5 Recommended Tools for B2B Social Media Management (2023)

Most businesses in the B2B and A/E/C worlds focus significant resources on building a professional and engaging presence on platforms such as LinkedIn (for business development and recruiting) and Facebook (for community-building and awareness).

However, as businesses explore omni-channel strategies to target members of their audience on other platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, the management of posting calendars and the numerous variations of content can become a tedious and time-consuming task.

That’s where social media management tools come in. While there are plenty of options out there to help you save time, we’ve come up with five tools that we recommend for social media management.

Before we begin, however, it’s important to note that there is no “right” or “wrong” choice when it comes to social media management tools. After all, they’re just tools — and their ultimate value is tied to whether or not they fit your business’s specific use case.

For this reason, instead of looking for the “best” tool or the one with the most bells and whistles, we highly recommend you adjust your focus to instead look for solutions that meet your unique workflows and needs. Often, you may find that a more streamlined tool that directly addresses your specific pain points is more valuable in the grand scheme of things than the most recent “do everything” app.

1

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management tools available, and has retained a top position in the market since its launch in 2008. With the free version, you can manage up to three social media accounts in various channels including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. From a functionality standpoint, Hootsuite excels at helping marketing teams of all sizes schedule and publish content, track conversations across platforms, and measure campaign results.

Like many of the larger social media management tools, Hootsuite also includes various “Inspiration” tools to help you come up with ideas for content. Most notably in this vein, Hootsuite launched their AI assistant OwlyWriter AI in early 2023, which lets you repurpose old posts, get inspirations from existing content, turn web content into posts, and otherwise automate many aspects of the ideation and creation process.

Supported Social Networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Google My Business [View All Integrations]

2

Oktopost

Oktopost is a social media management platform that specifically caters to organizations in the B2B industry. It focuses on helping enterprise and mid-market clients manage their content — and excels in empowering marketing teams in making social campaigns, editorial calendars, and detailed analytics reports.

Oktopost can also integrate seamlessly with various CRM and marketing automation platforms, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Act-On to provide a more holistic experience and assist with brand management.

One area that Oktopost specifically excels in is employee advocacy — as they make a point of ensuring your organization’s social media presence is a shared activity and not something relegated specifically to the marketing team.

Supported Social Networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, WeChat, Xing [View Other Supported Networks]

3

Buffer

Compared to the prior two entries, Buffer is a much smaller and more manageable package that’s best suited for smaller marketing teams or individuals who are in charge of a limited number of profiles. Buffer excels in its simplicity, and is a great management platform for people just getting started with social media.

The platform’s dashboard has great scheduling flexibility that allows you to keep a consistent social media schedule without having to micro-manage the delivery times. The interface is clean, simple and easy to use. It also provides analytics about the engagement and reach of your posts, as well as an AI assistant to help with ideation and running experiments on your posts.

Supported Social Networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google My Business, TikTok [View All Channels]

4

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another great option for social media management. It creates one unified inbox where you can see all of your activity in one stream. It also has workflow management features so you can assign tasks to users to follow up with tweets or posts.

One of Sprout Social’s key features is its “Discover” tab where you can find people who follow you but you’re not following back. On the same note, there is a “Clean Up” tab where you can unfollow any silent, irregular, or “do not follow back” accounts.

Outside of these supplementary features, Sprout Social includes many of the perks seen on other platforms, such as engagement monitoring, detailed analytics, social listening capabilities, and options for employee advocacy.

However, these additional features come with an additional cost — making this platform one of the more expensive options available. For this reason, Sprout Social is excellent for larger marketing teams that place a heavy focus on social media as a core channel in their strategies, but may not be well-suited for smaller brands or ones that only post to social once or twice a week at the most.

Supported Social Networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, WhatsApp, Google My Business [See All Integrations]

5

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is an excellent middle-of-the-road option that comes with many of the advanced features found in platforms such as Sprout Social or HootSuite without the high price tag and complicated infrastructure. This tool primarily focuses on writing, publishing, monitoring, and reporting across a wide variety of social media platforms, and also comes with additional features for managing your inboxes, listening to chatter on various platforms, and more.

It boasts a unified social media inbox with real time tracking and the ability to get to a “zero” inbox — allowing managers to create workflows and see what has been handled and what hasn’t.

With the CRM component, you can classify your fan base and identify your most active fans. Monthly reporting is also a feature that is included in the price and the reports can be easily converted to PowerPoint and other formats.

Supported Social Networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google My Business, TikTok [View Supported Networks]

Choose the tool that best fits your budget and needs

There are many social media management tools out there, so it can become overwhelming to try to pick the one that best fits your needs. We hope this post will help narrow down the search and help you choose the best platform for your goals and budget.