Social allows small- to medium-sized businesses to run the social aspects of their business on one platform while managing email, projects, and accounting with their CRM product. Because Zoho offers a social media management tool and a CRM, businesses can successfully manage more all in one place.
Provides multiple ways to schedule content
Social monitoring capabilities
Creates intelligent reports
Utilizes social listening to track brand reviews, mentions, and keywords
Provides a live stream of social engagements
Allows for team collaboration and sharing of custom reports
Offers a user-friendly interface
Standard business plan $10/month
Professional business plan $30/month
Premium business plan $65/month
Meta
YouTube
Google My Business
Small to medium-sized businesses
Hootsuite allows users to schedule unlimited posts across multiple social platforms. Another reason this tool makes our list is its tracking and analytics capabilities. Hootsuite allows users to easily customize reports and can even provide team productivity reporting.
Allows for creation and scheduling of social media content
Monitors multiple accounts and keywords
Uses one calendar for all social media content
Capability to set up customizable monitoring of trends
Includes customizable dashboards with easy-to-share summaries
Analyzes trends and engagement in real-time
Professional plan $49/month
Team plan $129/month
Business plan $739/ month
Must contact for enterprise plan
Meta
YouTube
Small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprise level companies
Sprout Social is a competitor because of its integrated social media management and intelligence tool that helps both brands and agencies. It is helpful with managing social conversations while also uncovering actionable insights. This platform can help streamline workflows and strengthen relationships with your audience.
Provides intuitive publishing capabilities
Easy to set-up and use
Utilizes algorithms to automatically schedule content
Includes a collaborative content calendar to manage social posts
Tracks campaign performance and provides customizable reports
Includes a unified messaging inbox with filtering options
Allows for social media monitoring
Standard plan $89/user/month
Professional plan $149/user/month
Advanced plan $249/user/month
Meta
Small to medium-sized businesses
Emplifi’s Social Marketing Cloud is an end-to-end platform that enables organizations to manage marketing, community, and care functions from a centralized dashboard. The tool utilizes AI to streamline processes that can help teams improve efficiency and scale operations as they grow. Powered by social analytics, the tool helps brands manage multi-channel strategies to identify trends and optimize campaigns to enhance performance.
Centralizes marketing, community, and care management functions on a single platform
Comes with a chatbot for customer service
Provides sentiment analysis in 100+ languages
Allows for customization of analytics dashboards
Allows for creation and publishing of social content
Includes social listening capabilities
Basic plan $200/month
Costs scale depending on features selected
TikTok
YouTube
Small to large-sized businesses and enterprise level companies
Brandwatch makes the list because of the actionable social insights the tool provides. This social media management tool lets you monitor your brand across millions of sources. Brandwatch also helps with benchmarking and measuring share of voice (SOV) by allowing businesses to compare themselves against their competitors.
Includes an integrated content calendar for on-brand content
Leverages AI to discover new social trends
Provides social media insights and customizable dashboards
Offers management of all content in one calendar
Automates ad campaign creation
Uses one inbox for all interactions
Monitors the web for insights
$108.00/month
Meta
YouTube
Small to medium-sized businesses and enterprise level companies
Social media management is one of the most important things your business can do to succeed in customer engagement. It helps bring in new customers, keep existing customers happy, and make your brand more relatable and recognizable. The best social media management tools can take your social media strategy to the next level.
To learn more about our top-ranked social media management platform, check out Khoros’s Social Media Marketing solution.