Increasingly, businesses are finding they need access to top Social Media management Tools to help automate their online marketing efforts.

As businesses and professionals alike embrace social media more and more, they are finding that one of the major challenges facing them include finding the best way to manage multiple social media platforms, via social media management tools.

This challenge is being eagerly met head-on by an increasing number of network management providers and software-as-a-service vendors. The key here is optimising workflow, and increasing efficiency while growing your brand and communities. The last thing we need to is incorporate new platforms to slow us down ! Here are some of the more successful tools at our disposal.

While there are many social media management tools out there, the main criteria we used for this review included :

1) Focus on management , rather than intelligence gathering

2) Capability of managing more than a single platform

3) A clear and strong degree of use within the social media management community.

Headnote: Never heard of Local Measure ? Stay tuned ! We imagine they will be profiled in our next review.

Here we go …. in no particular order 🙂

HootSuite

Hootsuite is one of the popular mainstays of Social Media Management. While it is used successfully by global brands such as Sony Music, Virgin, Pepsico, it is also very popular amongst small, medium and enterprise organisations.

Dashboard monitoring, one-click posting, professional-grade scheduling, Google Analytics and Facebook insights integration, and the wide range of networks incorporated in its design all contribute to its success in the market. Hootsuite embraces Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ Pages, as well as Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress and others.

Uniquely,  it incorporates an interactive ROI calculator, and helpful case studies.

While not free for the more useful elements of this software, Hootsuite has a low barrier of entry . There are 3 different membership levels including a free one At the time of writing, you can get a free trial for 30 days.

SproutSocial

SproutSocial is a powerful management system catering for the largest platforms, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn  and Google+.  It’s visual, graphical interface is intuitive, so it allows you to quickly understand the significance of the information being displayed. It has a single stream “Smart Inbox’ for all your messaging from all your managed platforms.  One of its strongest features is a reporting module that is brandable for customer facing presentations, if you are a service provider.

The Social CRM component provides seamless integration to 3rd party systems such as Zendesk and Salesforce. As such,  handing you and your teams, a complete view of every contact ; through every historical sales, support and customer engagement.

It has 3 paid membership levels, with a 30 day free trial at each level so you can try it out. It also includes its free mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Buffer

Buffer has a sophisticated scheduling platform, perhaps even more flexible than HootSuite ( whereas one of HootSuite’s strengths in contrast is its ability to listen and monitor social conversations. Embedded in the software is uniquely granular scheduling options, for Tweets, Facebook Updates, and LinkedIn posts.

Sign-up is free, and Buffer has an “Awesome Account” allowing unlimited posts and to be buffered, 12 social profiles from your LinkedIn Twitter and Facebook accounts, and 2 team members. Its paid monthly levels include extras such as analytics.

SocialOomph

Well, SocialOomph certainly isn’t in the running for the sexiest website. But if you after a nicely packaged platform that helps you manage your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plurk, App.net and Onlywire accounts, and boost productivity, this is it.

SocialOomph has a very cool feature that provides for email submission of your social media updates. How cool is that ? No longer needing to login or be directly connected is a blessing for many.

It has a free and paid version. The paid subscription offers such extras as drip-feeds, bulk uploads, and spam control.

MarketMeSuite

MarketMeSuite is growing its customer market at a very rapid pace catering for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn platform management. It has both free and paid versions, with a free trial available for the premium service, which is the one that you want, as the free version is essentially a teaser only.

This platform has  a dashboard, not unlike that of Hootsuite or TweetDeck, and is both a productivity enhancer and a social media intelligence gatherer. It makes managing and marketing  on multiple social media platforms a breeze. The dashboard, named Inbox For Social™ Works ,  displays like an email client, instantly lending itself to the comfort levels of most computer users. Very clever !

As well as one-click management, this platform goes further with customer lead generation via by geotargeting, and real-time search.

If you’re struggling to maximise all your social media marketing, then one of the solutions above may be right for you !