For small businesses, an active social media presence is a crucial part of developing your brand and growing your audience. But it can be hard to keep up with the pace that different social media platforms demand, especially when you’re balancing running a business.
These social media management tools will support your marketing efforts and help you maximize time spent growing your social media engagement.
The 14 best social media management tools for 2022
As you build out the suite of marketing tools that best help you run your overall marketing strategy and create marketing campaigns, the following social media management software can support different aspects of your social strategy, from scheduling to content creation.
- Best tools for creation: Product Video Maker, Canva
- Best tools for engagement: Shopify Inbox, ShareThis
- Best tool for measurement and analytics: Sprout Social, HubSpot
- Best tools for social commerce: Sauce Social Commerce by SNPT, Instagram Feed, Story & TikTok by Socialhead
- Best tools for advertising: Facebook channel by Shopify, Snapchat ads, AdRoll
- Best tool for pixel tracking: Multi Facebook Pixels by Omega
- Best all around tools: Buffer, Hootsuite
Best tools for creating social media posts
1. Product Video Maker
As video content rises in importance (54% of people want to see video content from brands, according to Hubspot), tools that enable quick video content creation can be helpful for you and your business.
Product Video Maker allows you to make product videos with text to promote sales and new product launches, or to feature customer testimonials and reviews. Its drag-and-drop video creation tool makes it quick and easy to use.
Pricing: Product Video Maker offers two pricing tiers: free and business.
- Product Video Maker (free): With the free plan, get two branded-free videos per month, plus more than 200 motion graphic templates and live chat and email support.
- Product Video Maker Business: $390 per year gets you 10 branded-free videos per month, the ability to use your own brand fonts and colors, and instant captions.
2. Canva
No design skills? No problem! Canva is a simple and straightforward tool that makes it easy for small businesses to create polished social-media-ready graphics. Canva is easy to learn and use, regardless of your skill level.
Canva offers up a set of templates that come pre-sized for every social media platform and includes a wide range of premade layouts and backgrounds. It also features a simple drag-and-drop interface that lets you quickly build, edit, and tweak your social media content until it’s exactly as you envisioned.
Pricing: Canva offers three pricing tiers: free, Pro, and Enterprise.
- Canva (free): Canva’s free plan is great for teams of one to five people, and includes more than 250,000 free templates and over 100 design types, some of which are perfect for social media posts.
- Canva Pro: Canva Pro costs $129.99 per year, and comes with additional design templates and elements, as well as exclusive editing tools.
- Canva Enterprise: With a minimum user count of 25 people, Canva’s Enterprise tool costs $30 per user per month.
Elevate your social media posts with Canva Connect, an app that effortlessly links your Shopify store to Canva.
Instantly access and drag your product images and videos into your designs, saving you time and simplifying your design efforts.
Best tools for engaging with people on social media
3. Shopify Inbox
Shopify Inbox is a customer communication tool that lets you live chat with current or prospective customers across social media channels, directly from your Shopify admin. This can help you close a sale, answer any outstanding questions, or help with customer support queries that pop up while someone is in the midst of making a purchasing decision.
“If someone’s popping in to ask a question, they’re really serious about potentially buying something. [It’s nice] to just know that they’re actually speaking with a real human on the other end of the website, get their questions answered, let them know about a restock, etc. It’s been a great tool. I like Shopify Inbox.” —Shelly Horst, founder, Room Shop
Pricing: Shopify Inbox is free for anyone with a Shopify store.
4. ShareThis Share Buttons
If you have an online store, your product pages pose a great opportunity for potential customers to share the items they think friends, family members, or their followers would love. This gets your shop more exposure on the web and gives people a quick and easy way to shout about your products.
ShareThis plugs right into your Shopify store; just install it from the Shopify App Store.
Pricing: Free for folks who have a Shopify store
📲 Let’s get social: Go Beyond Likes and Follows: How to Create a Social Media Strategy That Sells
Best tools for social media measurement and analytics
5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a robust social media management tool that lets you schedule posts ahead of time and review analytics reports on how each post and social profile performs. Its analytics tools (like its post performance report and easily downloadable report PDFs) make it a great social media marketing platform for those who want to track content performance and present analytics to other business partners.
It’s an all-in-one platform that can help you manage everything from running your social media content calendar to messaging with potential customers to scheduling posts ahead of time—so you don’t have to worry about creating and publishing content during each busy day.
Pricing: Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial. After that, it has three different pricing tiers:
- Sprout Standard: $89 per user per month, with up to five social media profiles, reporting, scheduling and publishing, and a social inbox.
- Sprout Professional: $149 per user per month, with up to 10 profiles, more robust analysis and reports, and custom workflows.
- Sprout Advanced: $249 per user per month, including additional features like chatbots and automation tools and automated link tracking.
6. HubSpot
HubSpot is another robust social media management platform that provides analytics that help you understand which tactics are performing best with your target audience. If you’re on Shopify, it also integrates with your ecommerce store.
Pricing: HubSpot offers four different pricing tiers for its marketing software:
- HubSpot (free): HubSpot’s free plan gets you access to a selection of tools.
- HubSpot Starter: $45 per month.
- HubSpot Professional: $800 per month.
- HubSpot Enterprise: $3,200 per month.
Best tools for selling and social commerce
7. Sauce Social Commerce by SNPT
If you have an online store, chances are your prospective customers want a couple of things: to see how your products function out in the wild and that other people have bought and loved them.
Sauce Social Commerce lets you add user-generated content from your social channels directly into your online store to provide that type of social proof that can remove hesitation and help people convert.
Pricing: Sauce Social Commerce is free to install, with the option to upgrade to paid features within the app.
💰Learn more: What is Social Commerce? Tips, Tools, and Trends for 2022
8. Instagram Feed, Story & TikTok by Socialhead
Embed your social feeds from Instagram and TikTok into your online store to increase social proof with this tool by Socialhead.
The tool also lets you make your Instagram feed shoppable, creating a user-friendly experience for your social media followers. If they see an item they like, they can simply tap on it to get more information without leaving the Instagram app. The tool also allows you to create “hot badges,” which show your most beloved products.
Pricing: Instagram Feed, Story & TikTok by Socialhead offers two pricing tiers: free and Standard.
- Socialhead (free): The free plan includes analytics, one feed, and daily auto refreshes.
- Socialhead Standard: At $9.90 per month, the Standard version includes up to two feeds and lets you use the tool on TikTok as well.
📌You might also like: How to Craft an Authentic Social Media Presence That Benefits Your Brand
Best social media management tools for advertising
9. Facebook channel by Shopify
Shopify’s Facebook tool lets you connect your Facebook ads to your Shopify store so you can easily share your products with potential customers on both Facebook and Instagram. This makes it easy to manage the sales you make from Facebook and Instagram ads directly within your Shopify store.
Get approved for Instagram shopping and tag your products for sale directly in the Instagram app. Create a custom storefront for your shop on Facebook and Instagram to reflect what your brand is all about.
Pricing: The app is free to install; any money you spend on Facebook ads is billed to your ad account.
10. Snapchat Ads
Use the Snapchat Ads tool to reach Snapchat users and grow your business via paid ads on Snapchat.
Create brand awareness and dynamic shopping ads to promote your products to new customers.
Pricing: The app is free to install. Any additional charges will pop up within the app.
👻Cha-ching: How to Make Money on Snapchat
11. AdRoll
Certified by Shopify, AdRoll helps you create ad campaigns, retarget visitors, recover abandoned carts, and manage ads across your social media accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest in one centralized platform.
AdRoll offers features like a campaign performance dashboard (across multiple channels), audience targeting, a list builder, and centralized contacts.
Pricing: AdRoll has two different pricing tiers: free to install and its Marketing and Ads+ tier at $40 per month.
- AdRoll (free): The app is free to install with your advertising cost based on the budget you set. The free plan features include things like access to retargeting ads, contextual targeting, and campaign reporting.
- AdRoll Marketing and Ads+: At $40 a month, this tier includes additional features like connected social ads, email marketing, cross channel reports, and monthly ad credits.
Best social media pixel tool
12. Multi Facebook Pixels by Omega
Multi Facebook Pixels lets you install pixels that send data to Facebook. The tool also provides an analytics dashboard where you can track the performance of your pixels.
Pricing: With a seven-day free trial option, Multi Facebook Pixels offers only one pricing tier, with a couple of add-ons. Starting at $8.99 per month, you’ll pay extra for things like Feed URL and Catalogs.
Best all around social media tools
13. Buffer
Buffer is both an affordable and user-friendly social media scheduling tool that’s perfect for small businesses. It comes with bonus features for paid users, like analytics and exportable reports.
With Buffer you can schedule content on your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn profiles in advance.
Buffer also comes with a handy browser extension that lets you easily share content in a single click. If you only have a couple of social media accounts but a few team members who need to be involved, Buffer offers team and agency plans that are perfect for team collaboration.
Pricing: Buffer offers four pricing tiers, including a completely free plan, making it one of the most robust yet affordable social media management tools out there.
- Buffer (free): Buffer’s free version includes three channels with basic publishing tools and a landing page builder.
- Buffer Essentials: At $5 per month per social channel, the Buffer Essentials plan also includes analytics and engagement tools. Try it free for 14 days.
- Buffer Team: $10 per month per social channel gets you exportable reports, unlimited team members, and draft collaboration. Try it free for 14 days.
- Buffer Agency: At $100 per month for 10 social channels, the agency plan allows custom access and permissions.
14. Hootsuite
As an entrepreneur, you’re busy enough as it is. The odds are that you don’t have time to spend every minute of your day posting to social media and keeping an eye on your social media profiles.
However, since regularly sharing content to your social media profiles is crucial for staying connected with your audience and keeping your brand top of mind, you need to be able to keep up. Hootsuite is an all-around-solid social media marketing tool that will help you stay on top of your social media accounts on the go.
Hootsuite has five key features: publish, engage, monitor, advertise, and analyze. It can help you simply publish posts or run your entire social media calendar.
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Social media management tools FAQ
What is a social media management tool?
A social media management tool is a platform that helps creators, brands, or small businesses plan, track, publish, and analyze their social media content.
What are the different types of social media management tools?
There are many different types of social media tools to choose from. The main types of tools help with content creation, managing a social media calendar, reporting and analytics, selling on social media, boosting engagement, and running paid ads.
What are the 14 best social media management tools for 2022?
- Best tools for creation: Product Video Maker, Canva
- Best tools for engagement: Shopify Inbox, ShareThis
- Best tool for measurement and analytics: Sprout Social, HubSpot
- Best tools for social commerce: Sauce Social Commerce by SNPT, Instagram Feed, Story & TikTok by Socialhead
- Best tools for advertising: Facebook channel by Shopify, Snapchat Ads, AdRoll
- Best tool for pixel tracking: Multi Facebook Pixels by Omega
- Best all around tools: Buffer, Hootsuite
