A set of professions was born whose designations range from Communication Professional to Community Manager, but whose responsibilities always go to build and manage the online presence of companies. One of the strands of this online presence inevitably passes through pages on social media. However, the number of social networks does not stop increasing, and with them the specifics of each one.

The Communication Professional thus has the task of creating content for all the platforms in which the company has expression and adapting it to different platforms.

Given that each social network has different characteristics, audiences, potentialities and different ideal publishing times, managing all this can be a time-consuming task. Fortunately, there are a few tools that can help the Communication Professional control all activity on social media, from scheduling publications to analyzing results and research trends.

In this article, we present those we consider to be the top five social media management tools, alerting to the advantages and disadvantages of each.

1. Hootsuite

HootSuite is the most popular social networking management tool for businesses. From a single dashboard, you can manage multiple profiles of different social media, monitor conversations about particular topics, measure campaign results, and schedule publications. HootSuite offers several plans, including a free one that allows you to integrate 3 profiles of different social networks.

Advantages

• Free option;

• Allows publishing and scheduling content; Has automatic programming option;

• Has analysis tools included.

Disadvantages

• It does not allow to create visual elements inside the platform.

2. Post-Planner

Post-Planner was born as an app optimized for Facebook, but nowadays it is a tool to locate, filter and plan content for Facebook and Twitter.

Advantages

• Integration with Canva, a free website for graphic design tools, with an easy-to-use interface and access to one million images that allows you to create images in real time;

• Identification of trending content for sharing (especially useful for companies that do not produce or share little of their own content);

• Recommendation of content based on industry and interests;

• Content search by keywords and hashtag.

Disadvantages

• It's paid;

• Only allows integrating two social networks (Facebook and Twitter).

3. Buffer

Buffer is a simple design tool that focuses on scheduling publications. Buffer lets you link profiles from the following social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+.

Advantages:

• Allows custom scheduling schedules. You can choose the automatic publishing option - in which the Buffer determines the best publishing time taking into account audience engagement - and choose the daily publishing frequency;

• Of the tools mentioned, it is the one that has the most simple and intuitive design.

Disadvantages:

• Like Post Panner, Buffer does not allow scheduling of Instagram publications.

4. Tailwind

This is the best platform to manage Pinterest. Pinterest is an image-sharing site that is described by company CEO Ben Silbermann as a "catalog of ideas." Tailwind lets you see what's "trendy," and identify influencers.

Advantages

• Simplicity: Tailwind allows you to schedule publications by dragging and dropping content in the calendar;

• Analyzes the time the audience is most active and publishes at those times.

Disadvantages

• It works only for Pinterest, meaning it is only useful for companies that share graphic or visual content, such as bloggers, design companies, architecture, among others.

5. Onlypult

If your company is very active in Instagram, the best publishing management tool is Onlypult. This tool allows you to manage, schedule and search content from multiple accounts through a simple user interface.

Advantages

• Allows management of multiple accounts at the same time.

Disadvantages

• It is exclusive to Instagram;

• It is paid, has no free option;

• The content must be created before it is uploaded to Onlypult.