According to the latest report from creative agency, We Are Social, 56.2 million of us in the UK are active on social media—that’s 83% of the population! With such a massive audience to tap into, it’s no wonder brands are investing in social media marketing. So, it goes without saying that businesses can reap the benefits of reaching out and connecting with target audiences on these platforms.

The problem is that social media marketing can be quite the time sink. This is why big brands today employ social media managers and full time teams to create and push their content on the likes of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X and the rest.

Luckily, there are tools out there that simplify the process of posting content on social. Most of them help you create, schedule and publish content across multiple platforms at the same time and offer varying degrees of analytic and reporting functionality.

Here we look at seven of the most popular and highly rated solutions to help you decide which is best for you. None are entirely free, but many are “freemium” or with decent free features. Just a heads-up—this isn’t a sponsored list, and any prices mentioned are accurate at the time of writing!

Buffer

This application or ‘tool kit’ makes is simpler to schedule social media content across multiple platforms. From within Buffer, you can compose posts, customise them to suit different outlets, schedule their release, analyse hit rates, and optimise posts using the insight that Buffer provides.

In addition, Buffer will provide post suggestions to inspire users and even auto generate content that you can simply approve and set live.

The free starter package lets you plan and publish content across three channels. The first paid for plan, meanwhile, gives you access to Buffer’s analytics functionality.

Reviews of the platform suggest that users have been able to increase followers by up to 400% and up engagement by as much as 999%.

USP: Buffer offers a free plan, but they also have premium options. Paid plans start from £5 per month for essential features.

Hootsuite

Using the Hootsuite dashboard, you can create posts with the help of templates, schedule content across multiple platforms, respond to your followers’ comments across platforms, and track the performance of your posts.

Hootsuite also provides what it calls ‘social listening’ tools. This means that, from within the application, you can search for mentions of your brand and competitor brands to see what audiences are saying about you and what sort of sentiment they’re using when it comes to your business.

Hootsuite lets you get started with a 30-day free trial, but after that, plan rates start at £89 a month for one user and 10 social accounts.

USP: Social listening

Loomly

Loomly claims to be able to save you 30 hours a week on social media management.

The application helps you create, schedule, and analyse social media content across multiple platforms.

This service also helps you brainstorm content by making you aware of awareness days, holidays and social media best practices, and by suggesting custom post ideas that link to your audience’s interests and trending topics from X. When you’re writing copy for posts, Loomly will provide hashtag inspiration, too.

Other handy features include an inbuilt link shortener and in-dashboard access to hundreds of royalty free images and gifs from Unsplash and Gify.

You can get started with a free trial, and the basic plan starts at £26 per month for two users working across 10 social media accounts.

USP: Content inspiration and hashtag manager

Sprout Social

According to Sprout Social 52% of customers see value within one day of using the application.

This social media management tool lets you create and schedule content across several platforms and comes with both analytics and listening tools to help you understand how your content is performing and the sort of content your target audience wants to see.

The content creator within Sprout Social also features AI assist, which allows you to do things like change the tone of your post or generate an additional three post options from the draft you input.

Pricing starts at £152 per user per month for use across five social profiles and you can get started with a 30-day free trial.

USP: AI assist tools

SocialBee

AI powered content generation, scheduling, analytics, and performance reporting are all part of SocialBee’s offering. The application also lets you mange and respond to audience enquiries and comments across multiple platforms from a unified social inbox.

Audience analysis functionality is included in the tool as well, as SocialBee can provide demographic details and follower segmentation data. Plus, this particular social media management platform excels at helping you recycle social material by helping you create multiple variations of evergreen content.

You can get started on SocialBee with a 14-day free trail, after which plans begin at £19 a month for one user managing five social profiles.

USP: AI content generation

Agorapulse

You can create and schedule content across everything from TikTok and Instagram to Facebook, X and LinkedIn using Agorapulse and access tools like Canva, Google Drive and Giphy from within the dashboard.

Comment moderation, analytics and reporting functionality are also included with the platform as well as tools that let you track mentions of your brand across social media and capture conversations about your business from news, websites and blogs.

In addition, Agorapulse lets you see which of your posts are leading to leads and sales.

Plans begin at $38 per user per month across 10 social profiles, following a 30-day free trial.

USP: Sales tracking data

Brandwatch

Brandwatch offers both consumer intelligence tools that let you monitor your brands, competitors and industry using data from more than a million online resources and social media management functionality that helps you create, schedule and analyse social posts across all the main platforms including YouTube.

Brandwatch’s social media analytics also let you benchmark your performance against your competitors. These insights let you go a little deeper than many other applications out there, providing consumer data that goes back 12 months where some other solutions only offer a month’s worth of insight.

Some Brandwatch plans help you discover and develop relationships with influencers in your industry, to boot.

Fixed priced plans are not available on the Brandwatch website. You’ll need to contact the company for a customisable quote.

USP: Extras including influencer marketing solutions

Wrap up

And there you have it—your toolkit to navigate social media. With these tools at your fingertips, you can boost engagement and keep your content organised. For small to medium business owners and side hustlers, these resources can simplify social media management, and help you connect with your audience more directly. Choose the one that fits your needs and grow your reach online.