Social media has become a powerful platform for businesses to connect with their audience and build brand presence. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and managing social media has become a crucial aspect of digital marketing. The impact of negative social media marketing can be swift and severe, potentially tarnishing a brand’s reputation and causing significant damage. In this digital age, where information spreads rapidly, social media managers need to be equipped with effective management strategies. This is where AI-powered management tools come into play.
As of now, every business, company, and enterprise tries to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools into their IT landscape, thereby making their operations function intelligently. It is incorporated into the social media landscape as well to help them manage various challenging situations from various situations, like negative customer reviews, PR mishaps, data breaches, or even viral misinformation as well as managing social media platforms and their day-to-day operations. The challenging situations can quickly escalate, catching businesses off guard and leaving them scrambling for an effective response. Social media managers need to be aware of their potential impact and understand the unique challenges they face during such situations.
AI tools leverage advanced algorithms to monitor social media platforms in real time, detect potential crises, and analyze sentiments expressed by users. These tools provide crucial insights into the crisis context, enabling social media managers to make informed decisions and respond promptly.
Additionally, AI tools assist social media managers in automating tasks like scheduling posts, responding to messages, and analyzing social media data, thereby freeing up their time to develop creative and unique social media content. The tools can help them to create more engaging and high-quality content by providing them with catchy phrases, captions, hashtags, and sometimes even entire posts. Social Media will be useless to businesses if they don’t analyze audience data. However, if done manually, it will take up an entire army of employees and a lot of time to analyze it effectively and draw insights from it, AI tools here come to the rescue. To understand better and engage with the audience, AI tools help social media managers by analyzing the entire social media data and identifying trends, tracking engagement, and monitoring the sentiment of the intended audience. The data can also be used to personalize content for the audience based on their preferences, interests, and behavior. To summarize all of this, we can say that AI tools can help social media managers to be more efficient, effective, and responsive, ultimately leading to better engagement, increased brand awareness, and higher conversion rates.
Five Freemium AI Tools for Social Media Managers are:
Later
It is a social media management platform that places a strong emphasis on visual content, particularly on Instagram. While it does allow posting on Twitter,
Facebook, and Pinterest, its main focus is on Instagram. With Later, you can sign up for a free plan that includes one social account per platform, one user, and limited monthly posts on each platform. Specifically, you can schedule up to 30 Instagram posts, 50 Twitter posts, 30 Facebook posts, and 30 Pinterest posts per month. The free plan also offers the ability to schedule photos and upload unlimited images to the Media Library. Basic Instagram analytics, as well as the ability to search and repost user-generated content, are also included. Later offers four paid plans, starting at just $15 per month, which provide additional capabilities beyond the free plan. One unique feature of Later is its requirement to start a post by uploading a picture, rather than beginning with a social message and then adding an image. From there, you can add suitable text to accompany the image. The heart of Later lies in its Media Library, which serves as a central hub for all your media assets. You can either upload new media or reuse existing media from the library when creating posts. Each media item can be labeled and annotated, and you can even highlight specific images with a Star. The Media Library provides various filtering options, such as by label or star, media usage, type of media, and upload time frame. It’s worth noting that Later allows unlimited media storage, even on the free plan. While the free plan limits you to scheduling static images, the higher-tier plans introduce support for videos, Instagram Stories, and multi-photo posts. Later offers a calendar-focused social media scheduling platform with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. Their planning and scheduling tools make it effortless to visualize and manage your social media content. Additional features include photo editing, publishing stories, and more.
Socialoomph
Since 2008, Socialoomph has been providing scheduled social posting services. It offers a range of paid plans and a free plan option. The Free Plan allows a single user to schedule unlimited posts to one social profile, with a maximum limit of three posts per hour. Even the highest-priced Business Suite plan is reasonably priced compared to its competitors. A key feature of Socialoomph is the concept of teams. With a free account, users automatically have one team called “My Account” that provides various options for creating posts. Users can schedule and queue posts, start from scratch, import posts in bulk, set up different queues, and collect content from RSS feeds. Additionally, Socialoomph enables users to post to their blogs. Content can be created and published at specified times using the platform’s queue feature. Another queue can then be used to promote blog posts across social channels. Socialoomph is a social media scheduling platform designed for businesses. It allows scheduling posts for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. Furthermore, users can monitor their posts and engagement.
Buffer
Buffer is a popular social media scheduling tool that has been around for a while. It offers a range of features and pricing options to cater to different needs. The core feature of Buffer is its post queue, where you can continuously add content to be published at specific times. You don’t need to create an account immediately to explore Buffer. You can visit the page without logging in, making it easy for newcomers to get a feel for the tool. However, if you want to stay updated with Buffer’s latest news, you can find their updates on Twitter and Facebook. Buffer provides a Free plan that allows scheduling up to 10 posts across three social accounts. For more advanced features, paid plans start at $5 per month. In addition to Buffer Publishing, which handles post-scheduling, there are two other apps available:
1. Buffer Reply: This app lets you engage in social conversations and provide support through a shared team inbox.
2. Buffer Analyze: With this app, you can measure the performance of your social media content and generate reports.
Alternatively, you can opt for the all-in-one Buffer package, which includes all three Buffer products. On the free plan, Buffer’s dashboard has a minimalistic look. It features three items that are Queue, Analytics, and Settings. You can also see the social accounts you have connected. Although the free plan offers limited features, you can still create and schedule up to ten posts. However, the Analytics tab only displays your posts from the past week, and the queue functionality is not available on the free plan. Buffer’s capabilities expand significantly when you upgrade to a paid plan. You gain more flexibility in creating posting schedules, a vital aspect of Buffer’s functionality. By combining original posts, content from the Buffer browser add-on, and posts from relevant RSS feeds, you can ensure a steady stream of content for your social accounts. Overall, Buffer is a highly regarded social media scheduling platform. It provides tools for scheduling, engagement, and analytics, enabling you to enhance engagement and drive traffic on social media.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a leading platform for social media management, offering options tailored to different needs. They provide a free 30-day trial and a limited Free plan to help you get started. While the Free plan integrates with major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest, it has limitations. You can manage a maximum of two social media accounts and schedule up to five messages at a time. Despite its limitations, the Free plan makes it easy to publish to your chosen channels and create engaging content. Hootsuite offers free images from Pixabay, or you can upload your media by dragging and selecting files. After creating a new post, you can choose to post it immediately, save it as a draft, or schedule it for a specific time. Social accounts are organized into separate boards, allowing you to track scheduled and published content efficiently. You can also filter your posts based on their status, such as viewing drafts only. The Free plan is suitable if you have a limited presence on a few platforms and don’t require extensive posting. However, if you need features like bulk scheduling, unified inbox message responses, and advanced analytics, you will need to upgrade to one of Hootsuite’s paid plans. Pricing starts at around $30 per month, but there is a significant price difference between the various plans. Its extensive features include automated publishing, contact management, content management, conversion tracking, customer targeting, keyword filtering, multi-account management, post scheduling, brand tracking, customer engagement, multi-user collaboration, reporting/analytics, and social media monitoring.
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a versatile social media management tool that offers both free and premium plans. It combines content discovery and social media management capabilities, providing a seamless experience for influencers and marketers. One of the standout features of Crowdfire is its content curation functionality. By selecting specific search terms, you can discover new and engaging content that resonates with your audience. Crowdfire constantly curates articles based on your preferences, ensuring a steady flow of fresh content to share. While the platform provides a default post with copy and a link, personalizing it adds a touch of uniqueness and appeal. Crowdfire simplifies the process of sharing content by allowing direct publishing to social accounts. By connecting to your YouTube channel, WordPress site, Etsy, or Shopify store, you can seamlessly publish content without the need to grab links from various sources manually. Additionally, Crowdfire lets you easily customize post copy and make tweaks before sharing. Post-scheduling is another valuable feature offered by Crowdfire. It helps you determine the best times to share your content, allowing you to prepare and schedule posts in advance. This saves time and ensures that your content reaches the right audience at optimal times. The image curation feature further enhances efficiency by automatically pulling images for your posts and giving proper credit to the creators. Moreover, Crowdfire offers a Chrome extension and the option to add your own RSS feed, enabling quick sharing of articles you come across. Crowdfire goes beyond content management with its team inbox, where all direct messages are stored. This ensures that you can access and respond to messages efficiently, without missing any important communication. The platform also provides robust analytics reporting, giving you valuable insights into post-engagement. You can customize reports with the metrics that matter most to you, and even analyze competitor performance to gain a competitive edge.
Paid AI Tools for Social Media Managers
Flick
Flick is the ultimate platform that revolutionizes social media marketing. With a wide range of features, Flick empowers online marketers and simplifies their tasks. Flick offers hashtag research tools, post scheduler, analytics, and reporting, all available for a free trial. For a nominal fee of just $7 a month, you can transform your social media strategy forever.
Flick is your one-stop destination for Instagram scheduling, hashtag optimization, and content analysis. Seamlessly manage, schedule, and grow your Instagram account with ease. The platform utilizes the official Instagram API for publishing posts and tracking analytics, and the tool is officially approved by Meta. With Flick, you can effortlessly create a visual calendar for your future Instagram posts, preview your feed, and discover the most popular hashtags. The advanced Hashtag Search supports over 20 languages, ensuring you have access to relevant and discoverable hashtags on Instagram.
One of its standout features is the AI Social Media Assistant. This groundbreaking feature accelerates the brainstorming, writing, and planning process for Instagram content. Within seconds, it generates original and captivating content ideas based on your desired topics, saving you valuable time and effort. When it comes to brand content, the AI Social Media Assistant delivers only original ideas and captions. You have full control over setting the tone and style to align with your brand identity. This AI Social Media Assistant is not just limited to Instagram. It is a comprehensive marketing tool that enhances the brainstorming, writing, and planning process for all social media platforms. Instead of spending hours ideating, let the Assistant generate original and engaging content ideas instantly, based on your specified topics. Flick also comes with a Content Planner, which is a dedicated space to organize your ideas, whether they are fully developed or just working titles. This ensures better thought organization and enables the creation of more cohesive content. In addition to these features, Flick offers a range of functionalities like scheduling, hashtags, and analytics. Choose Flick and elevate your social media marketing game. Experience the power of this tool and unlock your true potential.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is recognized as a leading social media management tool, known for its professional features and user-friendly interface. One of the standout features of Sprout Social is its Smart Inbox, which serves as a centralized hub for all your social media messages. This feature allows you to combine multiple social inboxes in anyway you prefer, streamlining your social media interactions. Additionally, the platform offers a Listening module that enables you to track mentions of your brand, competitors, or specific keywords, providing valuable insights into your online presence. Setting up and connecting your social media accounts on Sprout Social is a breeze, even for more complex platforms like Instagram. The platform includes tools that facilitate collaboration among team members, making it easy to assign and manage tasks efficiently. With this AI tool, you have the flexibility to customize your posts to align with the best practices of different social networks, and you can schedule them for various time frames. The platform also allows you to import content from multiple sources and then reschedule or add it to your posting queue.
In addition to its robust scheduling and publishing features, Sprout Social provides a range of analytics and engagement tools.
The tool provides contact management as well as content management features where you can organize and segment your audiences well as content for more targeted communication. Additionally, the tool helps you identify and target specific customer segments based on their demographics, interests, and behavior, allowing for more personalized and effective marketing campaigns. You can manage multiple social media accounts from a single platform, simplifying the process of monitoring and engaging with your audience across different channels. The pricing for these plans ranges from $99 to $249 per user per month, depending on the number of social profiles you need to manage and the additional features included in each plan.
Lately.ai
Lately.ai is a popular AI tool for incorporating AI into your social media strategy. It offers a range of features that can help you create engaging social media posts and manage your social media presence effectively. With Lately.ai, you can repurpose long-form content such as blogs, podcasts, and webinars into captivating social media posts. Simply submit the URL of your existing content, and Lately.ai will generate content ideas for you. You can review and customize the AI-generated content to align with your expectations. The platform also provides a Post Success Rating indicator to optimize your content and schedule it through platforms like Hootsuite. In addition to content creation, Lately.ai offers a dashboard with social media tools for scheduling and project management. It allows you to analyze metrics on your social pages, helping you determine the best posting times for reaching a wider and more engaged audience.
Lately.ai’s advanced control options enable you to assign automatic post-reviewer settings before publishing. The parent-child account feature simplifies content publishing across multiple regions, brands, and products from a centralized place. AI technology plays a crucial role in enhancing your ad copy and captions, and Lately.ai leverages this technology to revamp your past ads and drive conversions. By recognizing context and providing detailed analyses, Lately.ai helps you identify the most effective words and strategies for engaging viewers and increasing revenue through social media content.
The platform’s data-driven recommendations are based on historical metrics, allowing you to achieve higher-value interactions with your audience in the future. Lately.ai also employs machine learning to help social media marketers organically grow their social accounts.
The pricing for Lately.ai starts at $29/month.
Circleboom
Circleboom is a highly acclaimed social media management tool that provides support for various platforms including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, and Pinterest. It stands out by offering user-friendly features that cater to your specific needs, without burdening you with unnecessary or complex functionalities. With Circleboom, you pay for the features that truly matter.
The tool’s intuitive design makes it suitable for users of all levels, from beginners to professionals. It offers a range of publishing tools, including separate schedulers for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google My Business. Additionally, it provides a content design tool for social media, a video and GIF downloader, and a content curation tool to enhance your social media management experience. Notable features of Circleboom include social media post design, platform-specific post creators, and QR code creation for social media. The tool also offers ready-to-use social media post templates, saving you time and effort. Additionally, you can create different categories to efficiently manage all your social media accounts from a single dashboard.
Circleboom offers four pricing plans to suit different needs. The Free plan allows one social account, while the Pro plan costs $15.83 per month (billed annually). The Premium plan is available at $34.99 per month (billed annually), and the Business plan is priced at $79.99 per month (billed annually).
Content Studio
ContentStudio is a comprehensive social media management platform that offers users a 14-day free trial. Unlike other platforms, it goes beyond the basics and provides additional features to enhance your social media strategy. One such feature is influencer marketing, which often requires manual web research or separate tools. However, ContentStudio has solved this challenge with its influencer discovery feature. The influencer discovery feature covers popular platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. It provides insights such as an influencer’s published posts, follower count, following count, interaction value per thousand followers, and a score out of 100% to evaluate their impact.
ContentStudio also automates content publishing for social media and blogs. You can identify sources or keywords and set up auto-posting to your preferred channels. Before publishing, you can review and personalize the content as desired. In addition to these unique features, ContentStudio includes all the essential tools. It offers a visually appealing planner, post-scheduling, channel analytics, and an RSS feed reader. A team inbox manages direct messages, while collaboration tools create workflows, tasks, and checklists.
Furthermore, ContentStudio’s AI-driven technology discovers new content and enables autopilot posting on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, WordPress, and Medium. Its AI writer generates post hashtags, adds emojis, and creates social post images. Pre-made templates can be customized to match your brand’s tone for tweets, Instagram captions, Facebook posts, and more. To stay updated with trending content in your industry, ContentStudio includes a discovery feature that searches for top-performing content. You can curate pre-suggested trending content and schedule it directly from the ContentStudio dashboard. Lastly, ContentStudio provides a centralized place to monitor post engagements and assign conversations to team members for collaboration.
Chrome Extensions, WordPress plugins for managing your social media:
Hootlet
Hootsuite’s free Hootlet extension revolutionizes the way you share content across social media platforms. With Hootlet, sharing pages or articles that catch your interest becomes effortless. This powerful tool allows you to seamlessly share captivating content on your preferred social media channels with just a few clicks.
But that’s not all Hootlet has to offer. It goes beyond simple content sharing by providing additional features to enhance your online experience. For instance, when you conduct a Google search, Hootlet goes the extra mile by displaying the latest tweets related to your search query. This feature keeps you up-to-date with real-time conversations happening on Twitter, ensuring you stay informed and connected.
Furthermore, Hootlet integrates seamlessly with Google Maps, enabling you to explore and discover content specific to a geographic area or business. When you use Google Maps to navigate, Hootlet automatically scans and retrieves relevant content posted nearby. Whether it’s discovering nearby attractions, checking out local events, or uncovering trending topics in a specific location, Hootlet ensures you have access to valuable and timely information.
With Hootlet, social sharing becomes effortless, and your online searches become more insightful and engaging. Experience the power of Hootlet and elevate your social media presence and online interactions to new heights.
Postcron for Chrome
Postcron for Chrome revolutionizes social media management for professionals. This powerful tool empowers social media managers to update their accounts effortlessly, keeping their audience engaged and informed. By seamlessly integrating with popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, Postcron for Chrome enables users to share captivating content they discover while browsing without any disruption.
With Postcron for Chrome, scheduling posts becomes a breeze. Say goodbye to the hassle of leaving your Chrome browser or logging into separate applications. With just a simple click on the Postcron button integrated into your browser, you can effortlessly schedule content to be published at your desired date and time, precisely tailored to your audience’s preferences.
One of the notable advantages of this tool is its ability to manage multiple accounts simultaneously. By leveraging this feature, social media managers can save significant time and effort, staying ahead and accomplishing weeks of work in a fraction of the time.
Furthermore, Postcron for Chrome goes the extra mile by allowing users to add watermarks to their images. This feature enables you to showcase your photo’s authorship while simultaneously expanding your brand or website’s reach.
Diigo
Diigo is an invaluable Chrome extension designed for research purposes. It empowers users to highlight significant phrases effortlessly, bookmark and save web pages, jot down notes, and compile references, all in one convenient location. This tool proves particularly useful for social media marketers, as they often dedicate extensive time to research and development, including campaign planning, staying updated on trends, and analyzing competitor strategies. The best part is that Diigo offers a free pricing option, making it accessible to all.
Unsplash Instant
Finding high-quality, professional stock pictures for social media marketing posts can often be a tiresome task. However, with Unsplash Instant, you can easily discover a wide range of excellent photos, including flowers, skies, desktops, and artsy portraits. The best part is, these photos are available for free and can be used for various commercial purposes.
Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon is the best WordPress plugin for adding a social media feed to your WordPress website. With six custom-designed plugins, Smash Balloon simplifies the tricky task of embedding social media feeds on WordPress. These plugins beautifully showcase posts from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, either individually or in a unified social wall. Additionally, Smash Balloon offers a plugin that gathers all your reviews into a single display.
Its key features include Feed Creation Wizard by which you can set up your feed quickly with just a few clicks, Feed Customizer, Downtime Prevention, Speed Optimizer, and SEO Booster. Smash Balloon saves time, boosts social engagement, and provides dynamic SEO content. The plugin’s support is exceptional, and it is GDPR compliant. You can access the free lite plugins for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube through the WordPress plugin repository.
Conclusion
AI tools have become indispensable for social media managers in today’s digital landscape. These powerful technologies offer a wide range of capabilities that streamline and enhance various aspects of social media management, ultimately enabling managers to work more efficiently and effectively. From content creation and scheduling to audience analysis and engagement, AI tools provide invaluable support that helps social media managers stay ahead of the curve.
At Acmo Network we offer a complete range of social media services to help your business thrive. Acmo Network Private Limited will assign a dedicated team incorporating Social Media Consultant, SEO Experts, Content Writer, and Graphic Designer for your social media management. The team will devise a strategy tailored to your goals and provide realistic options to market your business on social media. Our team uses AI tools to automate their routine tasks, generate high-quality posts and articles in a fraction of the time, plan and organize your social media campaigns in advance, and the like. We will make sure that your social media thrive by creating a perfect balance between automation and the human touch.
