It is an indisputable fact that social networks are dominating the advertising market in recent times. This hype is because social media campaigns are affordable and bring thousands of leads in a short time. There are various social networking sites and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are leading the race. Even though you start a social media campaign, managing it effectively is not easy for small businesses. Social media tools automate this process and provide better engagement across multiple sites. Here are 5 best tools to help you in this regard.

hoot suite

Hootsuite is a powerful tool for managing your social media campaigns. It is compatible with major networking sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, WordPress, etc. You can schedule your tweets or messages according to your requirements. You can easily integrate information from Facebook and other social media applications. The free version supports one account and five social profiles. Hootsuite Pro costs $10 per month and allows you to add two user accounts and unlimited social profiles. This program is suitable for small and micro businesses. While you can manage your profiles from a single dashboard, the visual appearance isn’t appealing compared to other programs.

Postling

Postling is another good tool for managing multiple social channels and platforms from a single dashboard. It supports all major social networking sites in addition to monitoring data from review sites. You can post images, videos, text and blog posts to all social sites and schedule them too. Postling costs $1 for a 30-day trial. The updated version requires $5 and supports up to 5 social profiles. You can add more accounts by paying $3 for each account. It allows you to track and monitor keywords. The iPhone app is available. Postling is perfect for companies on a tight budget.

SocialSprout

SocialSprout is a powerful tool that brings your messages across all social platforms into one single inbox. It is compatible with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. You can reply, follow or retweet efficiently with this tool. Apps for iPhone and Android are available. You can take advantage of the Discovery feature that tells you who to follow based on their activity levels. SocialSprout provides powerful analytics that can be exported to Excel or PDF. This program comes with a 30-day free trial. After that, you have to pay $39 per month for one account and 10 social profiles. The price increases as you add user accounts and social profiles.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck, as the name suggests, is a perfect tool to effectively manage your Twitter accounts. Considering its popularity, Twitter has now bought this app and is offering it for free. While managing Twitter accounts, you can also integrate other social profiles. The interface is good. Using a single dashboard, you can check keyword searches, followers, and other activities that happen on the site. Display messages from multiple accounts side by side. The new version requires more clicks to perform certain tasks.

crowd amplifier

CrowdBooster is a social media analytics tool that tells you about your audience’s behavioral trends. You can check which posts are popular, how your audience is reacting, what is the best time to post, and who to engage with. By analyzing your social media campaigns, you can improve conversion rates. The interface is intuitive. This program provides analysis in visually appealing graphs, tables, and formats to help you understand it easily. You can schedule posts. The program sends a weekly summary of the campaign’s performance. However, the analytics are not updated in real time and do not offer keyword monitoring. It only supports Twitter and Facebook. CrowdBooster is free for one Twitter account and one Facebook fan page. He charges $39 for 10 accounts and $99 for 30 accounts. Small businesses can take advantage of this program.