Social media automation is a great option for busy marketers who want to optimize their time and efforts while getting the best results. Automation tools can help boost a company's social media accounts and get more leads.
To help you find the best social media automation tool, we listed and reviewed the features and prices of the 11 best social media automation tools. These tools can help companies with different social media marketing needs. They can cover everything from building an effective social media marketing strategy to answering messages, so each company can find the best option for their case.
What is social media automation?
Social media automation is the process of automating social interactions by using automation tools or software. The tools can automate post scheduling, resharing articles, and other tasks. Companies automate social media tasks to optimize social interactions, and save time and resources while maintaining their brand’s presence on social media.
Automating social media has many advantages:
- Saves time — you don’t have to spend time doing time-consuming tasks such as writing comments, looking for relevant profiles, and filtering content to repost.
- Gives more online visibility for your brand since your account can become more active and get posts published consistently.
- Reduces manual work — you don’t have to reshare posts and perform other tasks manually, the tools automate these jobs.
- Ensures consistent posting, which means no more large gaps of silence on your social media.
How do I automate my social media?
Social media automation can cover various tasks. These include automated comments, posts, likes, etc. Sometimes they can also send messages on various social media channels. Most tools can schedule posts, and find relevant content and profiles to follow.
Automation tools can like and comment on posts or profiles that meet a set of your defined criteria. For example, to automate your social media, you would have to provide a list of locations that you want to target, and a set of keywords that you’re interested in. Based on this information, the automation software can help engage with social media accounts that meet your criteria.
Another helpful automation feature is post scheduling. You can set a time when you’d like your scheduled content to go live. Social media management tools can ensure your posts are published even without your presence. This is especially helpful if you’re preparing content for different time zones or managing multiple social media accounts.
Choosing the best social automation tool for your business
The market is loaded with various social media automation tools. Some tools cover a wide range of features, while others focus on particular automations. Most of the tools offer monthly subscription plans depending on how many social accounts you wish to manage and provide a discount for annual subscriptions.
Depending on the nature of your business, you may be interested in different tools. However, the most important thing to pay attention to is how reliable these tools are. Here are the best options:
1. SocialBee
SocialBee works with the most popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterested, Linkedin, and others. The tool’s main features include social media scheduling, editing in bulk, and tracking post performance. It also has an integrated Canva editor that helps to design attractive-looking posts.
The tool comes with a 14-day free trial. Monthly subscription prices vary depending on how many social media accounts you’d like to automate and how many users will be managing the workspace. The cheapest plan is $19/month and covers five social media accounts.
2. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a social media management software that offers various features. One of them is a unified social inbox. This feature allows managing the incoming messages, comments, and reviews in one place, even if they come from social media accounts on different platforms. Other features include social media monitoring, automated publishing, and detailed reporting to track your performance.
The software can be used by agencies that manage multiple social media accounts for their clients. It comes with special features for agencies, such as a shared content calendar, client reports, and an option to assign roles to different users.
You can test the tool for free during a 15-day trial. Monthly subscriptions start from $99/month for two users and ten social media profiles. Annual subscriptions come with a 20% discount.
3. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo helps generate ideas for new content to post on your social media accounts. The tool allows following trends and discovering high-performing content. Following trends and planning your content around them helps attract more visibility and get more engagement from your social media connections.
Content research is another helpful feature. The tool scans loads of articles and social media posts to provide you with meaningful insights.
BuzzSumo is a great tool to gather data about the best performing content and relevant trends. This information can be used to build effective content and social media strategies. The tool offers a free trial for 30 days. During the trial, you can perform ten searches and use some of the features, including a content idea generator, domain reports, and content analysis reports.
4. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a social media automation tool for small businesses, professionals, marketing agencies, and enterprises. The tool covers a wide range of automations, as it can schedule posts, provides a social media calendar, RSS feeds automation, and other benefits.
The tool also has a social inbox feature that helps gather messages and comments from various platforms in one place. Facebook ads management is another helpful feature that can help generate more leads and boost engagement. And finally, SocialPilot’s dashboard provides analytics of your performance on social media.
SocialPilot offers a 14-day free trial. Monthly plans start from $50 a month for a small team with 25 accounts and $150 for 75 social media accounts. Yearly subscriptions come with a 15% discount.
5. Falcon.io
Falcon.io provides a helpful set of tools for social media marketers. A collaborative content calendar helps manage different social media channels, workflows, and campaigns. Social inbox allows for creating personalized profile cards to stay on top of all the requests that come in through social channels. Social listening provides helpful data that can be sent to a company's CRM for a wholesome view.
This social media management platform covers all the most important tasks and allows dealing with them in one place for convenient management. The tool comes with a 14-day trial. Paid plans start from $129 a month.
6. Pocket
Pocket is a browser extension that helps organize curated content. The tool automatically collects content from the web and saves it in your browser for later use. The content can be categorized into collections and later integrated into your social media profiles.
Pocket can automatically suggest relevant content based on your interests. The tool is helpful for figuring out current trends and gathering inspiration for social media posts. It can also help marketers find where their target audience spends most of their time.
Pocket has two subscription plans: a limited free version and a premium option with more features.
7. Zapier
Zapier automates various workflows. The tool can link various web apps and move data between the apps while creating workflows. Zapier can automatically finish routine tasks this way, saving time for its users.
The automation tool works with over 3,000 web apps, including Facebook, Slack, and various Google applications.
Zapier has a Free-forever option that automates basic tasks. Premium plans start from $20 a month and cover more complex workflows.
8. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular tool for social media automation. The tool allows conveniently managing multiple social media profiles on one platform. Hootsuite supports over 20 social media networks and can be integrated with different apps.
This tool covers the main social media management tasks, including automated publishing, engagement, monitoring, and advertising. You can also see an in-depth analysis of your performance, so you can easily measure your social media strategy results.
Hootsuite offers a 30-day free trial. Subscription plans start from $49/month for ten accounts and one user.
9. Buffer
Buffer is one of the best social media automation tools for small businesses. It offers all the usual features, such as social media scheduling, automated publishing, and performance analytics. The tool is particularly useful for social media marketing as it helps plan and create various posts, Instagram stories, and marketing campaigns. It also enables marketers to respond to follower messages and comments quickly.
Buffer is one of the easiest to use social media automation tools, and it covers all the main features required for effective social media management. The software has a free version that covers basic publishing tools. Paid plans start from $6/month.
10. Post Planner
Post Planner works on the most popular social media platforms. The tool can extract popular content from different social media channels, RSS feeds, or even Giphy searches. This feature helps gather ideas for creating well-performing content or allows you to promptly reshare popular social media posts to get more engagement from your followers.
Post Planner helps compose various content in different formats, offers a calendar for social media scheduling, and enables you to stay on top of your performance by providing helpful statistics.
When it comes to pricing, the cheapest Post Planner plan is $9/month and covers three social media profiles. Annual plans are 33% cheaper than the monthly ones.
11. Crowd Fire
Crowd Fire offers all the most popular social media automation features. The tool can schedule content and curate articles and images. It also covers customized RSS feeds and tracks mentions. It allows managing multiple social profiles in one place and provides analytics to track your performance.
The tool works on five social media networks (four with a free version). The free version of Crowd Fire allows linking tree social media accounts and offers a Chrome extension for sharing articles. Paid plans start from $9.99.
Best proxies for social media automation software
Social media automation software is inseparable from proxies. They’re the reason these tools are capable of gathering large amounts of fresh data from different sources. And only with the help of proxies marketers can manage multiple social accounts at once.
Residential proxies are the best type of proxies for social media automation tools. These proxies come from the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and are connected to a residential address. They’re harder to be identified as proxies and, therefore, less likely to get blocked.
Final word
Social media automation tools are great help for businesses and social media marketing experts. They allow saving time by automating various tasks, boosting engagement and visibility of business social network accounts.
Get residential or mobile proxies for just $2.
Different social media automation tools offer various features, such as automated post scheduling, calendars, inboxes, shares, and others. Depending on your business needs, you can choose tools that offer free versions for a small number of profiles. To manage more accounts, you can get monthly or annual subscriptions.
Most automation tools wouldn’t be able to work without proxies. The best choice for social media automation is residential proxies because they’re connected to residential home addresses and are less likely to be identified as proxies.
