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Planable is the best client-facing social media tool we’ve ever used and we’ve used a lot.
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Social media is a lot of work: you have to create, schedule, approve, and distribute content, not to mention analyze its performance afterward. You can do it all manually, but once you have more than one or two accounts, you’re in for many headaches. Social media tools have your back during day-to-day operations, making everything less of a hassle and more effective.
Using the right social media tools is like having an extra pair of hands to make social media management so much easier. So, here are some proven social media tools that can help you streamline your processes and create content at scale without sacrificing quality.
Social media tools can significantly enhance your everyday work on social media, from campaign management to performance analysis and audience engagement.
When choosing social media tools, consider:
Ensure your social media tools of choice have seamless integration with social platforms and other tools you use.
Look for user-friendly tools that don’t require hours of onboarding either from you or your clients.
Opt for social media management tools that facilitate easy collaboration among team members.
Prioritize tools with robust reporting and analytics capabilities to track your progress and make data-driven decisions.
Choose social media tools that automate repetitive tasks to save time and reduce errors.
Planable is the ultimate social media tool that makes running multiple social media accounts much easier and more efficient. Planable’s trump card is seamless collaboration when it comes to social media content management.
Collaboration and approval in Planable
Planable allows you to create dedicated workspaces, making it ideal for marketing teams and agencies working with multiple brands or clients across diverse platforms. In each workspace, you’re free to set custom approval workflows to speed up content down the pipeline, set specific roles, and connect the required channels.
Workspace permissions in Planable
You get four options when it comes to the approval workflow. They span from none, for solo acts who don’t need approval from others before posting, all the way up to multi-level.
Anyone invited to your workspace can be granted approval permissions, including external collaborators such as subject matter experts from other teams, or client stakeholders.
The multi-level approval option is the stand-out feature here. Perfect for teams who need approval on content at different stages, or for agencies who run internal approvals before presenting work to the client for the final go-ahead.
Multi-level approval flow in Planable
I love how you can see mockup previews of exactly how your posts will look in Planable’s feed view. It helps your team and any other stakeholders to understand the full context of the content while providing feedback or issuing approval.
Mockup post previews in Planable’s feed view
With Planable, you can schedule and automatically publish content to any major social media platform directly from the calendar view. Facebook posts, Instagram Reels, YouTube videos, LinkedIn PDF carousels — schedule all your content to go live, regardless of the format.
Social media calendar view in Planable
Beyond social media, Planable supports other content types like blog articles, newsletters, briefs, and video scripts through its Universal Content feature, making it one of the few social media tools that cover all your content needs.
Drawbacks: Planable doesn’t have social listening features.
Pricing: Planable offers 50 free posts to try the platform first-hand. After that, you can choose a plan befitting your needs in terms of workspaces, users, and features. The upgrade starts at $11/month per user.
Canva is a user-friendly tool for designing visual content for social media and beyond. Its simple drag-and-drop interface makes it easy for anyone to produce professional-quality graphics for various social media channels.
At the risk of making a lot of designers very angry, I can say that Canva is a solid option for social media teams that don’t have a dedicated designer.
Drawbacks: Canva is simple, so its features might be insufficient for more elaborate designs.
Pricing: Canva has a robust free plan and two paid plans starting at $12/month.
SocialPilot is a social media tool for managing content across various social channels. Its remarkable feature is a unified social inbox that helps you keep all your DMs, mentions, and comments tidy and taken care of timely.
There are also some collaboration features in the mix, allowing you to draft posts together with your team.
Drawbacks: Compared to other social media tools on this list, SocialPilot has limitations, such as lacking social media listening features and detailed Instagram analytics.
Pricing: SocialPilot has four paid plans starting at $30/month.
Collaboration is the very heart of Planable, making it one of the best social media tools for teams who want to leverage their collective creativity. Planable helps you craft outstanding social media posts together with your team and clients, speeding up content creation, feedback exchange, and approvals.
Collaboration on a TikTok post in Planable
My favorite thing about Planable’s collaboration workflow is that it’s very thought-through and easy to get a grip on. The onboarding is very smooth, leaving little to no chance of doing things wrong.
And even if you did make an error or simply decided to go back on your content, you can always revert changes, thanks to the post-activity history.
Drawbacks: Planable has multiple collaboration tools but no project management tool like a task tracker.
Pricing: Planable offers 50 free posts. After that, you can upgrade for $11/month per user.
When it comes to collaboration and approvals, Planable is a fantastic alternative to Sked Social and other social media management tools for agencies.
HubSpot is a robust all-in-one platform that enhances team collaboration through its integrated CRM and suite of marketing tools.
HubSpot has solutions for content marketing, social media management, sales, marketing automation, and customer support. These tools can work separately or together, integrating through HubSpot CRM.
Such an extensive ecosystem helps marketing teams sync between branches and trace the customer’s journey through the whole funnel, ensuring a cohesive marketing strategy at every stage.
Drawbacks: HubSpot is a solution for big companies with branched-out extensive marketing teams. It would be total overkill for a small agency or in-house social media marketer who only needs basic social media tools.
Pricing: HubSpot’s CRM is free. Each Hub (Content, Service, Marketing, etc.) is billed separately. A basic bundle of all Hubs starts at $20/month.
Sendible positions itself as a social media tool for agencies, emphasizing seamless collaboration with external clients.
Besides scheduling posts and gathering analytics, agencies can easily and securely onboard clients into their dashboards without the hassle of sharing passwords. This ensures prompt feedback exchange that speeds up social media content creation and approvals.
Drawbacks: Unlike other social media tools, Sendible doesn’t support posting to TikTok.
Pricing: Sendible has four paid plans starting at $29/month.
As a social media tool, Planable provides a built-in analytics solution for tracking your performance on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok.
Social media analytics dashboard in Planable
You can track all your core metrics on account and post-level, identify top-performing posts, and get a pretty solid overall view of your social media efforts.
Drawbacks: Planable doesn’t yet provide analytics for all supported platforms (but it’s getting there).
Pricing: Planable Analytics is available in any paid plan as an add-on for $9/month.
Hootsuite is an all-in-one solution for managing your social media presence. Beyond scheduling and publishing content, Hootsuite offers detailed analytics to measure performance across multiple channels.
Its social listening features are particularly handy for tracking brand mentions and identifying upcoming trends online.
Drawbacks: Hootsuite lacks the collaboration features other social media tools have that can streamline workflows.
Pricing: Hootsuite has three paid plans starting at $99/month.
Sprout Social provides a huge suite of advanced social media analytics tools, perfect for large companies that need detailed insights to guide their content strategy (and have a budget for that).
This social media management platform offers in-depth account and post analysis, allowing differentiation between organic and paid results for more precise reporting. It also includes ROI reports you can customize based on your client’s needs.
Drawbacks: Sprout Social is quite expensive compared to other social media tools.
Pricing: Sprout Social has four paid plans (plus add-ons), starting at $249/month.
Do you ever feel stuck in front of a blank page? Or just tired of rewriting the same caption for all your social media accounts so it sounds unique? Planable AI is here to solve that.
Instagram caption generation with Planable AI
Planable AI can help you generate social media captions tailored to different channels. You can make your text shorter, longer, bolder, or whatever you’d like to improve it.
Drawbacks: Planable AI only works for creating text, not images or videos.
Pricing: Planable AI is included in all Planable plans alongside other social media tools within the platform. Try it for free for 50 posts and upgrade later for $11/month.
Emplifi is a cutting-edge AI tool that enhances social media management through intelligent automation and data-driven insights.
The platform helps teams streamline their social media marketing efforts, engage with their audience more effectively, and optimize their social strategy with AI insights derived from content performance.
Drawbacks: Emplifi lacks the listening capabilities or collaboration features other social media tools have. Some users also mention its “heavy” UX.
Pricing: Emplifi’s Social Marketing Cloud has four paid plans starting at $2400/year (or about $200/month).
Managing social media can feel like a lot, but the right tools make it much easier, especially for small businesses. Platforms like Planable take the stress out of juggling content creation, scheduling, and team collaboration, helping you stay organized across multiple accounts. Tools like Canva make designing posts simple, and analytics platforms help you track what’s working.
If you want to use social media for a small business without feeling overwhelmed, there are tools that let you streamline everything and focus on growing your brand. You can try Planable for free to see how it simplifies your workflow.
Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.
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