9 Social Media Automation Tools for Agencies

Social media automation tools go beyond simple social media calendars, although those are super helpful too. Automation tools help marketing agencies keep about their wits when managing accounts for multiple clients.

Whether it’s streamlining content management, gathering analytical insights, or keeping track of all client social interactions, automation tools are your solution.

Let me introduce you to the best social media automation tools — signed, sealed, and delivered.

What are social media automation tools?

Social media automation tools are software designed to streamline social media management and organize activities across multiple channels. They automate repetitive tasks such as scheduling posts, monitoring interactions, and analyzing performance metrics.

These tools help social media marketers maintain a consistent social media presence regardless of the number of social channels they manage. Less manual oversight means more time for proper content creation and strategizing.

9 social media automation tools for agencies

Working with multiple clients is a daily challenge for marketing agencies. Each client has several social channels that need social media posts to be ideated, drafted, planned, scheduled, and analyzed.

Sounds dire? You bet. But these tools for social media automation are here to save social media marketers like yourself from going insane:

1. Planable – best social media automation tool for approval, collaboration, and scheduling

Planable is the ultimate automation tool for social media specialists and marketing agencies. It elevates the content creation process, making social media management significantly less hectic by optimizing processes and workflows.

Collaboration is the star of the show in Planable. With all the features to improve your everyday work, such as customizable approval workflows and automated scheduling, Planable enables agencies and clients to collaborate seamlessly throughout the content management pipeline.

With Planable, you can set up a dedicated workspace for each client, linking the relevant channels. You can also differentiate between clients and team members with various roles and permissions to tidy up your content processes.

Key features

• Customized approval workflows

Approvals are the biggest pain in the brain for agencies. Instead of going back and forth with emails, automate the process with Planable’s approval workflows. Choose from four approval modes: none, optional, mandatory, multi-level.

• Feedback exchange

Create the best copy possible using feedback tools like comments, annotations, and internal notes to pinpoint weak spots.

• Automated publishing

Leverage Planable’s visual social media content calendar to plan and schedule posts in just a few clicks. It supports seamless publishing to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, X (Twitter), Pinterest, and Google Business Profile.

• AI Writing Assistant

Whether you have to overcome the blank page fear or rephrase social media captions for the client’s five different channels, Planable’s AI is here to help you. Make a text shorter, longer, or punchier, or generate it from scratch.

• Universal Content

Planable’s collaboration tools work for long-form content, too. You can collaborate and approve any content besides social media posts, including emails, articles, briefs, scripts, and whatnot.

Drawbacks: Planable has no CRM integration and can’t publish to blogs.

Pricing: Planable offers 50 free posts to try the platform out. After that, you can upgrade for $33/month and tweak your plan according to the number of users and workspaces you need.

2. Hootsuite – social media automation tool for large brands

Hootsuite is a functional social media marketing platform that has a little bit of everything. It helps marketing agencies automate everyday processes and establish a solid social media presence.

Hootsuite provides one dashboard to manage multiple social media channels, which is especially valuable for agencies that manage a high volume of content across multiple accounts for different clients.

Key features

• Content calendar. Plan all your content in one place. Hootsuite supports automated multi-platform publishing across all core social platforms.
• Social listening. Track online brand mentions, identify emerging trends, and analyze audience insights like demographics, preferred platforms, behaviors, and interests.
• Social media advertising dashboard. You can create advertising campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter directly in Hootsuite’s dashboard and analyze results for the best ROI.

Drawbacks: Hootsuite doesn’t offer many collaboration tools. Also, setting up streams to monitor and manage multiple social accounts is a bit of a challenge.

Pricing: Hootsuite offers three paid plans starting at $99/month.

3. Sprout Social – automation tool for big marketing agencies with tons of clients

Sprout Social is a powerful tool renowned for its robust analytics capabilities. It’s a pricey tool with lots of features that help big marketing agencies automate their complex social media marketing tasks.

Sprout Social automates routine scheduling and publishing tasks and offers interesting capabilities, such as employee advocacy analysis and an in-depth breakdown of paid and organic traffic to evaluate marketing initiatives.

Key features

• Automated reporting. Sprout gathers in-depth data to analyze how each social media channel performs alone and alongside other platforms.
• Social listening. Monitor social conversations to track brand mentions and identify industry trends. Sprout also gathers a sentiment analysis report to help you understand how your audience perceives the brand.
• AI-driven automation. You can leverage Sprout’s AI to minimize manual work and get tailored recommendations based on historical social media data.

Drawbacks: Sprout Social is expensive for small to mid-size marketing agencies.

Pricing: Sprout Social’s paid plans start at $249/month, and each additional user costs $199/month.

4. PromoRepublic – best social media automation tool for franchise businesses

PromoRepublic is an automation tool for marketing agencies working with franchise businesses. With features tailored to multi-location operations, this platform simplifies content management across different branches while ensuring brand consistency.

PromoRepublic’s automation features help agencies maintain a cohesive online presence for their multi-location clients, streamline workflows, and gather insights across all accounts.

Key features

• Centralized content library. Maintain a unified brand voice with a shared library of templates and images to create tailored content that still sticks to brand standards.
• Smart scheduling slots. Schedule posts for multiple locations at once and customize timing based on local audience behavior and peak engagement times in each location.
• Multi-account management. Manage and monitor social media accounts for various franchise locations from a single dashboard to track the cumulative performance of each network.

Drawbacks: Posting on Facebook is limited to Facebook pages, so you can’t automatically post to groups.

Pricing: PromoRepublic has three paid plans starting at $59/month.

5. Agorapulse – best automation tool with a smart social inbox

Agorapulse is a comprehensive tool for social media management. It automates publishing and analyzing content and helps you track brand mentions, comments, and DMs through one dashboard.

Its smart inbox feature stands out for marketing agencies that prioritize timely interactions with their audiences. Inbox Assistant automatically organizes all incoming messages to help you navigate high volumes of social media interactions.

Key features

• Multi-platform publishing. Automatically schedule and publish content across major social media platforms.
• Engagement tracking. Monitor and respond to comments and direct messages from a single social inbox, ensuring no user interactions are overlooked.
• Team collaboration. Streamline project management within your social team and with clients by assigning posts, sharing feedback on copy and visuals, and managing workflows.

Drawbacks: Agorapulse supports publishing and analyzing Twitter content, but it costs an extra $30/month per profile.

Pricing: Agorapulse offers four paid plans and a 30-day trial period. Paid plans start at $69/month per user.

6. Buffer – automation tool for basic social media scheduling

Buffer is a straightforward tool for automating social media tasks like planning, scheduling, and publishing content. It also provides built-in analytics to help you evaluate your performance across social media channels.

Check Buffer’s Answers tab for tailored recommendations for each social account you run, such as the most active times, best-performing content type, and demographic data.

Key features

• Native publishing. Buffer integrates with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Shopify, and Mastodon.
• Content calendar. Buffer offers a neat calendar for content scheduling. You can schedule and publish all your posts from a single dashboard and get a quick overview of your content efforts.

Drawbacks: Buffer’s analytics tool is quite basic and doesn’t differentiate between paid and organic efforts.

Pricing: Buffer has a free plan with up to 3 accounts. The upgrade with analytics costs $6/month per social platform.

7. SocialPilot – automation tool for high content volumes

SocialPilot is an automation tool that helps you handle loads of social media content smoothly. Its solid client management system also allows you to manage client accounts without credentials, which is useful for marketing agencies.

Designed to make content management at scale easier, SocialPilot lets you schedule hundreds of posts at once or focus on crafting specific pieces for targeted campaigns.

Key features

• Bulk scheduling. Easily schedule up to 500 posts with a .csv file upload and links to images, ensuring your content goes live at peak hours.
• Collaboration tools. Streamline teamwork by assigning roles, inviting clients with a link, discussing changes in comments, and getting content approvals in one place.
• Custom reports. Automatically send customized, branded analytics reports to your clients regularly, making it easier to keep them in the loop without extra effort.

Drawbacks: SocialPilot’s analytics doesn’t support TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Pricing: SocialPilot has four paid plans starting at $30/month.

8. Sendible – automation tool for reusing content

Sendible is a social media automation tool designed for marketing agencies. It supports scheduling, content recommendations, campaign reporting, and a social inbox.

Sendible’s smart queue automation makes it easy to recycle evergreen content and post it automatically, ensuring a consistent posting schedule. With automated queues, you can maintain a full editorial calendar, organizing your thematic content.

Key features

• Social media scheduling. Sendible schedules and publishes posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. It also integrates with blogging platforms like WordPress.
• Client Connect. Clients can have their own dashboards to give feedback and approve content, making it more secure than sharing your passwords with them.
• Automated reports. Create custom white-labeled reports and schedule them to go to your clients automatically.

Drawbacks: Sendible doesn’t support publishing to Pinterest.

Pricing: Sendible has four paid plans starting at $29/month.

9. Loomly – best tool for automating content idea generation

Loomly is a user-friendly social media calendar tool that simplifies content management across various social media accounts by automating content creation. You can use it to schedule individual posts or use batch scheduling for all major social media platforms and some extras like Pinterest, Snapchat, and Google My Business.

Loomly stands out with its automated idea-generation feature. It delivers curated post suggestions based on RSS feeds, industry trends, special events, holidays, and current news, helping you generate fresh and engaging content.

Key features

• Customizable workflows. Set up each content calendar with specific statuses and approval steps to ensure all content is reviewed and approved before going live.
• Marketing campaign launch. Launch marketing campaigns with audience targeting, managed hashtags, and tracked link clicks, all from a single dashboard.
• Analytics and automated reports. Track follower growth, reach, best-performing posts, and link clicks. Automatically generate and send reports to clients on a regular schedule.

Drawbacks: Users have noted that Loomly’s built-in editor for images and videos tends to compress files significantly, affecting their quality.

Pricing: Loomly offers four paid plans starting at $42/month.

Key benefits of using automation in your social media strategy

Streamlined posting schedules

A successful content strategy is based on consistency. Social media automation tools like Planable help you save time managing multiple social media accounts by scheduling your content in advance. Such an approach ensures you aim for optimal engagement across all platforms.

Planable allows you to manage content for multiple Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, GMB, Pinterest, and TikTok accounts.

Advanced analytics for better insights

Automatic social media tools help you better understand your audience’s behavior by analyzing data across all your social media campaigns. If you know what your followers like, you can create engaging content that resonates with your audience, eventually boosting your presence.

Social media analytics tools accumulate data about post reach, engagement, and overall social media performance, so you don’t have to crunch those numbers manually for every client.

Enhancing audience engagement

Timely engagement is a powerful tool for boosting your online reputation and signaling to the algorithms that you’re not only a broadcaster but an active part of the conversation.

Some social media management tools help you manage conversations from a unified inbox, making tracking comments and DMs across multiple platforms and channels much easier.