![\"Hootsuite](\"http:\/\/sitebeginner.com\/assets\/hootsuite-alternatives.jpg\")
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What\u2019s not to love about social media management (SMM) tools? Isn\u2019t it time to grow your social engagement, build social teams, and provide robust reports to see how your strategy is working?<\/p>\n
Most businesses today are already doing this. Why take a backseat to social media when you can drive it?<\/p>\n
Social media is more than just a messenger platform. Most businesses today have full pages on Facebook with promotions, contests, product launches, and company mission statement videos. If your content is not \u201cA+\u201d quality, then you need to step it up and start publishing pieces that make your audience take notice.<\/p>\n
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When businesses start posting content, they see drastic changes in their audiences. Many followers start to like and share, and they may even request more content or information. To keep up with that engagement, businesses are using third party platforms like Hootsuite, Sendible, AgoraPulse, and Buffer to make quick work of content and moderation.<\/p>\n
Social media management tools like these are everywhere. There has been in influx of all kinds of platforms, ranging from those that help you schedule content to those that help you schedule, moderate, advertise, and more.<\/p>\n
The right social media management platform should have a few different analytical tools as well. That is how businesses are able to see what content is working and start posting more content that their audiences loves.<\/p>\n
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Before reviewing some of the best platforms on the web right now, there are a few features that make some tools better than others. When combined, all of these characteristics make up an incredibly powerful social media engagement tool as well as a content publishing machine!<\/p>\n
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All of the networks should be enabled for integration in your social media management platform. The key networks are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat. However, most platforms only seem to cater to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you have a dynamic, integrated channel marketing strategy, then you definitely want to publish content on as many channels as possible.<\/p>\n
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Many social media managers were buried in Excel sheets before using third party social media management tools. Many of the new calendars allow you to plan, draft, schedule, and backdate content, allowing you to tag and share on any platform. This is essential for planning out your next month of content as well as save drafts for ideas.<\/p>\n
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If you do love Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets, you can download a CSV and upload into some third party platforms. While this is not a foolproof option, it is nice to have if you have an agency that puts together 100-300 social posts for you. Uploading all of those into your calendar, you can schedule and rearrange as needed with a third party application like Sendible.<\/p>\n
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Any scheduling software should have a mobile app. Hootsuite has one of the older social management mobile apps, but the software is a little dated. The latest third party social media management tools have diverse tools that let you view your social media engagement statistics, talk to followers, post content, and schedule out upcoming content.<\/p>\n
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If you have a team of social media strategists and interns, then you want to be able to assign tasks and create teams with different permissions so that you can keep all of your pages monitored. This is especially useful if you have an agency or advertising firm.<\/p>\n
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Analytics are huge when it comes to social media management tools. Reporting needs to happen in real-time so that you can see what users are looking at right now. In other cases, you want to see historical data compared year-over-year to your current statistics. Third party tools should let you track key metrics like page engagement, page likes, page followers, post likes, post comments, top commenters, most shared, most viewed, video plays, and more.<\/p>\n
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From comment moderation to responding to messages on Facebook in Messenger, you need tools that are made for today\u2019s on-demand social audiences. The latest tools will help you automate actions to keep up with engagement and increase followers on Instagram and Twitter.<\/p>\n
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The objective of this guide is to not do Hootsuite down in anyway, but to highlight the fact that there's more great Social Media Management tools out there other than just going for the most popular brand in this market.<\/p>\n
Hootsuite is the most popular social media management tools on the market, but as with all software, no one tool is perfect. There are some features of Hootsuite that people love and can't be without, and some issues and glitches that they absolutely hate. You're not ever going to please 100% of people 100% of the time. Fact.<\/p>\n
Social media management tools must work for your business and provide value. The costs much match what features are included with the tool because that is how you increase engagement and make social media an important piece to your business.<\/p>\n
If you want to switch it up or just don\u2019t like Hootsuite, there are a number of tools with plenty of features that can work for your business as well. The following review includes those features, as well as pros and cons, so you can make the best decision on the right social media management tool.<\/p>\n
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#1 Sendible
\n#2 Social Booster
\n#3 Buffer
\n#4 Socialoompf
\n#5 AgoraPulse
\n#6 SocialReport
\n#7 Social Clout
\n#8 Sprout Social<\/p>\n
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Sendible makes the top of our Hootsuite alternatives list. Sendible is fast becoming the most innovative and fastest growing SMM tool on the market today. They have four different prices plans which make the software completely accessible to all types of businesses from very small to enterprise level. Its a complete social media management platform. They are a relatively small start up based in London, with an incredible customer and technical support service team.\u00a0They go above and beyond most third party social media tools when it comes to helping you get the most out of their software.<\/p>\n
The number of features included with Sendible makes it a godsend to businesses who just want to improve engagement and squeeze some ROI from social media networks. You can manage both organic and paid social media platforms from this tool, as well as all of the social networks that matter.<\/p>\n Sendible has some discounts available right now, but their basic plans start at $29.99 per month<\/strong>. Other third party schedulers have a free plan that allows you to use everything but advanced features. Sendible offers 1 user and 12 services with their most basic plan.<\/p>\n You can also white label Sendible which provides you with a customized dashboard and API access.<\/p>\n Cool Features Pros<\/strong> Cons<\/strong> <\/p>\n Go To Sendible.com – Free Trial For 30 Days<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Social Booster has always been one of the top social media tools. It also is a close competitor to Hootsuite in terms of features and costs.<\/p>\n Overall, Social Booster is an intelligent and advanced social media management tool. While there is some functionality missing, and their website is atrocious, you can still manage to sign up and start managing your social accounts for less than $10\/per month.<\/p>\n Social Booster has many features of social media management platforms like scheduling posts, reporting, and teams. What it does different is automate some social processes such as liking comments and engaging with followers. This allows you to always be interacting with your followers, which is great for your engagement metrics.<\/p>\n In addition, you can also control any paid advertising from Social Booster, but you may need to bump up your subscription level to Enterprise. This means you can control the posts you boost and put budget into through the Social Booster platform. If you plan on using a paid advertising platform, this one has some great options, but it may honestly be better to go with AdEspresso, which has many more tools and A\/B testing for your ads.<\/p>\n Cool Features\u00a0<\/strong> Pros<\/strong> Cons<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Buffer has been around for almost as long as Hootsuite, and as a social media management tool, it is pretty robust and fun to use. This tool can supercharge your social management tasks and gives you the perfect times to publish content so your audience will see it.<\/p>\n You can manage all of your social networks from this platform, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest. You can also use Pablo, a design tool within Buffer, to create your own images and re-size graphics so that they look perfect on your wall.<\/p>\n While there aren\u2019t any robust paid advertising tools on this platform, this is a great tool to get started with your content and focus on audience engagement.<\/p>\n Cool Features Pros Cons <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Socialoomph was once TweetLater.com, and so for that reason, it really is a robust tool for management of Twitter. It steadily has added more social media networks that you can manage, including Facebook. However, most of the tool is still geared towards Twitter.<\/p>\n You can schedule blog posts, auto-respond to comments, and follow all of your social media activities on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.<\/p>\n The best part about this tool is that you can use the free plan forever and still manage most of your accounts, but you may miss some of the advanced features for Twitter power users.<\/p>\n Cool Features Pros Cons <\/p>\n <\/p>\n AgoraPulse lets you manage all of your social media posts from one platform. This is one of the newer and robust tools for social media because you can do everything from one dashboard with your team. This includes comment moderation, advanced scheduling, contest planning, and Facebook tabs.<\/p>\n Many of the features are powerful for Facebook, but it does connect to multiple profiles and has special plugins for Twitter as well.<\/p>\n IF you run a lot of paid campaigns that need comment moderation, this will be your favorite tool. Using filters, you can set up multiple filter groups to block out profanity, negative comments, poor feedback, and spam.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/leaddyno-client-images.s3.amazonaws.com\/e87693d0cbaf77ef1e24995e4dd2f30caf414afa\/e166652a11a1d41cbfe876f57f78496134d25289_TW800x400-socialmediatoday.png\")
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\n<\/strong>Organized dashboard
\nComment monitoring
\nRSS Feed poster
\nContent suggestion tools
\nBuilt-in content library
\nCanva design tool
\nTeams and user permissions
\nDetailed reporting<\/p>\n
\nIntegrates with all social networks
\nSophisticated Instagram scheduling tools
\nBulk scheduling options including content with images that can be imported through CSV
\nTask scheduling for teams
\nRobust reporting on all metrics<\/p>\n
\nNo free options, but there is a 30-day trial
\nKeyword monitoring doesn\u2019t always work correctly for geo-location<\/p>\nSocial Booster<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sitebeginner.com\/assets\/socialbooster-1024x465.jpg\")
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\nAll-in-one visual dashboard
\nConnects to most social networks (not Pinterest)
\nAutomate social processes
\nSchedule posts
\nPaid advertising tools
\nTeams
\nTask delegation<\/p>\n
\nManage most of your social networks from one place
\nIdeal for small to medium business
\n24\/7 customer support
\nPaid advertising tools directly from dashboard
\nRobust reporting for social metrics
\nAdvanced analytics<\/p>\n
\nDoes not connect with Pinterest or Google apps
\nWebsite does not work well for first-time signups
\nWebsite is extremely slow
\nUnclear pricing structure and features
\nNot easy to use for beginners<\/p>\nBuffer<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sitebeginner.com\/assets\/buffer-1024x543.jpg\")
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\n<\/strong>Connects to all social networks
\nAdvanced scheduling
\nVisual calendar for planning
\nSuggested scheduling times
\nMobile app<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Supports all social scheduling on all networks
\nAutomate content that you think your audience will like
\nCreate your own images using Pablo
\nSupports RSS Feed integrations
\nFree plan available<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Paid plans are quite expensive compared to what you get with other social media management platforms.
\nPaid teams can only have five members.<\/p>\nSocialoomph<\/h3>\n
\n<\/strong>Powerful Twitter engagement tool
\nTrack mentions and retweets
\nTweet via mail
\nKeyword searches<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Powerful for Twitter users
\nTrack all of your social media mentions and hashtags
\nSchedule posts in advance
\nYou can manage unlimited accounts with the free plan<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Advanced features really focus on Twitter, not any of the other social platforms<\/p>\nAgoraPulse<\/h3>\n
![\"social](\"http:\/\/sitebeginner.com\/assets\/social-report-1024x483.jpg\")
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