Q: What are the best free apps for social media management? I am a bit familiar with Hootsuite, Zoho social, Klout and Buffer but want to see what is the best and how they compare.
A: You’ve hit on a few of the top social media management tools out there, but there are a few others I’d recommend taking a look at as well, including SocialOomph, Sprout Social, TweetDeck, CrowdBooster, MeetEdgar and IFTTT/Zapier.
At Louder, we use Buffer, specifically the Buffer for Business plan, that lets us bulk upload social updates via Excel file. I can’t tell you if that’s the right option for you, since I don’t know what kind of campaigns you’re running or what your marketing objectives are.
There are a lot of questions I’d suggest you answer before investing in a tool, including the following:
What networks will I be posting to?
HootSuite is a popular, social media management tool, but it only posts to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn but not Pinterest. If you need Pinterest management, you’ll need to choose a suite that includes it (like Buffer) or a standalone Pinterest tool (Tailwind).
What features are important to me?
This is where the tools I mentioned above differentiate themselves. MeetEdgar, for example, focuses specifically on recycling old content from your social channels to increase their engagement and decrease the amount of time you have to spend curating new content.
IFTTT and Zapier, on the other hand, are strictly automation tools. They’ll auto-load your new blog posts…