Top social media automation tools to halve your workload [2024]

We live in the attention economy, where businesses and even personal brands compete daily to capture the attention of their ideal customer. Over the last 10 years, social media has proven to be a great source for capturing this attention. 

However, the competition is now so high that if you want to prosper from the attention social media has to offer, you need to be more efficient, present on as many platforms as possible, and create unique and creative content.

Social media automation is one of those mechanisms that help you be more efficient. It may seem like a fancy concept, but it's simpler than you think. Imagine it as a robot that takes care of the social media tasks that consume your time and bore you.

If you are interested in learning more about social media automation, exploring its benefits, and finding some powerful tools that can literally cut your workload in half; then stick around—this article is for you.

Table of contents

• What is social media automation?
• What is the main problem that social media automation solves?
• Who needs social media automation tools? 
• Criteria for choosing the right social media automation tool
• Best social media automation tools in 2024
  • Nuelink
  • Zoho Social 
  • MeetEdgar 
  • Zapier
• Conclusion

What is social media automation?

Social media automation refers to the use of third-party software, tools, or platforms to automate social media-related activities and manage multiple WhatsApp business accounts, Facebook and every social media account without manual interaction from the social media account owner.

It's designed to help you delegate repetitive, boring, and time-consuming tasks associated with your social media marketing efforts.

It may include but is not limited to:

• Auto-replying to DMs
• Auto-replying to comments
• Automatically resharing evergreen content
• Automated cross-posting

To clarify, social media automation and management are not the same thing. 

Social media automation focuses on automating repetitive tasks like posting and scheduling, whereas social media management covers broader activities including strategy planning, community engagement, and analytics monitoring.

What is the main problem that social media automation solves?

Mixing quantity and quality at the same time

It’s clear now that as a business or a personal brand relying on one social media platform won’t do the work anymore. 

The competition is high, and average content is everywhere. 

You need to put quality content on various social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest… And the list goes long.

The paradox is that focusing on creating or at least sharing content on multiple social media platforms, will eat up the time you need for creativity, and other aspects of your business, and personal life.

Here social media automation saves the day, by automating various social media activities that consume your time and mental effort you can have the ability to share your content on as many platforms as you want, without sacrificing precious time for creatively producing quality content that resonates with your audience, and taking care of other aspects that truly matter for you.

Beyond just saving time, social media automation plays a crucial role in maintaining consistency

Grabbing the fruits of social media and seeing its ROI overnight is not a realistic goal. 

You need to be consistent, persistent, and resilient.

As humans, it's natural for us to feel tired, become distracted, face burnout, fall ill, or feel overwhelmed. 

All these challenges make it difficult to maintain a consistent presence on social media over time, and social media automation solves it magically.

Who needs social media automation tools?

• Social Media Managers: For managing multiple accounts and brands without burning out.
• Digital Marketers: For running campaigns and analyzing social media metrics.
• YouTubers: Gian new visitors to their channels with no extra work.
• Podcasters: For sharing episodes, and updates, and engaging with listeners through social media platforms.
• Bloggers: To automate the distribution of new posts and content updates.
• Personal Brands: To maintain consistent online activity and personal engagement.
• Startups: To build and maintain their brand presence without dedicating excessive time.
• Influencers: To keep their audience engaged with regular content while saving time.
• Small Local Businesses: To promote products/services and engage with local customers.
• Non-Profit Organizations: To spread their message and engage with their community effectively.
• Freelancers: To showcase their work and attract organically new clients.
• Authors: To promote their books and maintain a relationship with readers.

All professionals above would benefit from relying on a social media automation tool. No question about that. 

However, not all of them should use the same tool. 

There are many criteria that anyone should consider before deciding which tool is perfect for their activities.

Criteria for choosing the right social media automation tool

The quality of your decisions directly correlates with the quality of questions you ask yourself beforehand. To assist you in this process, we've prepared a list of essential questions you need to ask yourself before determining which social media tool to purchase and which to pass on.

Budget

Is the pricing of the tool you are considering suitable for the budget you are putting for it? How about a price increase? If this tool makes a sudden price increase it will still be suitable for my budget, or then I need to switch to another affordable one? 

Compatibility with existing and future tools

Before making a choice, ask yourself: Does this tool have the capability to integrate with the tools I am currently using, as well as those I plan to use in the future? This includes CRM software, email marketing platforms, and analytics tools.

Multi-platform support

Does the tool you are considering support all the social media platforms you utilize in your social media marketing strategies?

Customer support

Does this tool provide top-quality support? 

How quickly do they respond to support queries?

Which support channels are available (email, chat, phone, social media)?

Are support team members knowledgeable and friendly?

Is support available 24/7 for critical issues?

How is personalized support ensured?

Growth-friendliness

When choosing a social media automation tool, it's crucial to check its scalability and adaptability to your evolving business needs.

Ask yourself: Can this tool adapt to the growth of my social media presence and changing strategies over time? By growth, we don’t mean only in terms of the number of accounts, posts, and brands but also in advanced features like analytics and team collaboration.

From its features do you see this tool is adaptable for your long-term game?

Security and compliance: 

How does the tool handle data security and privacy?

Do you agree with their Privacy Policy? Is this tool compliant with GDPR?

Best social media automation tools in 2024

• Nuelink
• Zoho Social 
• MeetEdgar 
• Zapier

Nuelink

‍Nuelink is a comprehensive social media management tool equipped with extensive automation features tailored for a wide range of professionals, including social media managers, podcasters, bloggers, e-commerce brands, and others. It is designed to place their social media marketing strategies on autopilot.

‍What is the unique feature(s) of Nuelink?What makes Nuelink unique is its automation capabilities where it supports almost every platform related to E-commerce (Like Shopify, Etsy, and others), podcasting (Like Spotify, Captivate, and others), Blogging (Like Medium, Ghost, and others). This automation 

‍Which problem is solved by this unique feature(s)? Online shop owners, podcasters, bloggers, YouTubers, and others often struggle to regularly post and promote their work or products on their social media to keep their fans interested and get views, shares, sales, or whatever metric they are looking for from social media.With Nuelink, they can set up a one-time automatic sharing for each social media site they use.This significantly reduces the time and effort required to grow on social media regardless of each category you fall in.If you are a podcaster, for example, connect your favorite podcast service to Nuelink. Add all the social media you want to use to this tool, and set up how you want things to be shared automatically.When you put a new podcast episode online, Nuelink will notice the new episode and use the rules you set up before to share it on your social media pages, as well as write a unique caption for each post by AI, add relevant hashtags, and more.

‍Nuelink’s pricing‍

‍Individual plans:‍

• Standard: $15/month
• Premium: $25/month
• Business: $49/month

‍Agency plans:‍

• Agency: $90/month
• Agency-Plus: $300/month

‍Does Nuelink offer a free trial? ‍

‍Yes. Nuelink offers a 14-day free trial.‍

Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a complete social media management tool designed to automate a variety of social media tasks. It stands out as the first social media tool capable of enabling users to track the revenue generated from their social media marketing activities. As a part of Zoho's suite of digital products, it aligns seamlessly with other products such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk, and over 40 additional tools, enhancing overall connectivity for digital businesses. 

What is the unique feature(s) of Zoho Social?The biggest advantage of using Zoho is the ability to connect Zoho Social with Zoho Desk (Customer Service Help Desk Software) and Zoho CRM (Sales CRM Platform).These integrations allow you to engage with prospects and generate leads from social media, as well as manage customer and client inquiries and issues received through social media DMs and comments by creating support tickets and assigning them to your team. Another great feature of Zoho Social is its team and client management capabilities. You can add clients to a simple dashboard, keep them separate from each other, and assign each team member to a specific client with dedicated tasks to do.

‍Which problem is solved by this unique feature(s)? Connecting your social media tool with CRM and support desk enables you to manage an entire ecosystem within a single platform.Many businesses struggle with the complexity and time required to manage social media, customer support, and CRM on different platforms.Especially when these tools are not integrated, it makes the work 10 times harder.This integration capability ensures seamless cooperation between various aspects of your business, eliminating the need to switch from one tool to another.The other feature makes client management and team management easier for agency owners.Agencies often struggle to monitor each client's progress, which team members are helping them, and what tasks they're doing. Zoho simplifies this by putting everything on one easy dashboard.‍

Zoho Social’s pricing

• Standard plan: $15/month
• Professional plan: $35/month
• Premium plan: $55/month

Does Zoho Social offer a free trial?

Yes. Zoho Social offers a 15-day free trial.

MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a social media scheduling platform with the primary goal of ensuring that brand owners never run out of content to share. It introduced the innovative concept of a structured content library, allowing users to categorize their content to increase clarity and focus in their social media marketing strategies. MeetEdgar is one of the first social media tools to bring the concept of evergreen content automation into existence

What is the unique feature(s) of MeetEdgar?

What sets MeetEdgar apart from others is its content organization feature. MeetEdgar allows you to organize your content into distinct categories, each with its own schedule and set of rules.

Another great aspect is the content recycling feature. If a category runs out of scheduled content, it can recycle the content for you, meaning it will re-share old content as if it's new.

Which problem is solved by this unique feature(s)? 

Handling various social media platforms and matching the content's tone can be tough and puzzling. 

By sorting your social media posts into categories such as "Quotes," "Testimonials," and "Tips," you can easily keep an eye on your strategy's progress. 

Also, some social media strategies involve sharing the same content over again, called evergreen content. Instead of scheduling these posts by hand every time, using a feature that recycles them automatically can make things much simpler and more efficient.

MeetEdgar’s Pricing

• Eddie monthly plan: $29.99/month
• Edgar monthly plan: $49.99/month

Does MeetEdgar offer a free trial?

Yes! MeetEdgar offers a 7-day free trial.‍

Zapier

Zapier is a web-based workflow automation platform. 

It enables you to create automated workflows between more than 2000 online services, called Zaps, which trigger actions in different apps based on specific conditions.

‍What is the unique feature(s) of Zapier?

Zapier is not just a social media automation tool; it's a workflow automation platform. 

The unlimited integrations offered by Zapier allow you not only to automate your social media activities but also to create comprehensive, time-saving automated workflows of which social media is just one component. 

By integrating social media with other digital services and automating tasks between them—such as from LinkedIn to Slack, or Facebook to Google Sheets—Zapier enables a seamless automation experience.

Which problem is solved by this unique feature(s)? 

Social media is just one piece of the bigger picture in digital marketing and business. Even with the usual tools that help automate social media, businesses can get mixed up trying to figure out the right kind of automation for different parts of their work.

Here Zapier serves as a friendly connector.

It lets you link up different online services that don't usually work together, helping you build a smoothly running and automated system for your business that includes but is not limited to social media.

Zapier’s pricing

• Free: $0 USD/month (Free forever)
• Starter: Starting from $29.99 USD/month
• Professional: Starting from $73.50 USD/month
• Team: Starting from $103.50 USD/month

Does Zapier offer a free trial?

Yes! Zapier does offer a 14-day trial of premium features & apps.

Conclusion

Contrary to popular belief, AI is not on its way—it's already here, transforming the way we do business, and, soon enough, it will change every aspect of what we do. 

There are countless AI tools available to assist with every facet of your business, including social media. Your role is to adapt as quickly as possible and begin using these tools to your advantage.