When implementing your social media strategy, it’s easy to realize that manually posting on multiple different websites, multiple times a day, isn’t optimal for your busy schedule. But it’s not easy to tell from a baseline or pricing page which tools are not only the best for efficiency but best for your business.
Instead of spending hours of extra research combing through all of your options and sitting through countless demos and free trials, we’ve compiled a list of the best social media dashboards that fit your budget and brand.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- What is a social media dashboard
- What to include in your social media dashboard
- Best social media dashboards
- Free social media dashboards
What is a Social Media Dashboard
Keeping track of social media activity can be challenging if you don’t have the right tools. A social media dashboard is a tool that consolidates your social media accounts and activity in one place. With a social media dashboard, you will be able to create and schedule posts, execute advertising campaigns, and track performance.
What to Include in Your Social Media Dashboard
There are some key features to look for in a social media dashboard. They include:
- Scheduling: Plan and queue future posts for multiple social platforms.
- Trends analysis: Stay on top of the latest trends by monitoring keywords and hashtags.
- Competitive analysis: Monitor brand and competitor mentions.
- Messaging: Audience engagement is key for any business. A social media dashboard enables you to quickly reply to messages from one place.
- Reporting: Reporting features like customizable dashboards let you share insights with your team and stakeholders.
These social media dashboards are optimized for every type of SMB; whether you’re a social media team or a party of one, these apps will help you accomplish your goals in a streamlined, efficient way.
1. HubSpot
Price: Included in Professional version ($800/mo) or Enterprise version ($3,200/mo)
Why it’s great: All-in-one social media software
With HubSpot’s social media management tool, you get an all-inclusive package. Connect up to 300 accounts and schedule up to 10,000 posts a month. Plus, for super in-depth planners, you can schedule posts up to 3 years in advance.
Get started with the HubSpot Social Media Dashboard.
HubSpot’s social media management features include monitoring mentions and engagement, and provides full analytic reports. You’re able to schedule posts all in one place without leaving the system.
Features:
- Schedule posts
- Monitor mentions and engagement
- Report on metrics
2. Later
Price: $9, $19, $29, $49 per month, and enterprise pricing
Why it’s great: Instagram scheduling
While you can connect Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest profiles, Later is best for Instagram scheduling. This is because of its image-based content calendar scheduling, so you can see a bird’s eye view of your brand in a monthly, visual format.
Later is also an Instagram partner, which means it integrates with Instagram’s API. This partnership means your account information will stay completely safe, which is important for Instagram Business accounts that have Shopping set up.
Features:
- Feed preview before posting
- Discover optimal posting times
- Hashtag recommendations
3. Sendible
Price: $29 up to $299 per month
Why it’s great: Agency-based management
Are you a social media or marketing agency? Sendible may be the answer to unkempt management: it’s a tool fit for an agency with clients. It helps you streamline how you manage brands and offers a couple unique features that help you succeed.
Sendible has a royalty-free image search tool and a Canva integration. Sendible also has social listening tools, a Reports function, scheduling, and post previews. To put it simply: this is a full dashboard and suite of tools to put your client accounts all in one place.
Features:
- Respond to messages, comments, and mentions from one place
- Automated reports
- Content suggestions
4. Tailwind
Price: $9.99 up to $799.99 per month, or enterprise pricing
Why it’s great: Pinterest and Instagram management
Tailwind is a very unique program, providing services for two apps normally not paired with each other: Pinterest and Instagram. It makes sense, however, considering both apps focus on visual multimedia. Offering a full media dashboard with scheduling, social listening, and analytics tools, Tailwind also has a few interesting program-specific services.
First, it gives suggestions about how to improve Instagram and Pinterest performance. It also comes with a way to promote Pinterest content and manage Instagram user-generated content. If your brand is heavily focused on visuals, Tailwind may be right for you.
Features:
- Create social posts, including images
- Hashtag finder
5. Sprout Social
Price: $99 up to $249 per user per month
Why it’s great: Team-based management
Sprout Social is a dashboard platform that’s focused entirely on social media teams. What you get for your money is a full suite of tools, including options that allow you to create and schedule posts, social listening tools, and most of all: analytic data.
The analytic tools are the shining star of Sprout Social. Expansive, in-depth reporting is available. If that’s a focus for your brand, consider Sprout. They make the reports so professional and easy to read, there’s no editing required.
Features:
- Identify industry trends and influencers
- Discover best send times
6. MeetEdgar
Price: $49/month
Why it’s great: 100% automated scheduling
MeetEdgar is an app with a different approach to social media management, is. All users do is upload categorically-based content into their account and create time slots for when they want their account to post said content.
Then, according to the time slots and categories, the app will schedule and upload content. If you want your Twitter account to post a meme at 11 AM on a Thursday, MeetEdgar would search through the “Meme” category of content you’ve already uploaded, schedule, and post it.
Managers might like this option, if they don’t have enough time to constantly schedule and upload content. They can plug in their entire content calendar at the start of the month and remove the heavy lifting for the next few weeks.
Features:
- A/B test posts
- Content library to save and store posts
Post-enhancing dashboards such as these can take care of your social strategy without losing any of quality.
1. TweetDeck
Price: Free
Why it’s great: Twitter dash management
TweetDeck is amazing if you’re tired of flipping back and forth through the different tabs on Twitter. It’s a free extension of twitter (no download required) that automatically gives you your account’s Home, Notifications, Trending, and Messages in a dashboard view.
This app is especially handy for posting quickly. You can engage with your Twitter in-app, and it feels like a much faster method of running your account than the in-browser functionality . Plus, TweetDeck automatically updates with any new notifications.
Features:
- Single dashboard view
- Instantly view updates
2. TubeBuddy
Price: Free plan, or $9 up to $49 per month
Why it’s great: YouTube management
If you have a large YouTube presence, consider TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy offers a hefty suite of perks to present a full dashboard. Categories include video dashboard, video SEO, bulk processing, promotion, data & research, and productivity.
The screenshot above features one of TubeBuddy’s card template features. Card templates streamline the process of uploading and finalizing YouTube videos, making it easier to sort videos into a playlist on your channel.
You can install the program for free on Chrome, working sort of like an extension. The free plan gives you access to analytics, productivity, and SEO tools to get started. TubeBuddy is also a YouTube Partner and integrates with Alexa.
Features:
- Brand alerts
- A/B testing
- AI Title Generator
3. MavSocial
Price: Free plan, or $19 up to $499 per month
Why it’s great: Visual-based streamlined management
This is a great post-enhancing tool. MavSocial has a focus on visual-based management, and as such, offers unique perks, like editing multimedia content and a stock photo digital library. With the editing tools, you can add filters to your photos, crop, and search for royalty-free images.
On top of all of this, MavSocial has a full dashboard suite, meaning you can schedule content and engage with followers. MavSocial supports YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The app is also an Instagram Partner.
Features:
- Create campaigns
- Automate evergreen content
4. Hootsuite
Price: Free plan, or $29 up to $599 per month
Why it’s great: All-in-one social media management
Hootsuite is a popular social media tool and boasts over 15 million users. The free plan lets you add three social accounts from different platforms on one screen and has a limit on how many posts are available to make.
While user-friendly, Hootsuite is an expansive app. You can create ads, running an ROI report on those ads, and also has options to schedule and create posts. Note that you can only post on your Instagram using the scheduler, if you have an Instagram Business account.
Features:
- Publish and schedule posts
- Canva templates
- Hashtag suggestions
Every business is unique, and so is every social media dashboard. Because of that, finding the best fit can be daunting. Covering all your bases can be simplified with a social media dashboard, as well as building a community and social presence.
If you want to take a crack at building your own content calendar that’ll help you plan your social media posts, check out our article here.
