Best Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses: Top 10 for 2024

Social media and business go hand-in-hand, more so now than ever! You cannot expect to grow a successful brand without establishing a thriving presence online. Along with breaking down geographical barriers and creating a seamless communication channel between your company and customers, it’s also one of the cheapest promotional techniques with long-term results. And there’s hardly any better way to do it than a social media management tool. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the ten best tools for social media management for small businesses, which we’ve ranked based on features, customer support, scalability, and of course, pricing. Our aim here is to help you find the best social media management tool for your needs, one that’ll skyrocket your social media growth, catalyzing your actual business growth along with it too!

Our Pick for the Best Tool for Social Media Management for Small Businesses: eClincher

Having thoroughly researched the features and other aspects of the best social media management tools on the market right now, we’ve found eClincher to be the best tool out there.

Best Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses: A Top 10 List

Here are our top 10 picks for the best social media management services and software for small businesses:

1. eClincher: Best Tool for Social Media Management for Small Businesses Overall
2. Hubspot: All-in-one Marketing and Social Media Management Tool
3. Zoho Social: Ideal for Team Management 
4. Sprout Social: Excels in Asset Management 
5. Hootsuite: Offers Free Trials and Demos for all Plans
6. Buffer: Social Media Management Tool for Organic Growth 
7. CoSchedule: Must-have for Bulk Uploading
8. AgoraPulse: Best Social Media Management Tool for Beginners
9. Social Pilot: Superb for Client Collaboration
10. Later: Perfect for In-depth Analytics 

Best Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses: Reviewed  

Now it’s time to spill the beans and give you all the details about our handpicked best tools for social media management for small businesses, including their best features, pricing, advantages, and limitations.

1. eClincher: Overall, Best Social Media Management Software for Small Businesses 

eClincher is one of the few social media management platforms that can cater to small businesses, agencies, and enterprises all at the same time. One of our favorite features of eClincher is its reputation management.

Under this, it uses an algorithm-based calculator to analyze the general feeling that users have toward your brand. It also instantly notifies you about brand mentions across all popular social media platforms.

And if this wasn’t enough, it goes a step further and simplifies visually planning your posts through a simple drag-and-drop builder. You can also use the same drag-and-drop builder to customize your posts for different social channels and get them queued for automated scheduling. 

To make it easier for you to talk to your users, eClincher offers an all-in-one smart inbox where you’ll see all your conversations from different platforms in one place. What’s more, it’ll be your best friend if you’re looking for the perfect solution to schedule Instagram posts.

Best Features

• Instant brand mentions and reputation management 
• Helps you uncover trends and discussions concerning your brand 
• One simple dashboard to plan and customize all your posts
• Bulk upload your content and set it up on auto-schedule 
• A smart inbox helps you prioritize your conversations with your team and customers

More information about eClincher:

Pricing

Here are the plans offered by eClincher:

• Basic: $59/month — visual calendar, auto post, built-in analytics, local SEO, saved libraries
• Premiere: $119/month — asset management, post-approval, team collaboration, 50 listening feeds
• Agency: $219/month — unlimited smart queues, post-approval workflows, free external users, reputation management

2. HubSpot: All-in-one Marketing and Social Media Management Tool

Who here hasn’t heard of HubSpot — the all-in-one marketing tool? This means that all their plans include not only social media marketing tools but also cover other aspects of digital marketing, like emails, landing pages, forms, and more.

For the price of a good social media management tool, you get a full-suite digital marketing tool if you give HubSpot a shot. It helps you automate your social media posts so that you can spend more time strategizing and building a relationship with your customers.

It also lets you connect your social media accounts to your website so that any time you post a new blog, it’s automatically shared on your social media accounts. That said, what you’ll love the most about it is the keyword monitoring feature.

With this, you can monitor important discussions and trends surrounding your primary keyword. You can also tweak the settings such that you get an email alert any time a prospective lead mentions a specific keyword.

Best Features 

• Round-the-clock keyword monitoring 
• Connect your blog and social handles for auto-share 
• Publish your content directly on your chosen social media channel
• In-depth analysis of your social media performance 
• Tag marketing assets to measure collective campaign performance better  

More information about HubSpot:

Pricing

HubSpot offers three plans but the tools for social media management for small businesses are only available from the Professional plan onwards. That said, here are all the plans (billed monthly) offered by HubSpot:

• Starter: $45/month — email marketing, email automation, form automation, landing pages
• Professional: $800/month — social media management tools, A/B testing, collaboration tools, campaign management tools, dynamic personalization
• Enterprise: $3,200/month — permission sets, adaptive testing, partitioning, single sign-on

3. Zoho Social: Ideal for Team Management

Zoho and its wide range of tools have made managing social media easier than ever. It’s flexible, affordable, and has even won awards — a great reason to select Zoho Social as your social media management software.

One of Zoho Social’s most useful features is content scheduling, wherein you can schedule posts to roll out in advance instead of manually posting them as per the content calendar.

But that’s not all — they also provide you instant access to RSS feeds and the zShare browser extension to simplify content curation. Plus, to manage your brand reputation better, Zoho Social also offers a unique feature called Listening Columns.

This lets you track brand mentions and keywords and uncovers discussions on the latest trends in your industry. Overall, Zoho Social is a leader in the space.

It doubles up as a team management platform, helping you collaborate with your team, create a personalized workflow, and set up custom roles and permissions. In fact, it’s one of the best LinkedIn tools out there.

Best Features 

• 24/7 email support on all plans
• Doubles up as a team management platform 
• Helps with content curation through RSS and zShare 
• Seamlessly integrates with other Zoho tools and third-party apps
• Publish on any channel of your choice (Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more)

More information about Zoho Social:

Pricing 

Here are the plans offered by Zoho Social (all plans work on annual billing):

• Standard: $10/month — activity log, user tagging, drafts, link shortener, publishing calendar
• Professional $30/month — live stream, notifications, repeat posting, bulk scheduling, insights
• Premium: $40/month — SmartQ, discussing posts, team collaboration, exporting posts, shareable reports

4. Sprout Social: Excels in Asset Management

Sprout Social prides itself on being an all-in-one social media channel, and if you feel like you’re unable to extract the fullest potential of your company, this is the tool for you.

We find it to be extremely helpful for beginners — it’ll help you understand your audience, so you’re not left guessing about what they want.

With constant insight monitoring and brand mention management, you always know what your target audience likes or dislikes about your content, helping you tweak your approach accordingly.

Trusted by more than 30,000 brands, including UNICEF, Shopify, and IHG, Sprout Social is one of the few social media management tools that has extended its service to Whatsapp as well — remember, it already has a trend analysis feature for Twitter keywords and hashtags.

Sign up with Sprout Social to manage your daily posts, review the response or even create and launch paid campaigns, all from one platform. 

Best Features

• Your very own digital asset and content library 
• You can manage 5 to 10 social profiles from one account
• Trend analysis for Twitter keywords and hashtags 
• Competitive reports for all platforms you are active on
• Create a social media calendar to keep your accounts updated with fresh posts
• Best tool for social media management for small online businesses 

More information about Sprout Social:

Pricing 

Here are the plans offered by Sprout Social (all plans are billed annually):

• Standard: $89/user/month — keyword and location monitoring, mobile apps, 5 social profiles, common inbox
• Professional: $149/user/month — 10 social profiles, custom workflows, trend analysis, paid social reporting 
• Advanced: $249/user/month — chatbot and automation tools, 10 social profiles, automated link tracking, saved and suggested replies

5. Hootsuite: Offers Free Trials and Demos for all Plans

Founded in 2008, Hootsuite is a veteran of social media management and, unsurprisingly, one of the most popular social media management tools — and for good reason!

Why choose Hootsuite? Well, it’ll allow you to bring all your social media channels together in one place, help you stay on top of your work, never miss a beat, and win over your target audience easily.

One of the best things about Hootsuite is that even its most basic plans let you schedule unlimited posts, unlike most other tools that heavily restrict the number of posts you can upload in one go, especially in their lower plans.

To simplify team management, you can create custom roles and permissions and decide who gets to access what features on the tool. As you move on to Hootsuite’s business plan, you get your very own content library,

Here you can store your digital assets for repurposing in the future. Another feature that makes working with a team super easy on Hootsuite is that you can assign individual posts to a team member, asking them to work on them. 

Best Features 

• Free trial and demo on all plans 
• Schedule unlimited posts in advance
• Assign posts to individual team members 
• An all-in-one inbox bringing all your conversations to one place
• Create custom roles and permissions to manage your team better

More information about Hootsuite:

Pricing 

The plans offered by Hootsuite are as follows — annual billing for all plans.

• Professional: $49/month — unlimited posts, 10 social accounts, post scheduling, and an all-in-one inbox
• Team: $179/month — 20 social accounts, 3 users, custom roles and permissions, post scheduling, an all-in-one inbox, and the ability to assign individual posts to team members
• Business: $739/month — Team plan features + approval workflow, content library, and quick customer support
• Enterprise: Custom pricing — Business plan features + employee advocacy, productivity reporting, ad analytics, and ad management

6. Buffer: Social Media Management Tool for Organic Growth

Are you a fan of organic growth on social media? If that’s the case, we suggest you partner with Buffer — it’ll help you employ the most ROI-generating organic growth strategies.

Whether you’re on TikTok, LinkedIn, or Instagram, you can manage content for all through Buffer. You can either schedule the posts to roll out automatically as per your schedule or simply set up notifications to remind you in case you want to post them manually. 

Buffer also makes drafting posts, seeking approval from a team, and making changes before posting a cakewalk by bringing together all your content assets and team on one platform. 

Another feature that makes Buffer special is its in-depth analytical reporting, where you get to know everything about your audience and see how people are reacting to your different content. 

Best Features 

• Helps you build landing pages 
• Simplifies engaging with your users 
• Automated post notifications to remind you to post manually 
• Works for multiple platforms like Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc
• Gives you a better understanding of your audience’s demographic

More information about Buffer:

Pricing 

Here are the plans offered by Buffer. Note that all the plans are billed annually or monthly at a higher cost:

• A free forever plan — basic publishing tools and landing page builder
• Essentials: $5/month/channel — publishing and planning tools, analytics tools, engagement tools, landing page builder
• Team: $10/month/channel — unlimited team members, draft collaboration tools, exportable reports
• Agency: $100/month/10 channels — custom access and permissions and agency-friendly pricing

7. CoSchedule: Must-have for Bulk Uploading 

CoSchedule helps you organize all your social media posts and processes in one place so that you can get your work done more quickly. Trusted by more than 30,000 companies like Forbes, Yamaha, UNICEF, and Walgreens, it’s known to offer a full suite of marketing tools. 

What makes it different from other tools is its ability to double up as project management software.

Here, you can manage your social media handles, auto-schedule posts, bulk upload, and have all your social media marketing needs taken care of — and manage your projects and tasks any way you wish. 

You’ll have access to Kanban boards, project templates, and team collaboration features to ensure your daily work goes by smoothly. Sign up for the top-tier plans to unlock social media campaign templates — incredibly useful if you’re planning to amp up your paid ads in the near future.

Best Features

• Reliable customer support 
• Automated social media publishing
• Bulk social media scheduling 
• Integrated task and project management features 
• Advanced audience targeting on social media 

More information about CoSchedule:

Pricing 

Here are the plans offered by CoSchedule:

• Marketing Calendar Free: a free forever plan — basic support, 2 social profiles, self-serve knowledge base, unlimited marketing projects 
• Marketing Calendar Pro: $29/user/month — priority support, customizable workflow templates, social media automation, bulk scheduling, campaign templates
• Marketing Suite — content ideation insight, approval workflow, advanced targeting, custom integration, custom onboarding

8. AgoraPulse: Best Social Media Management Tool for Beginners

AgoraPulse is one of the best social media marketing tools for beginners, and why wouldn’t it be — it’s easy to use, loaded with all the features you could possibly need to scale your online presence, and comes with a generous free plan.

What’s more, you can schedule unlimited posts at any given time on any platform of your choice. On top of that, you get a unified content calendar for your team to check the upcoming schedule of posts and events. 

An AgoraPulse feature that makes campaign tracking super easy is ad campaign monitoring — get a list of potential leads and a gist of what people feel about your campaign in a jiffy. 

If you want in-depth reports to be shared or uploaded on any other platform, AgoraPulse’s exportable performance report is just what you need. 

Best Features 

• Shared calendar for the whole team
• Listening to searches to uncover trending keywords 
• Exportable team performance reports 
• Schedule unlimited posts at once (unavailable on the free plan)
• Multiple add-ons like Facebook competitor analysis and power reports 

More information about AgoraPulse:

Pricing 

Here are the plans offered by AgoraPulse — annual billing applies for all paid plans:

• A free forever plan — 10 scheduled posts, social CRM tool, content label, Facebook ROI calculator 
• Pro: $79/month — unified calendar, Twitter sync, listening searches, report exports
• Premium: $199/month — Facebook competitor analysis, team reports, priority support, group training 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing — post assign and approval, automated inbox assistant, collision detection, saved replies, power reports

9. Social Pilot: Superb for Client Collaboration

Social Pilot is a no-nonsense social media management tool — it’ll get straight to the point without bombarding you with unnecessary promotions. The tool specializes in offering powerful insights, simplifying publishing, and team collaboration. 

Their services extend to seven social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. 

Social Pilot will assist you in making your content a little more interesting by allowing you to add emojis, images, and GIFs. All the other assets of your post, like alt text, mentions, and hashtags, can all be managed from the platform itself.

Other great features include a shared social calendar, smart auto-posting, and useful integrations. If you’re running short on content ideas, you can use Social Pilot’s curated content list, which is always made with current trends and popular keywords in mind. 

Best Features 

• Built-in image editor 
• Lets you bring your clients on board
• Make your content more interesting with emojis and GIFs
• Get ready-to-share content from Social Pilot’s curated list of content
• Share content from anywhere you want (website and blogs) without switching tabs

More information about Social Pilot:

Pricing

Here are the plans offered by Social Pilot (annual billing):

• Agency: $106.25/month — 50 social media accounts, 9 users, unlimited clients, white label
• Studio: $85.50/month — 30 social media accounts, 6 users, unlimited clients
• Small Team: $42.50/month — 20 social media accounts, 3 users, unlimited clients
• Professional: $25.50/month — 10 social media accounts, 1 user

10. Later: Perfect for In-depth Analytics

Want your social handles to make it to the top of every popular social networking site? Try Later. Trusted by more than 7 million users across the globe, Later is best known for its Instagram management and flexible pricing.

Another thing we appreciate about Later — and we’re sure you will too — is its user-friendly interface, making it perfect for those that are new to using tools for social media management for small businesses.

Post reporting is certainly great, but Later goes a step ahead and offers personalized insights — it’ll zero in on the unique strengths of your business and show things that actually matter. 

Say you’re having a tough time wrapping your head around the complexities of social media management. In that case, go ahead and try Later’s Advanced plan, where its experienced team will help you every step of the way via live chat support.

Best Features 

• Save your captions to repurpose in future 
• Get detailed analytics even for your older posts
• Get audience insights on all your posts
• Creating posts is easier with Later’s stock photo library 
• Besides posts, you can also schedule your reels in advance 

More information about Later:

Pricing 

Here are the plans offered by Later, all of which are billed annually:

• Starter: $15/month — auto-publish, multi-channel scheduling, saved captions, visual Instagram planner, and more
• Growth: $33.33/month — Shopify connection, no Later branding, exportable reports, post-performance report going back to a year, and more
• Advanced: $66.67/month — live support, calendar notes, reel scheduling, media editing, auto-publish carousel, and more

Best Tools for Social Media Management for Small Businesses: Comparison Table 

Here we bring you a quick overview of the best social media management tools that’ll make it 10x faster and easier for you to draw out important differences between the tools and zero in on the one tool that you’ll ultimately sign up with for your social media management needs.

What Are the Best Social Media Management Tools for Small Businesses?

Social media management tools enable an organization to stay updated with all social media marketing tasks. They help perform various tasks — creating content, publishing, analyzing, reporting, and more while streamlining your workflows.

Leveraging social media management tools effectively not only allows the right content to reach the right target at the right time, but you also carry out all your social media management tasks efficiently and effortlessly.

Small businesses must ensure they get the most out of their investments by selecting the right social media management tool. Here are our top picks.

Sprout Social

With a starting plan of $99 per month, some businesses might consider Sprout Social a pricey option. However, its rich features make it an attractive proposition for small and medium-sized businesses.

It can unlock sustained business growth by moving past the confines of being a small business. To start with, there are no limits on the number of posts you can engage in.

And on top of an excellent set of post-scheduling and analytics features, you can also take advantage of a multitude of organization options like task dashboard and management. The platform is also bundled with a taggable inbox, send-time optimization, and an image editor.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is best suited for small businesses where only a single user oversees the entire social media marketing and associated campaigns. The tool is quite a cost-effective option. Perhaps the best aspect of Hootsuite is its free plan that allows up to 30 posts to be queued at once.

If you need more features, the professional tier plan for one user costs just $25 per month. With this, you can schedule unlimited posts and use up to 10 social profiles. Added benefits include a compiled inbox, an extensive pipeline calendar, and demographic analysis for insights.

Zoho Social

Zoho Social is often considered the best value social media management tool for small businesses mainly because of its rich feature set at affordable pricing. While Zoho Social has a free plan that does not compromise on features, its entry-level premium plan is only $10 per month.

The free plans of Zoho Social have no set limits on posts and scheduling, and you can use up to 7 social profiles. The higher tiers of the platform are also priced generously at monthly charges of $10, $25, and $37.50.

These provide access to advanced features like analytics, customer engagement, and organizational features with higher-priced tiers featuring all the tools available.

Why Should My Small Business Use Social Media Management Tools?

With a smaller budget, there’s not usually much wiggle room in terms of experimentation and workarounds. Thus, as a small business, you want to ensure that all your marketing campaigns are on-point and effective.

To engage your social audience directly, effectively, and efficiently, small businesses should look to harness technology in the form of social media management tools. In fact, there are many benefits to look for: 

Quicker Customer Response

Customer loyalty is paramount and a stepping stone toward the eventual scaling of small businesses. One of the foremost ways to grasp customer attention is with a fast response.

A social media management tool can streamline online engagement processes, ensuring you can access all your mentions and comments under a single pane. With this, you can quickly locate and respond to your customer’s queries, suggestions, or general comments.

Actionable Insights

Knowing your audience is the best way to ensure your marketing campaigns remain effective. And social media marketing is no different. Social media marketing tools can unlock several customer details like followers, geographies, and other demographics.

Accounting for this can lead to more informed decision-making, which is more effective.

Brand Recognition

Building brand awareness can be a fast track to success for small businesses. With an effective social media marketing tool, your audience can discover you faster as you can communicate across multiple platforms and channels and hit peak times for maximum engagement.

Maintaining Reputation

Nothing can be more detrimental to a small business than negative publicity or word of mouth. And the situation gets compounded on social media, where comments and perspectives can spread like wildfire.

The social listening capabilities of these tools allow you to react and respond to any negative comments and resolve issues before they get out of hand.

Wide Presence

Features like advanced scheduling ensure that all your communication goes out when needed, thereby ensuring a consistent online presence. You can batch schedule posts at times that are convenient rather than scampering around at peak times.

How Can I Use Social Media Management Tools for Marketing as a Small Business?

If you’re a small business looking to promote yourself and increase sales, you cannot possibly overlook the potential of social media marketing. Social media is a valuable platform that helps you to promote your products and find the right audience, irrespective of the size of your business.

However, since the cost of social media marketing is low compared to other platforms, small businesses can easily dive into it without a second thought. 

A survey by Sprout Social found that marketing on social media increases the sale opportunity of your product or service by 57.5 %. Although it can be a bit tricky, to begin with, you’re bound to reap the rewards with the following steps:

Know Your Audience

Identifying your audience is the primary step when conceptualizing a product launch, especially in the era of social media. Analyzing social data with the help of a social media management tool can be extremely helpful in knowing your target audience — their tastes, preferences, and demographics.

Customer Relationship is Crucial 

The best businesses on social media platforms are the ones that work on building engaging and personal relationships with customers.

Answering questions on time, receiving customer feedback, acting on the customer feedback, etc., are certain ways to ensure that the customer feels secure and engages in a personal association. 

Social Content Calendar At Your Fingertips

With something so crucial as marketing your product or service, you can hardly miss any notifications regarding purchases, feedback, review, etc. Also, it’s best to plan your calendar ahead so that you keep posting quality content regularly without fail.

How to increase Instagram followers, you ask? Sharing engaging and regular content is extremely important to gain new followers and reach more customers. 

Finding the Best Hashtags and Posting Content at Favourable Times

Hashtags increase the chances of your content being viewed and liked. Increasing reach becomes easier when you use the right hashtags. There are dedicated social media management tools that help you to find trending hashtags.

Moreover, they also suggest the appropriate time to post your content depending on the volume of traffic flow. You do not want to post at a time when there is no audience for your content.

Creating Amazing Visuals for Your Content

Creativity is what will set your content apart from the rest. Get creative with your content by adding great visuals to help increase the reach of your account. You can edit your images and create videos using tools that help edit the image size depending on the social media platform. 

How to Use a Social Media Management Tool – Step by Step

Follow the below steps to use a social media management tool like eClincher to create and publish posts.

Step 1: Adding Social Media Accounts

• Click on “add & manage accounts”

• Click on the account(s) you would like to add. You need to log in to each social media account with your credentials.

Step 2: Create a New Post

• Choose the social media profile(s) you wish to post to. Use the text box to write your post – you can include images, emojis, and icons using the editor box.

Step 3: Publishing Your Post

• If you’re satisfied with your post and want to publish it immediately, you can click “post now” or schedule it for later.

• You can select the exact date and time for your post

• Click on the “schedule” button to schedule your post

Step 4: Setting Up Auto Post Queues

• Under the publishing tab, click on “auto post with queues”

• Click “create new queue” and select the social media channel(s)

• You can select the queue type in the next step and click “save”. All options are elaborated within the interface.

Is Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses Effective?

Social media marketing can be extremely effective when it comes to small businesses. This is because social media offers small businesses an interactive platform where they can share information about the product or service and promote themselves. 

Social media is a fantastic way to build online networks as there are millions of users among which you’re sure to find your target audience.

Also, social media is widely used, so you give yourself better chances of acquiring customers than in physical stores; not to forget that you’ll also be able to reach your audience in real-time with minimum cost. The numerous benefits of social media for small businesses are:

• Attracting customers and engaging with them on a platform that they visit daily 
• Building customer loyalty by answering their queries and getting customer feedback
• Low marketing costs compared to other platforms
• Advertising your products and services to reach millions of users
• Building customer networks
• Developing your brand 
• Improving the modus operandi of your business based on the customer feedback
• Exchanging valuable ideas with customers and changing the things they do not like
• Building a daily flow of customers to your website and increasing the traffic day by day
• Recruiting staff with the skills you’re looking for
• Improve the search engine ranking of your website
• Monitoring your competitors

Conclusion: What is the Best Tool for Social Media Management for Small Businesses 

If you’re finding it tough to lay your finger on ONE tool that’ll be the game-changer for you, we’re here to help. Sure, the 10 tools don’t have a sea of differences to separate them, but in our analysis, we’ve found eClincher to be the clear top pick in terms of both features and affordability. 

eClincher won’t just bulk post in advance but also serve as the perfect creator, thanks to its advanced yet simple drag-and-drop builder. It’ll keep your general reputation amongst the public in check by scrutinizing and alerting you about every mention you get.

Sign up today for only $59 per month — don’t worry, you’ll get a free trial before you’re charged anything so you’re fully satisfied with your choice — and enjoy a visual calendar, built-in analytics, media libraries, and more.

FAQs