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Top Free Social Media Management Tools March 25, 2011 by chicagosocial Leave a Comment (Edit) This article is composed of the top free social media management tool reviews. It is an unbiased look at the most popular engagement consoles available, the networks that they support, pricing, and a sourced review. All social networks are subject to have their reviews added to, revised, or removed as deemed necessary by the editor. This collection is an assembly of sourced reviews, consolidated into one article for reader convenience. The author of this article makes no claim that this is original work, but simply wishes to provide readers with a more convenient and less-biased viewpoint on their options when considering social media management applications. Image by Gustavo Pimenta via Flickr CoTweet http://cotweet.com Networks Supported: Price: Free (up to 5 social networks), Enterprise Plan $1,500/month 1. Like HootSuite, CoTweet is a free and easy tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts — up to five — with a single login. It also allows brand and keyword monitoring through Twitter search. This Twitter management tool’s true distinguishing feature is its workflow management capabilities (shown above). When an @ reply comes in to an account, you can assign it to a person on your CoTweet task to respond to. They’ll be notified via email and on their own CoTweet page. Plus, the tool allows you to take notes on Twitter users for your co-users to see. Full Article | Amp | Source | 2. CoTweet is an excellent tool for small businesses or divisions of larger businesses that spread social media duties among team members and have a customer-service approach to engagement. Like many SMM services, CoTweet allows updates and follow-up messages to be assigned to specific social media managers. This can make responses more relevant as team members with certain knowledge bases can handle appropriate questions and comments from followers. The responder’s initials are included at the end of the tweet, letting the follower know there’s a person behind the handle.  What’s different about CoTweet is its OnDuty status, which notes who is responsible for social streams at a certain time. Aside from organizing your SMM schedule, it allows for more passive monitoring. The person on duty can receive e-mails when something needs to be acted on, freeing him or her up to go to meetings or take calls while remaining aware of social media activity. CoTweet supports Twitter and Facebook and recently launched an iPhone app. The Standard edition is free and allows up to six Twitter accounts. The Enterprise version costs $1,500 a month but you can request a free demo. Full Article | Amp | Source | EasyTweets http://easytweets.com Supported Networks: Twitter Price: Free 1. EasyTweets is a low-cost Twitter management tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts — the more you pay, the more continuous searches, feeds and accounts you can track. With this tool, you can automatically post RSS feed content and track RSS traffic in Google Analytics. That way, you can easily track traffic from Twitter and understand what users do when they get to your site. Another useful feature, the Twitter management tool lets you set up continuous searches for brand mentions (shown above), and auto follow some or all users who mention your brand. Plus, you can be set up to send SMS or email alerts when people mention your brand. So wherever you are, you won’t miss your chance to respond to a prospect. Full Article | Amp | Source | Image via CrunchBase Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com Supported Networks: Twitter, Facebook, LInkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress, Ping.fm Price: Free (ad supported, up to 5 social networks), $5.99/month (Pro Plan); $1499/month (Enterprise Plan); Other Scalable Options Available 1. Overview: HootSuite is the Social Media Dashboard. HootSuite helps marketers manage social media campaigns, identify potential audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple social channels. Using HootSuite’s social media dashboard, teams can collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook (individual accounts and pages), Linkedin, WordPress and other social networks via web, desktop or mobile platforms. Hootsuite provides campaign tracking results as a summary or by individual message. Benefits: HootSuite is one of the more popular dashboard applications, but many users may not be taking full advantage of its features. Over the past few months lots of new functions have been added that make HootSuite an option for nearly any level user. Some features that users should explore (if you haven’t already) include its ability to publish to multiple platforms, schedule updates, team collaboration tools, task assigning, real-time result tracking and web analytics integration. Intended User: HootSuite has 3 price plans – a free Basic version (ad-supported) which provides up to 5 social networks, a Pro plan for $5.99/month that includes unlimited social networks, feeds, stats and Google Analytics integration, and an Enterprise level plan with a multitude of features for $1499/month. The basic plan is recommended for those looking to get started with a social media management system, and upgrading it to a Pro account will provide a lot of features at a very reasonable price. Power users will want to explore the Enterprise level and compare it to other top-tier SMMS options. Full Article | Amp | Source | 2. HootSuite is a great — and free — tool for managing multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm accounts. The Twitter and social media management tool allows you to personalize columns, so you can view multiple feeds from the same social networking account or multiple feeds from different social networking accounts. For example, with my personalized Twitter tab (shown above), I can view my Twitter home feed, Twitter mentions, sent Tweets and a saved search for “online marketing” — all from one screen. Plus, HootSuite allows you to create a message and choose which social accounts you want the message to be automatically posted to. Full Article | Amp | Source | 3. Like SocialOomph, Hootsuite will automate your tweets. But it’s most useful feature is how it juggles multiple social media accounts. Not only can you create a dashboard that gives lets you monitor your Twitter accounts, but you can add your Facebook (this includes Facebook pages), LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress blog, MySpace and FourSquare accounts. This is so integrated that you can write one update that goes to any and all of those social media timelines/pages. I don’t want to do that, but I do use it to monitor and update accounts one at a time. It saves me time to round up all my social media activity onto one page. Full Article | Amp | Source | MediaFunnel http://mediafunnel.com Supported Networks: Facebook, Twitter Price: Free (2 users/2 channels) or $4.95/month per user/channel Offers a Business Social Media platform for Facebook and Twitter supporting multiple users per profile and editorial review. Includes monitoring and integrates with Salesforce.com. Full Article | Amp | Source | PeopleBrowsr http://my.peoplebrowsr.com/ Supported Networks: Twitter, RSS Price: Free This Twitter and social media management tool, currently in Beta version, offers a very simple, visual browser-based dashboard view of social activity. PeopleBrowsr uses an interface similar to email, with the Twitter or other social feeds appearing as a list in the center of the screen, and additional options in the left nav (see above). PeopleBrowsr allows you to create and manage groups by adding public or private tags to any users from any of your different social sites. Then you can view everyone in a group in a widget of their own. Full Article | Amp | Source | Postling http://postling.com Supported Networks: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, WordPress, Blogger Price: Free Use Postling to create content, stay organized and reach your customers. Link up your social media accounts and manage them all in one place. Full Article | Amp | Source | Image by Henk-Jan van der Klis via Flickr Seesmic http://seesmic.com Supported Networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare and Google Buzz Price: Free Web and desktop tools to manage social marketing activity on Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Google Buzz and Linkedin plus a plug-in marketplace for more social management options. Full Article | Amp | Source | Sendible http://sendible.com Supported Networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Google Buzz, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and more Price: Free 30 Day Trial; $9.99/month (Solo Plan); $19.99/month (Marketer Plan); $49.99/month (Business Plan); $99.99/month (Enterprise Plan); Variety of other plans available Overview: Sendible bills itself as a “one-stop-shop” for all your marketing needs. It allows you to manage multiple social channels, email, SMS and blog accounts all from one interface. Sendible supports Facebook status and page updates, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Google Buzz, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and a bunch more. It provides the ability to share posts from your blogs and RSS feeds, schedule messages, respond to feedback, and provides reporting on clicks, views, shares and message reaction. Read full article here: http://chicagosocial.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/social-media-dashboard-systems/ Full Article | Amp | Source | Image by Kevglobal via Flickr TweetDeck http://tweetdeck.com Supported Networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Foursquare and Google Buzz Price: Free 1. This free desktop browser helps you keep track of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace activities from multiple accounts. Like the other tools mentioned here, you can update your accounts, follow topics with saved searches, and manage conversations with @ replies and direct messages from within TweetDeck. But the social media management tool offers some more advanced features as well. TweetDeck allows you to record, share or watch video clips, and view YouTube videos, from within the tool (shown above). Plus, you can share and view photos, as TweetDeck now supports Flickr, Twitgo and mobypicture. Full Article | Amp | Source | 2. TweetDeck is your best (and free) bet if you’re looking to manage all your personal social media profiles. TweetDeck allows you to connect across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google Buzz. You can update all or just a few with the same status at one time. The design is clean, user friendly and even makes some networks more fun. For example, it integrates Google Maps into your Foursquare feed, visualizing your friends’ checkins. You can also view photos and videos from within the tool. As you might have guessed from the name, TweetDeck is best at managing Twitter accounts. It makes the experience more customizable by organizing feeds, mentions, messages and searches across columns. TweetDeck is probably best when dealing with four or five accounts at a time (whether that be all Twitter accounts or a mix of the other networks it supports). Though the dashboard is generally easy to use, it can get bogged down if your streams have a lot of activity, making it difficult to keep up with updates and engagement. 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