1. ContentCal

Social accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn+, Instagram

Price: Free (paid options available)

Our thoughts:

We're big fans of ContentCal and use it internally for managing our own social accounts. The user-friendly interface is impressively clean and easily navigated, plus the mobile app is really convenient for the team to schedule our social posts. ContentCal's free version allows 1 user to connect up to 4 social accounts. With upto 50 posts per month and video uploader it was our favourite choice to help manage our online presence.

If you're lucky enough to have a large Social Media Budget the AutoPilot package will create content on your behalf and full reporting and analysis.

Overall, ContentCal's free version offers great capability at zero cost for smaller businesses seeking social content management, and if you're willing to upgrade to a monthly subscription it really will help to get your voice heard within the most popular social networks.

2. Buffer

Social accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn+, Instagram, Pinterest

Price: Free (paid options available)

Our thoughts:

We're big fans of Buffer and use it internally for managing our own social accounts. The user-friendly interface is impressively clean and easily navigated, plus the mobile app is really convenient for the team to schedule our social posts. Buffer's free version allows 1 profile per platform meaning you can manage all of your business's social accounts in one place without all the hassle of logging in to each profile separately.

On the downside there is limited reporting and analysis with the free version, and you also need to upgrade to view your scheduled tweets in a more visual calendar view. Listening ability is also quite limited so you'll need to use it in conjunction with your social account timelines if you want to keep up with what everyone else is saying online.

3. Hootsuite

Price: Free (paid options available)

Social accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube.

Our Thoughts:

Hootsuite is probably the most well-known social scheduling tool on the market, with over 10 million customers worldwide. Unlike Buffer, Hootsuite allows users to make lists of their interactions and mentions and also create lists to monitor and listen online for potential business opportunities. The only issue with this is the screen can get a bit cluttered and overwhelming until you get familiarised with how it all works.

Whereas other tools like Buffer concentrate largely on posting out content, Hootsuite also pays attention to the listening aspect of social media which makes it perhaps a more well-rounded tool for businesses investing in social media marketing. Similarly to Buffer, it has its own mobile app for iOS and Android, which caters perfectly to marketers on-the-go.

The only potential downfall we can see with the free version of this app is that you can only link 3 social profiles and again reporting is rather basic, so if your business is seeking activity on more than 3 social media platforms you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan to see Hootsuite's real value.

4. Sprout Social

Price: From $59 (other plans available)

Social Accounts: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Google+

Our thoughts:

Sprout Social is a Chicago based company continuing to build a steady customer based worldwide. It's social scheduling tool is highly functional but again, it can be a little overwhelming to a first time user as there are lots of tabs, instructions and statistics from the moment you log in. We'd suggest that its more catered to larger corporate businesses as you can assign team members to different tasks to keep productivity streamlined (a feature which small businesses with only one social media manager may not necessarily require).

The Discovery feature is interesting though, which will help you to find keywords that your customers could be including in their posts, therefore helping to shape your future content into something you have evidence that your customers are interested in. Of all the social media management tools its analysis and reporting features are probably the best giving users a real insight into their performance on social media, as a base for improvement.

There are no free versions of Sprout Social, however all plans come with a 30-day free trial to let you see if it's the right fit for your business's social marketing plan.

5. Tweetdeck

Price: Free

Social Accounts: Twitter

Our Thoughts:

It's one of the simplest, but we must admit, Tweetdeck is a very capable tool with a whole host of features especially when you consider it comes with no price tag whatsoever. With Tweetdeck you can manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule tweets, build collections and view reports on your audience engagement. Another clever feature is the ability to mark tweets as "read" which helps social media managers to stay ultra-organised.

One instance where it falls behind its peers is that it doesn't have a mobile app, so its best used on a PC/Mac - but hey, it's free so we'll not complain!