Social Media Management tools

If you can’t quite stretch to Sprout Social, but you like the idea of one inbox and extensive keyword monitoring, then Sendible may be right up your street. We liked it so much, we can’t stop using it!

• Sendible brings together all your social media accounts, including lots of extra ones you wouldn’t expect to see including Flickr, Plurk, Delicious, Ning, Slideshare – the list goes on!
• Like Sprout, you have one inbox, making it super easy to keep on top of everything
• Unlike any other product we’ve come across, Sendible also offers email marketing tools as well as SMS services to help you grow your business. We love the idea that we can email our database and manage our social media conversations all from one product.
• Amazing keyword monitoring across loads and loads of social networks, blogs and forums. If they don’t currently cover a blog or forum you’d like to monitor, you can request that it be added. Amazing. See what’s being said about you online, respond directly or follow links to relevant sites.
• Powerful reporting function tracks your campaigns and show you what’s working and what could improve
• Lots of useful extras, like Twitter autoresponders and autofollow to save you even more time. Sendible is easy to use with fantastic live support on hand to answer your every question. Mobile App for iPhone.
• Easy to use - we worked it out very quickly, and any questions we had were answered instantly via live chat
• Mobile app - which we love

If you feel like your social media is overwhelming you, Hootsuite will save you many hours per week, for a very minimal cost.

• All your accounts shown in one dashboard
• Loads of add ons and integration, many of which are free
• Super useful bulk scheduling from a spreadsheet - so you can get to the pub more often
• Post to all your LinkedIn and Facebook groups in one click (even the ones you are a member of, but not managing)
• Mobile app for iPhone and Android
• ​To get access to bulk scheduling you'll need the Pro package - just $8.99 per month for up to 100 social profiles

However, Hootsuite can be tricky to get the hang of and the design can feel a little overwhelming.
And it's worth bearing in mind, that you'll be working with tabs, rather than an inbox - just so you know.

• Manage and schedule posts

· Monitor keywords across all your networks relating to your brand and your competitiors.

· Find potential new clients, and keep up to date on your industry by joining relevant conversations and tracking key words

· Response Rate metric gives you an idea of how well you’re doing at responding to messages and identify anything you’re missing

· Feedly integration makes it easy to share interesting content with your audience

· Smart inbox brings all your social channels into one place, making it easier to keep up with everything. No crazy dashboard to mess with your head!

· If you work as part of a team, Sprout will help you turn messages into support tickets

· Extensive analysis and reporting tools

· See instantly every conversation you’ve had with a particular person, across different social networks.

· Get suggestions for people on Twitter who may be interesting for you to follow, based on your past activity.

· Mobile app for Android & iOS (including iPhone & iPad)

· $59 per month for up to 20 profiles (that includes all your groups) The next package up costs $99 per month, per user. Most of us will need the $99 package, so it is a bit pricey!

Sociota is one of the best looking tools around, and it’s great value for money too. Here's what it can do:

• Manage lots of different accounts from one simple dashboard
• Lovely fluid interface and easy to use with drag and drop functionality
• Magic Box monitoring tracks who’s saying what about your brand, or keywords
• Advance scheduling is easy to use
• Bulk updates allow you to post lots of messages at set times
• Good reporting features
• Free package and a great $10 per month package

If you're keen to run competitions and campaigns as part of your social media marketing, Rignite could be just what you need

Rignite helps your business get results from social marketing. Grow your following, boost engagement, and win sales. Easily. With less hassle.

• Run end-to-end social media campaigns across multiple networks
• Get campaign level reporting to know what’s working
• Monitor and engage from a single dashboard
• Schedule posts – individually, or as a series
• Save time spent on social with team collaboration features

A simple tool to help you publish your stuff on social media.
I love Buffer for it's simplicity and ease of use.
It doesn't have all the fancy features of some of the other tools, but it's a great place to start.

Edgar is the talk of the online marketing world! People love Edgar for it's ability to recycle your posts and publish them when people are most likely to see them.
We all know that only a fraction of people ever see your posts, so Edgar helps you to squeeze value out of your hard work and of course grow your following.