Free Social Media Management Tools

Being on social media is a non-negotiable these days, but juggling multiple accounts on different social media platforms is time-consuming.

If you constantly find yourself toggling between screens or struggling just to maintain your social media presence, it's time to invest in a social media management tool that can do the heavy lifting for you.

Social media management tools vary in terms of function and scale, but most will help you formulate and execute your social media strategies across multiple platforms.

By using a social media management tool to schedule posts, reach your target audience, and provide social media analytics, you can improve social media engagement and performance in one fell swoop.

What Are Social Media Management Tools?

Social media management tools allow users to manage one or more social media profiles across one or multiple networks from a single dashboard.

This simplifies creating, scheduling, publishing, and monitoring your social media efforts.

Tasks like social listening, commenting and engaging with users become easier, freeing you up to focus on other aspects of the business.

The Best Free Social Media Management Tools on the Market

Here's a round-up of our favorite free social media management tools that are perfect for small businesses and social media marketers.

1.Buffer

Buffer has a free plan that will help you navigate the social media world. Buffer enables teams to publish posts automatically at the time and date of your choosing.

There's a handy shuffle ad feature that will publish the same posts in random order and provide variety in your feeds, Google Analytics Campaign tracking, and the option to create short landing pages that tell people about your business.

The benefit of Buffer is that you can post to multiple social media channels, and once you've outgrown the free plan, you can switch to a plan that enables greater team collaboration.

2.Later

Later is a popular free social media management and link-in-bio tool that works across all social media sites.

Social media managers can use Later for planning, analyzing, and publishing content online.

Later started as an app dedicated exclusively to Instagram and creating a visual content calendar; it's since expanded to several major social platforms.

You can use the free account forever, but the paid plans come with saved captions, analytics, and scheduled stories.

3.Friends + Me

Friends + Me is a useful but simple free social media management tool that enables two users to schedule five posts on two queues on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest.

The free version is a decent solution if you aren't managing many social channels.

It offers bulk scheduling, a browser extension or mobile or desktop app, and Zapier integration so you can stream content from RSS feeds for publishing.

Like many other social media management platforms, you can upgrade to a paid plan when you need to scale up.

4.Tweetdeck

If your social media strategy involves Twitter, you should consider TweetDeck.

You can use TweetDeck to manage multiple accounts from a unified interface, create a customizable social media dashboard, and monitor your Twitter account.

It's available as a web, Chrome, and desktop app. You can use it for social media scheduling, building Tweet lists, and more.

It's always free and easy to use. On the downside, you'll need to use additional tools if you use multiple social networks to convey your message, but if Twitter is your go-to social network, TweetDeck will suffice.

5.CoSchedule

CoSchedule is used to manage marketing campaigns, but it now offers a free forever version of its Marketing Calendar.

The calendar is essentially a social media scheduler for up to five messages across multiple social media platforms.

What sets CoSchedule apart from other free social media management tools is its ability to time posts according to the likelihood of getting good visibility and engagement.

It will also automatically reshare content to popular social media networks without prompting.

You can also import the last 60 days of messages or up to 100 past messages to reuse, measure or reschedule them.

6.Hootsuite

Hootsuite is probably the most established and popular app for managing your social media accounts, with good reason.

You can schedule your social media posts, generate reports, and collaborate with team members.

Unlike many other free social media management tools, you can view multiple streams at once and monitor what your customers are saying about you.

There is a free plan available for three social profiles and up to 30 scheduled messages.

You can get pretty far with the free tier, but the paid plan gives you the ability to create and promote social media ads and posts.

7.Crowdfire

If content curation is an important part of your social media campaign, Crowdfire is an extremely useful tool to use.

The free version allows a single user and three profiles across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

It comes with unlimited article and image curation so that you can share your own content or curate high-quality content from others to keep your profiles and audience engaged and ease the pressure to create content from scratch.

While you can only access one day of free advanced analytics, the information you'll receive is far more in-depth than you would receive using other social media management tools.

Crowdfire also comes with a useful Chrome extension so you can share articles on the fly without logging in.

8.Planable

Planable is a useful social media management platform that enables collaboration between marketers, which is why it's a popular choice for agencies or creators that need to share social media posts for approval.

It supports several platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram, along with YouTube.

Planable is great for teams who can give feedback on posts, have conversations, request and get approval, and schedule content automatically.

There is a free plan with 50 posts available to get you started.

9.Tailwind

Tailwind is a social media marketing tool that is perfect for highly visual platforms like Instagram.

The free version can only be used by one user at a time and three profiles (one per platform). Three platforms are supported, including Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook.

It offers photo and video support and automated post design tools to create quality content using your brand colors, photos, and fonts.

Like many of the other tools in this article, it allows for bulk uploads, which saves time in the long run.

If you use a lot of visuals and videos, Tailwind is one of the best free social media management tools on the market.

The most expensive version of the tool gives you access to unlimited posts and up to five users.

10.ContentCal

ContentCal is a good tool for social media teams. You can share ideas, create approval workflows, build your content plan and then publish your posts to multiple social media accounts and platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Medium.

ContentCal's analytics and social media monitoring tools will help you respond to mentions and messages and help you understand how well your content is performing across the various channels.

ContentCal integrates with more than 2000 other apps, so you can create a social media workflow by connecting ContentCal to useful work management tools like Slack and Trello and distributing content to channels such as email and blogs.

Pull your whole team into the content creation process, gain feedback and watch your performance improve over time.

11.Circleboom Publish

Circleboom is a social media management tool that supports Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 

It's intuitive to use, without unnecessary bells and whistles that you won't use (but end up paying for), that so many social media tools include. 

There are separate tools for scheduling content on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, a GIF downloader, and a social media marketing curation tool.

You can also use Circleboom to create social media post designs, post creators for supported social media platforms, and a QR code creator.

You can post RSS feeds to your social accounts and connect all of them at once without doing so separately for each network.

You can get access to ready-made social media post templates, so you don't need to start from scratch, and you can create different categories to manage all your social media accounts from a single place.

The free account is limited to one social account, but there are three additional paid plans to choose from.

12.Canva

Canva is a little different from the social media posting tools in this article. You can use Canva to create marketing assets and connect the work you've created directly to social media, simplifying content creation and scheduling.

The free version has several good pre-made templates, but the pro version has a rich media library with stock images and graphics to inspire you. It starts at $12.95 per month.

13.SocialOomph

Socialoomph offers three paid plans along with a free plan. A single user can schedule unlimited posts to a single social profile for free, but it is limited to a maximum of three posts per hour.

The paid versions are reasonably priced as well, with additional features.

Socialoomph keeps its interface simple, but there is a learning curve. You'll need to spend some time navigating the help documents and setting up social accounts.

Like some of the other tools, you can collaborate and work in teams with Socialoomph, although the free plan is limited to a single team.

Socialoomph enables content creation, publishing, and queues that post content across all of your social channels.

Conclusion

Social media management doesn't have to be a routine and time-consuming headache.

By using the right tools, you can simplify the entire process of creating, scheduling, and monitoring your content, saving you hours of time each week.

All you need to do is create your work, upload, and set the scheduler, and your social media management software will do the rest.