15 Free Social Media Management Tools for Your Businesses
The following free social media management tools are enough for any WordPress business to have a solid social media presence. Regardless of the business, these tools provide everything you need to impress your followers.
A Facebook page and a Twitter account without a constant stream of updates do more harm than not having them at all. You don’t have any choice but to focus on social media, especially on Facebook and Twitter. Depending on your industry and target audience, consider also using YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, or TikTok. For instance, Mercedes Benz, BMW, and the Washington Post invest huge amounts of money in TikTok. It’s crystal clear that a multi-channel presence is a must these days.
The tools below will help you delight your followers on all social networks for free. Check each of the free social media management tools carefully and use the ones suitable for your needs.
IMPORTANT:
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Indeed, the following tools offer a free plan, but you’ll have to pay for premium features. I will mention what you’ll get from the free plan and what you’ll get from the premium plans.
Before using social media tools, you need a complete idea of their advantages. All major brands use a large array of tools to take care of their social media presence. If some of the most skilled marketing teams use marketing tools, then you should do the same. However, there are many other advantages to using social media tools.
Advantages of Social Media Management Tools, Free or Paid
Save Time
You have to constantly check your social media channels if you’re not using a unified platform to manage them. Imagine constantly monitoring a Facebook page, Pinterest page, and Twitter account and replying to YouTube comments on your channel. It takes hours of back and forth to effectively manage your social media presence.
Luckily, many platforms integrate all your social media channels into a unique dashboard.
Improve Engagement
People don’t have much time, and they won’t wait for ages for your reply. Social media tools instantly notify you of followers’ comments, reactions, and mentions. In this way, you can engage with people in no time, and they will appreciate your fast turnaround.
Provide Analytics and Feedback
Most social media tools provide basic analytics about social media performance. For instance, you can get data about your followers’ profiles and reactions, devices used, and engagement rate. You can then adapt your social media strategy based on this data to drive better results.
Social Media Management Tools
Each WordPress business’s needs and requirements are unique. Some tools cover all the clients’ needs, while others focus on specific tasks, such as scheduling, monitoring, or posting. To make the list more digestible, we’ve divided the suggested social media management tools. There are five categories: all-in-one, scheduling, monitoring, analytics, and graphic.
All-in-One Social Media Management Tools
Buffer
Buffer launched in 2010, and it was one of the first social media management tools. You can’t call yourself a social marketer if you haven’t heard of Buffer. In addition to offering top-notch experience and a high level of transparency, Buffer is an irreplaceable helper for your marketing endeavors. Start with a trial and downgrade to the free plan (one user, three social channels, and ten scheduled posts) if you are on a tight budget.
Buffer activity falls into two categories: Publish and Analyze.
The Publish section is for managing social media profiles and schedule content. Buffer allows you to schedule posts in advance without any restrictions (if you have a premium plan), so you can schedule posts for a week in advance. The Analyze section is for checking the performance of your content.
Other important Buffer benefits are the Google Chrome extension (which allows you to schedule posts while browsing the web) and the mobile apps (available for iOS and Android).
Hootsuite
Like Buffer, Hootsuite is one of the most famous tools for managing your social media presence. It bundles plenty of useful features. You probably won’t need any other tool if you have a premium Hootsuite subscription.
Hootsuite allows you to compose, publish, and schedule posts on multiple social networks. You’ll have access to all social streams from the Hootsuite dashboard, so engaging with users is simple and efficient. In addition to posting and monitoring engagement, you can run marketing campaigns and monitor brand mentions. Finally, it provides a 360-degree view of your social media activity by giving you insights into your posts’ performances.
Hootsuite works best for medium to large companies, but check the tool out yourself during the 14-day trial. The free plan allows one user, three social profiles, and 30 scheduled updates.
Zoho Social
Zoho Social impresses with its simple onboarding process and intuitive interface. Even less-trained users will have no issues using Zoho Social.
Start using Zoho Social by connecting your social channels. Next, use the Calendar to publish posts and schedule content. Select the social account, create the post, and choose to publish it instantly or schedule it for a specific date or when the audience is more likely to engage.
Zoho Social isn’t only for scheduling posts. It allows users to reply to messages and mentions directly from the dashboard. The Reports section shows the performance of your posts. You can set the date range, schedule reports, create custom ones, and email them to your coworkers.
As a social media marketer, you probably read many cool pieces of content. Install the zShare Chrome browser extension, and you can post or schedule the content you like the most.
Social Media Scheduling Tools
FS Poster
FS Poster is a social media auto-posting plugin that lets you schedule and auto-post your content from WordPress to social networks. FS Poster supports 20 social networks, including TikTok, Discord, YouTube Community, and more.
FS Poster is a feature-rich plugin that lets you manage all social media marketing processes from one plugin. If you want to keep your social media presence and improve your engagement but don’t have enough time to share them manually, FS Poster is that plugin for you.
FS Poster has free and paid versions. The free version is called FS Poster Lite, which is available to use with limited features. The Premium version of FS Poster is $45 for a lifetime.
ContentCal
ContentCal gets the highest marks for ease of use, collaborative work, and integrations with third-party apps. Like the marketing tools above, the interface is pretty intuitive. You’ll only need a couple of minutes to learn the basic features. The Content Hub is a useful ContentCal feature. You and your team can collect pieces of content, choose the best ones to distribute on social media, and schedule the posts.
Another cool feature of this free social media management tool is the approval flow, which eliminates all mistakes and typos. You can set roles, permissions, and users who can give the final OK for each social media post. ContentCal allows users to comment, so everyone can contribute.
The built-in analytics offer a complete overview of the best- and worst-performing content for each social profile. Use this data to fine-tune your marketing strategy.
Friends+Me
Would you believe that a marketing tool focused on Google+, a social network that has been dead for a few years, earned a place on this list? The truth is that Friends+Me is perfect for small marketing teams or social media marketers on a budget. It lacks fancy features, but it perfectly does what scheduling tools should do. Here are the reasons why you should give this free social media management tool a chance.
First, Friends+Me works for not only Google+ but also Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Unfortunately, only paying customers can use Friends+Me for Pinterest.
Second, it’s one of the simplest but most effective scheduling tools. Create a queue for each social media account and schedule posts to engage your audience. Use the Draft section to create, edit, and store future posts. Add team members and assign them roles as contributors (create, edit, delete drafts), queue managers (manage assigned queues), or team managers.
Third, Friends+Me impresses with its browser extensions. Most marketing tools have Chrome extensions, but this one has extensions for Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, and of course, Chrome.
Later
Use Later if your target audience is on Instagram. All you have to do is upload relevant images to the Media Library, drag them onto the Calendar, and schedule them for posting. Managing comments is straightforward, too. Use the Conversation tab to engage with followers and reply to their comments.
Linkin.bio is a useful feature for social marketers. It integrates the Instagram feed with your site and displays your Instagram posts as clickable images. The built-in analytics reveal the performance of each post and story for Instagram business accounts.
Besides your Instagram profile, you can add your Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter accounts. Later allows you to schedule posts for your entire social set (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest).
Semrush
Semrush is one of the most famous SEO tools. Still, it also incorporates useful features to manage your social media strategy.
Create a free account, go to the Semrush dashboard, and click on Social Media > Social Media Dashboard. Connect your social accounts, go to Social Media Poster, and start scheduling posts. The calendar is similar to other scheduling tools—simple and intuitive.
A stand-out Semrush feature is the Social Media Tracker. It compares your social media performance to your competitors’ performances. You can discover how your competitors are doing in terms of audience, activity, as well as engagement.
Unfortunately, Semrush’s free plan allows only ten requests per day, so you have to use them wisely.
Social Monitoring Tools
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is 100% free, and there is no premium plan. It’s the perfect tool if you want to focus your marketing strategy on Twitter. So, sign up with a Twitter account, add all your other Twitter accounts, and start scheduling tweets for each account.
You are free to add and remove columns on your dashboard. Direct Messages, Notifications, Mentions, as well as Followers are just a few of the columns you can use. The columns are a convenient method for people managing more than one Twitter account.
TweetDeck allows you to schedule posts, and it’s also a basic social monitoring tool. Just insert a Notification column into your dashboard to discover who has interacted with you. Besides these actions, you can also reply to Tweets directly from the TweetDeck dashboard.
Follower Wonk
Follower Wonk is a unique free social media marketing tool. Basically, it tells you everything you want to know about your Twitter account for free. It’s one of the most complete analytics tools for Twitter. At the same time, it’s a powerful tool for creating an engaging community.
Suppose that you want to follow and get followed by WordPress users. Head to the Follower Wonk dashboard and search for profiles that use the word “WordPress” in their bio. Follow the most relevant ones for your needs based on their authority and activity. Next, go to the Analyze section. Here, you can get a detailed bird’s eye view of your followers and the users you follow.
Additionally, Follower Wonk sorts and tracks followers and compares users so you can see how you stack up against your competitors.
Social Mention
Social Mention is a real hidden gem if you can get past its outdated interface. It works like a search engine for user-generated content. Generally, it aggregates all social media mentions in a single stream. Use it to find out who has mentioned your brand on social media.
Analytics Tools
Social Media Platforms’ Built-in Analytics
Are you spending tons of money on complex analytics tools to evaluate your posts’ performance? You’d better give each platform’s built-in analytics tool a chance! These tools mostly provide basic data, but they are golden in the hands of a skilled social marketer.
Twitter Analytics is one of the most attractive built-in analytics tools. It gives you a strategic perspective of your Twitter activity in less than five minutes. It also gives you granular data about each tweet. Head to Tweets (Twitter > Twitter Analytics >Tweets) and analyze how each tweet performs.
The built-in analytics tools for other social platforms work similarly. Don’t skip consulting them because you might miss precious data for your marketing strategy.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics doesn’t need any intro. This free social media management tool provides solid data about site stats, including your social media channels’ performances. Head to Analytics dashboard > Acquisition > Overview and find out how social media has contributed to your site’s traffic. It shows the percentage of traffic generated by social media, referrals, organic, as well as direct traffic. Compare your budget and resources allocated to social media against the results.
Go to Acquisition > Overview > All Traffic and select Social to see how well each social media platform has generated site visitors. Compare your budget and resources allocated to each social media account against its contribution to the site’s traffic.
Social Blade
You may be tempted to consider Social Blade as a tool for influencer marketing. In some instances, however, it works well in a social marketer’s arsenal. Use it to get an idea of your social accounts from a global perspective. Just type in your account, and you’ll get a detailed report of its performance. The Future Projections tab predicts the number of followers. It’s only a prediction, but it gives you a hint about the success of your marketing strategy. Detailed Statistics, however, show how much your audience increases each day.
Social Blade doesn’t end with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. This tool also supports Twitch, TikTok, Mixer, DailyMotion, Trovo, and StoryFire.
Don’t worry if you haven’t heard about Trovo or StoryFire—I didn’t know about them until I started writing this article! Still, Social Blade can be a genuine helper if you want to be a pioneer and join one of these new social platforms.
Graphics Tools
Canva
Canva is everything you need to visually delight social media followers. That is to say, even the free account is enough to create some stunning images for your social channels.
The premium account includes
- 420,000 templates
- Millions of premium stock photos
- 100 GB cloud storage
- The option to upload your own fonts and logo.
Canva’s strong point is the large array of options for creating graphics for every type of social media channel. With Canva, you can create
- Instagram posts and stories
- Facebook posts and covers
- TikTok backgrounds
- Twitter posts
- YouTube thumbnails
Editing is intuitive, and you can create cool designs even if you are not a designer.
Piktochart
Piktochart is a serious Canva contender. Give it a try if you aren’t happy with Canva. Its main aim is to allow you to create infographics and other types of data visualizations. Even so, marketers can use it confidently to create social media visuals. It packages numerous social media templates for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, as well as LinkedIn. The intuitive interface and rich design toolkit are two other capital advantages of this tool.
It doesn’t make sense to purchase a premium subscription for social media visuals only. Still, a premium subscription is a real bargain if you need to make infographics, flyers, or images for blog posts.
Wrapping Up
This list of free social media management tools is a good start to boost your business’ online presence. Indeed, there are many other competitive options, but you will have to pay for them. However, we did extensive research to find the best social media tools that are budget-friendly. The list isn’t exclusive, so leave a comment with your favorite tool if we missed showcasing it here.
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