Staying on top of all your social media accounts, managing multiple inboxes, and carefully planning content aligned to your audience is no easy task. Luckily, this is where social media management tools come in.
Using a great scheduling tool will allow you to plan your social media strategy ahead of time, making posting across platforms easier and more efficient. It can also help with community management, collaboration, analysis and more.
Recently, we put five social media management tools to the test, so you don’t have to. Ready? Let’s get started.
StatusBrew
Features
Statusbrew is a listening, publishing, advertising, measurement, and customer data management platform. It’s basically an all-in-one tool for social media professionals.
Trusted by some of the biggest brands, including Ford and Spotify, Statusbrew offers multiple plans for its users starting from £55 per month for the Lite plan, suitable for single users getting started with social media management.
For marketing teams, the Standard plan is available for £104 per month and includes 10 social profiles, performance dashboards and community management.
The Premium and Enterprise plans start at £184 per month and are designed for larger companies with multiple teams and is perfect for collaboration. It takes everything from the Standard Plan and adds in team performance analytics, paid social reporting, sentiment analysis and more users and social profiles.
The verdict
With pretty much every feature you’d want in a social media management platform, Statusbrew was easily a favourite of ours from the start.
We particularly liked the built-in analytics tool which provides detailed custom reports for our clients, allowing us to keep tabs on performance and improve social content for the future.
It also offers the unique ability to schedule Twitter threads and polls, something which we haven’t seen any other social media platform offer yet!
Agora Pulse
Features
Agorapulse allows you to take control of your social media with inbox, publishing, reporting, monitoring and team collaboration tools.
The tool claims that it has ‘everything you need for social publishing’ with the ability to organise posts into an easy-to-use calendar. Not only that, but different team members can share notes, track posts, and collaborate on social media content easily using the social media scheduling calendar.
It offers five plans including a free plan available for single users, a Standard plan for £39 per month containing all the features you need to get started, as well as a Professional, Advanced and Custom plan for larger teams.
The main difference between each option is the number of social profiles and users catered for, although there are also differences relating to data retention and ad comment monitoring.
The verdict
We found that Agora Pulse had many of the essential features; however, it lacked the option to view the Instagram grid whilst scheduling, which we find particularly useful for planning a strong and coherent visual feed. It also didn’t have integrations with Pinterest or TikTok, unlike other competitors.
Pallyy
Features
Simple but effective, Pallyy is a social media management platform for growing brands and agencies.
Jam-packed with features, Pallyy allows for post scheduling, inbox management and reporting of organic social content. Ideal for teams and agencies, Pallyy has made it easy to collaborate with team members and clients using built-in workflows, approvals and comments.
For just £12 per month for agencies, Pallyy won’t break the bank whilst still providing all the key features you need in one place.
The verdict
As the most affordable option, Pallyy offers a great range of features, and its pretty pastel interface makes for an enjoyable user experience.
We especially love the detailed features it offers for social scheduling, including the ability to see the Instagram grid, filter posts by label and brainstorm content ideas with the media library. This helps to organise posts, information and ideas to make future social media planning easier with content inspiration to hand.
Planable
Features
Arguably the easiest tool for social media collaboration, Planable works brilliantly for planning and scheduling social media content.
Its clean and intuitive interface allows you to drag and drop posts around the calendar and visualise them on the Instagram grid. It also prides itself on ‘easy-peasy collaboration’, allowing you to give fast feedback and helping save time on approvals.
The verdict
Unfortunately, Planable offers no community management or reporting feature so it’s not an all-in-one solution.
Despite this, the tool is on the cheaper side compared to its competitors and offers 4 different plans starting with a basic free version. Its most popular plan is £17 per month per user.
Loomly
Features
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use social media scheduling tool with the essentials, Loomly is for you. It’s great for beginners because of its clean interface but it offers a range of features for experienced marketers too.
With a list view, calendar view, post view and an Instagram grid, Loomly makes it easy to plan your social media content out in advance. It also lets you store and organise photos, videos, notes and links in an intuitive library, so you never run out of ideas!
Loomly also has a good approval process for those who want clients to be able to check and leave comments on posts prior to scheduling.
The verdict
Loomly offers a range of plans starting at £28 per month for the basic plan and ranging up to £288 per month for the premium plan. Whilst Loomly does have a lot of pros, the analytics feature doesn’t provide as much detail as other platforms which is something to bear in mind if reporting is key for you.
What is the best social media management tool for you?
You can’t go wrong with any of the social media management tools above – all will help you to save time, improve workflow and be more organised!
Statusbrew was best-in-class for us; however, the best tool for you is whatever fits your needs best. Take advantage of the free trials and check out the tools for yourself to see if they align with the needs of your business.
If you’re looking to enhance your social media strategy, get in touch.
