11 Stunning Social Media Automation Tools To Use This Year

SocialPilot is a social media automation and analytics tool for businesses - from small to medium and even large companies. With this social media automation tool, you can expect to enjoy a ton of features such as social media scheduling, calendar management, client management, and more.

Additionally, it doesn't matter what social media channel you are using because SocialPilot has got your needs covered. That said, you can integrate SocialPilot with social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, as well as Google+ simultaneously.

The best of all is that SocialPilot offers users a social media calendar feature, which will help you monitor your social media campaigns. If you like, you can incorporate filters to your calendars and monitor your social media campaigns by groups and accounts. Even more, the calendar functionality allows users to drag and drop their social media posts and reschedule them, depending on what has changed.

Finally, SocialPilot users can analyse their social media post-performance in terms of how engaged their audience is, influencers, demographics, competitors, and even how rapidly their audience is growing.

Core Features of SocialPilot

Now that you know what SocialPilot is capable of doing, let's summarize the core features of SocialPilot below:

• SocialPilot gives you the freedom to schedule your posts as you want with advanced social media publishing capabilities and audience targeting.
• You will get helpful analytics regarding your social media strategies and know where to adjust with downloadable PDF social media reports.
• Set access levels to your team to maintain the content flow in your company. With its team collaboration feature you can add your team members and assign accounts and access levels.
• You can use Social Inbox to moderate conversations on your Facebook pages.
• You have control of your Facebook ad campaigns by using Lead Ads or Boost Post.
• Excellent customer services who will always help you out whenever you need any assistance with chat/email/call 24x5.

Pros

• Enhanced team & client collaboration for hassle-free social media management.
• You can bulk upload upto 500 posts in one-go.
• Facebook and LinkedIn audience targeting available.
• Top-notch browser extension.
• Publish native videos, add GIFS, create carousel or album posts for interactive social media posts.
• Google Drive, Dropbox and Box integration for easy access to your media
• Create marvelous social media images on the spot with the Canva integration.
• They offer 5 ways to automate your social media posts - immediately, schedule according to the said time-slots, schedule at a specific time, repeat posts in time intervals and share it after the first post in your queue.

SocialPilot Pricing

They offer a 14-day free trial and a SocialPilot walkthrough as you sign-up (no credit card required)

• Professional Plan - $30/ month
• Small Team Plan - 50/ month
• Agency Plan - $100/ month
• Enterprise Plan - you will have to contact them for a quote

Hootsuite is a popular social media automation tool for marketers. Its robust features make it compatible with a variety of social media platforms. It is mainly focused as a large enterprise and big sized agencies because of the complex features and the pricing range.

Additionally, Hootsuite enables you to monitor multiple social media platforms at once with its social media streams. And yes, you can also use it to keep an eye on all your brands with its real-time updates. Because it keeps track of your brands, you'll be updated upon mentioning your brand, and as such, know what consumers are saying about it.

Pros

• You can view social media streams at one place.
• Hootsuite makes you understand how your social media strategy is performing by availing reports whenever you need them.

Cons

• The interface isn't very much user-friendly. It comes with a learning curve.
• Costs can accumulate and empty pockets for small businesses and agencies.
• They aren’t very responsive to the emails/posts if someone is facing issues.
• You need to pay extra to get the social media reports.

BuzzSumo is one of the most essential social media search tools if you want to have a greater understanding of your content marketing strategies.

So instead of guessing which content topics are getting shared the most, BuzzSumo will help you discover some of the popular keywords in your industry and the publishers.

Over the years, BuzzSumo has grown into a popular social media marketing tool because of its ability to provide in-depth insights into what your competition is doing and adjust accordingly.

If you are a savvy content marketer who loves to stay ahead of your competition, BuzzSumo will help you discover the most popular content by entering either a keyword or a domain name on the search bar.

You have the option to filter your results, depending on what you want - from duration to location. Even more, BuzzSumo is capable of collecting analytics from popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, among others.

Pros

• It's a great tool you can use to identify the most popular or widely shared content in your niche.
• You can identify influencers within your niche and build stellar relationships with them using BuzzSumo.
• It helps with link building strategies by identifying the most suitable content topics that your linkreators will love.

Cons

• It is limited to specific mediums, such as Twitch, but not a very big deal.
• It does not have enough backlink data to help content marketers build links.

Sprout Social is another social media engagement tool that you can rely on if you are looking forward to taking your social media marketing to the next level.

It has all the essential features you might be looking for in a social media automation tool. That is why Sprout Social is considered one of the best social media automation tools you can use to track your activities better.

Sprout Social is popular for its ability to allow users to organize and assign tasks to members. Besides, this tool will be more than helpful if you are looking forward to running ads on social platforms, though it is limited to the number of social media platforms.

Even though this tool is limited to some social media platforms, they got you covered if you'd want to schedule your posts or campaigns. Even more, they provide an analytics feature, as well as a social listening feature.

Finally, Sprout Social can serve all levels of businesses - from small businesses to large enterprises.

Pros

• The analytics features provided by Sprout Social come in handy to help you track your increase in followers, link clicks, the number of posts, change in your social media engagement, etc.
• Sprout Social has a smart inbox where you can monitor and reply to all your brand mentions.
• You can monitor campaigns across social media and search for posts mentioning you or your brand using Sprout Social.

Cons

• Sprout Social is not at its best, yet when it comes to scheduling campaigns on Instagram, though nearly every social media automation tool has the same problem. Sources explain that it's a setting from Instagram's end that's causing all these.
• Some users also encounter issues with LinkedIn posting. They say that when they schedule a post on LinkedIn, the image often looks smaller than what they thought had been scheduled.

Buffer is one of the popular social media marketing automation tools that offer users scheduling functionality. This tool comes in handy for LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook users. Even more, customers on the pro package can enjoy the Pinterest feature, too. However, those on a lower package will have a limited number of social media accounts connected - Facebook, which includes pages and groups.

As a new user, you can choose to go with the default scheduling functionality offered by Buffer or use your automation to match your needs.

This social media automation tool provides users four slots per day by default. You have the freedom to either delete or add slots depending on the number of campaigns you have to post daily.

The more campaign slots you have, the more posts you’ll have to schedule.

Buffer browser extension is available for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. With these extensions, you can schedule your posts by clicking on the Buffer icon to add to your queue. Additionally, there are mobile applications - both for Android and iOS.

Pros

• Buffer gives users the ability to customize every post, depending on which social media account you will be scheduling.
• This automation tool gives you insights on the best times to post so that you don’t end up sending out your campaigns at the wrong times.
• They have a great engaged community you can interact with.

Cons

• To get the analytics, you will have to pay way more, even when you can get the same functionality at a fair price with other tools, SocialPilot for example.
• The downside with Buffer is that they don’t have the media library feature, which most social media automation tools have.
• They have different pricing plans if you need to have Analytics and Social Inbox. You need to buy subscriptions to all of these plans to have a complete social media automation tool which can turn out to be way more expensive.

The primary goal of CoSchedule is to achieve efficiency for both solopreneurs and marketing companies. This social media automation tool integrates with WordPress and helps with pushing content to your preferred social media account whenever you hit “publish” for every post.

The best of all is that CoSchedule offers users a “Top Content Report,” which gives users insights regarding social engagement of the campaigns you send out on social media. This feature is useful for content marketers who are curious to know how their marketing campaigns are fairing to help them adjust whenever necessary.

Unlike other social media tools, CoSchedule focuses on content and social performance. It offers features such as “ReQueue,” which allows users to reschedule their best content. This will help your audience see more fresh content in their feeds.

Pros

• The tool allows users to visualize their content in one place.
• You can easily tweak your calendar settings to match your preferences.
• CoSchedule will enable you to implement approval procedures.
• You can create a read-only calendar using CoSchedule, and your team members can view what is coming up next.

Cons

• The tool has become sluggish all of a sudden, probably because of the huge amount of data users are entering.
• The tool indeed offers scheduling functionalities, but people experience publishing errors regularly.
• You will have to change your templates manually if you happen to change your mind with scheduling posts.

Scoop.it is partly a social network and partly as a content curation tool for content marketers. It is also one of the best free social media automation tools, offering users a free plan.

With Scoop.it, you can create specific topics, share your ideas and connect with like-minded individuals.

Using the Scoop.it content director, users can curate content from any other source. The best of all is that you can share your idea across your most preferred social media platforms with just a click of a button.

This social media automation tool also enables users to generate ideas using specific terms called keywords. So, if you are a content marketer, Scoop.it will help you stay updated and know what to always share with your audience.

Pros

• Scoop.it regularly updates its users on the trending topics, depending on the keywords you choose.
• You can share your content to various social media channels with just the click of a button.
• Your front page provides you with all the relevant information you need - from curator profile to topics.

Cons

• Social media savvies haven’t leveraged on this tool because they are muddled about whether or not it is worth an investment.
• It’s quite expensive - $79/ month, which most beginner writers can’t afford to “lose” every month.

Sendible is another great social media automation tool on this list, and like other social media tools, Sendible helps users to manage their social media channels under one umbrella.

With Sendible, you don’t have to go one-by-one scheduling your campaigns on different social media accounts. You can easily manage how your campaigns go out, right from your dashboard.

The best of all is that you can create content and schedule them for a week, month, or for how long you may need. Additionally, you can tailor your content to match different social platforms by leveraging emoji, attachments, etc. features.

Pros

• Sendible has an excellent and dedicated customer support personnel who will walk you through whenever you have any issues.
• Sendible has a unified social inbox that helps you manage all your conversations at one place.
• You can create custom-reports as you want with Sendible.

Cons

• Sendible does not feature a clickable calendar, which is on-demand right now.
• The pricing is way too high for a small business and agency for the features it offers.
• It has a learning curve, not very user-friendly.

Meetedgar stands to be different from the social media automation tools currently existing in the market. It not only gives you better service but also assists you in uniquely scheduling content with its evergreen posting feature.

After your post is scheduled in Meetedgar, it also provides the feature of saving the same in the library for later use. This tool supports and assists you on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, & LinkedIn.

Pros

• Meetedgar has a posting queue which allows you to never run out of scheduling your posts i.e. evergreen posting.
• It also has category based detail scheduling which enables you to categorize your content and schedule them differently.

Cons

• With its limited features, it hardly supports 4 networks which might not be sufficient for the marketers.
• Meetedgar doesn’t allow you to shuffle your posts in the queue for rescheduling.
• Features are as stagnant as they could be with only one pricing plan available.
• Doesn’t have a feature of creating a social team or even for in-depth analytics.

With businesses growing at a speed like never before, Zoho Social is built to efficiently match their needs. This social media automation tool will help you to work with your team, monitor brand mentions and social conversations.

It offers an unlimited social media scheduling feature and also creates a custom report for you to analyze your social media. Zoho Social lets you manage social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram & Google My Business.

Pros

• Based on its SmartQ feature, it comes up with the best time slots to schedule your posts for maximum audience engagement.
• With its CRM integrations, you can interact with prospects as well as generate potential leads from social media.
• Automated reports creation at Zoho Social enables report sharing with clients at any point of time complemented with a personalized message.

Cons

• Zoho Social lacks a combined analytics feature which takes it on a low for marketers especially when there are some alternatives of Zoho Social that offers this. 
• The most common feature in social media scheduling tools is missing in Zoho Social i.e. RSS feed integration.
• With the amount of features it offers, it is looked at as an expensive tool in the market.

Agorapulse is an all-in-one social media automation tool that encourages teams to work collaboratively. Whether you are looking to schedule, reschedule, queue, or bulk upload your posts, they have plenty of options to fill your content calendar.

With a social inbox to catch every conversation, it also provides one-click reports to its users. Agorapulse supports social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube & Instagram. 

Pros

• Their social inbox offers you to directly send reports to your clients within a few clicks.
• You can easily label your content for smooth retrievals and analysis.
• With their inbuild CRM feature, Agorapulse helps you understand your audience better.

Cons

• Their reporting feature is too basic for the ever-growing industry of marketers.
• It's difficult for users to navigate through the tool which suggests the tool to have a shift in their interface.
• This social media automation tool doesn't integrate with any external applications or tools except for bit.ly and is also expensive for what all features it offers.