Top 20 Social Media Management Tools

Angelo Fernandez | @angelobfs

One of the great challenges of any social media effort is that the landscape is always changing. Social media websites are popping up and fading away continuously as are the tools to manage them. I have spent hundreds of hours using, researching, testing, and comparing various social media tools over the past 2 years working at social media companies. And here (in no particular order) are my top 20 social media management tools.

Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/ The leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks. My favorite aspect of Hootsuite is how long it's been around. Any social media tool with the longevity of Hootsuite has to be taken very seriously because there has to be a reason it is still around with all the competition out there.
uberVU http://www.ubervu.com/ uberVU is the only end-to-end social intelligence dashboard that covers all 4 social media value pillars: Monitoring, Analytics & ReportingEngagement, Workflow. One of the few tools that manages almost every social service, with a total of an impressive 25 as of now. The customizability when tracking and creating reports is amazing as well.
PageLever http://pagelever.com/ PageLever is a tool that takes Facebook Insights and adds more analytics—like how many of your fans are using mobile devices. After using PageLever you realize how little information Facebook Insights pulls by itself. For a robust and comprehensive look into your Facebook page you need a tool like PageLever.
Tweetspinner https://tweetspinner.com/ Our Web-based app increases your Twitter productivity. Automatically de-spam/archive your DM inbox. Use our scheduler to archive all of your Direct Messages to our system. What an incredibly simple tool, it is perfect for new and experienced social media users. One of the biggest strengths of the tool is the ability to grow your accounts.
Sprout Social http://sproutsocial.com/ Our web application integrates with Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands. Working at a company with staff all around the world, you learn to appreciate tools like Sprout Social that do an excellent job of making it easy to manage and filter tasks for different members of the team.
Sysomos http://www.sysomos.com/ Sysomos is redefining social media analytics by giving corporations, marketers, public relations agencies and advertisers the intelligence and insight needed to make smarter business and strategic decisions. The ever so subtle feature that sets Sysomos apart from the competition is the use of Boolean words in queries to find better results when monitoring social media channels.
EdgeRank Checker http://edgerankchecker.com/ EdgeRank is an algorithm that ranks objects in the Facebook News Feed. Pages with high EdgeRank Scores will be more likely to show up in the news feed, than Pages with low EdgeRank Scores. I was skeptical of the EdgeRank algorithm until I began to use EdgeRank Checker. They really know what they're doing and the "grading" they use is a nice touch as well.
Involver http://www.involver.com/ Involver helps the world's most ambitious brands and agencies create meaningful connections across the social web. If you want a monitoring tool that is more built towards developers, then Involver is the right choice for you. The ability to easily customize Facebook tabs is great.
Simply Measured http://simplymeasured.com/ Simply Measured provides easy Social Media Measurement and Analytics for data-driven agencies and brands. Analytics, as the name suggests, are the strength of Simply Measured. The clean and colorful layouts makes deciphering tons of information easy for anyone to understand.
SpredFast http://spredfast.com/ Our Social CRM platforms helps social media practitioners gain Social Advantage by monitoring, engaging, coordinating and integrating social media with one, robust tool. Outside of the strong monitoring platform the biggest difference between SpredFast and the competition is its focus on generating leads for your company.
Gremln http://gremln.com/ Gremln helps you maximize your social media impact and measures your results, allowing you to see what’s working, what isn’t, and how your customers are interacting with your brand. Gremln's ability to translate messages from 40 different languages assures you that a mention of your company won't ever go unnoticed. And having an adorable mascot doesn't hurt either.
Tweepi http://tweepi.com/ Tweepi Twitter Follow Management Utility is a set of Twitter tools to add, follow and unfollow tweeps in bulk. The best way to describe Tweepi, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, is as a necessary evil. Because as much as I dislike using it, you can't argue that it yields amazing results.
Alerti http://en.alerti.com/ Alerti is your social media monitoring and management service based on a search engine that continuously scans all types of sources. Alerti is all about keeping you up to date on the latest messages that pop up online, but the feature that interests me is the ability to comment internally on messages before sharing with other team members.
CoTweet http://cotweet.com/ Helps teams manage one or more Twitter accounts by providing tweet assignments, notes,and on-duty status. Collaboration, surprise surprise, is the strength of CoTweet. The features make sure you don't step on anyone's toes while collaborating on work.
Shoutlet http://shoutlet.com/ The Shoutlet do-it-yourself SaaS solution gives brands & agencies the tools to publish, engage, & measure all of their social marketing in one platform. The Canvas tool allows you to easily build HTML pages, which alongside the social media aspects, is a powerful combination. Plus, making social profiles from captured information is ingenious. 
Radian6 http://www.radian6.com/ Radian6 was created with the idea that companies need to actively engage in Social Media Monitoring. Intelligence about online conversations is critical—companies need to know what’s being said about their brand, industry, and competitors online. Radian6 is one of the more robust tools out there and incorporates social media with aspects of your company such as public relations and customer service, along with the typical services provided.
Vitrue http://www.vitrue.com/ With world-class brands and innovative marketers using our products, Vitrue is an established leader in the social marketing space. Vitrue has insider-level information about Facebook and Google+, keeping you ahead of your competitors. Another nice addition is their shopping features you can incorporate onto Facebook pages.
Wildfire http://www.wildfireapp.com/ Wildfire social media marketing software is a powerful platform to grow, engage and monetize your audience across social networks. The Wildfire suite's campaign builder is absolutely wonderful. It makes it possible for almost anyone to create a custom Facebook campaign tab, even if you have almost no experience whatsoever.
Engage121 http://www.engage121.com/ Engage121 is a social media management application that allows users to listen and speak across the entire social web. It evaluates activity with deep analytics. Engage121 is one of the only tools that is tailor-made for franchises and their corporations to work in a harmonious fashion. It allows for corporate to oversee while franchises keep their "voice" in tact.
Social Miner http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11349/index.html Cisco SocialMiner is a social media customer care solution that can help you proactively respond to customers and prospects communicating through public social media networks. Social Miner is a very solid monitoring tool overall, but their filtering tool is miles ahead of the competition. As you remove results from queries it learns what kind of tweets/messages you don't care for and actually learns to better your results as you move forward.

Please let me know if there are any social media management tools that I may have left out and perhaps why they should have made the list so I can look into them. Thanks in advance and I hope you enjoyed my top 20 list.

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