Best Social Media Marketing Software of 2026

Managing social media marketing campaigns requires marketers to juggle a number of tasks: managing profiles on multiple social media platforms, creating and scheduling campaigns, replying to inquiries and comments, and tracking campaign engagement and performance metrics.

Doing this many tasks manually can be time-consuming and prone to error. Moreover, if you are unable to quickly respond to customer queries, you may end up losing business opportunities.

A social media marketing tool lets you manage different social media platforms, track customer comments and inquiries, and view reports on campaign performance metrics.

However, finding the right software solution for your business can be confusing. To help you make an informed purchase decision, we'll cover:

What is social media marketing software?

Common features of social media marketing software

What type of buyer are you?

Benefits of social media marketing software

Market trends to understand

What is social media marketing software?

Social media marketing software helps businesses create, track, and manage online campaigns on their brand's social media accounts. The software also provides users with reports on campaign performance metrics, such as cost, revenue, and profits, enabling users to accurately measure return on investment on these campaigns.

Common features of social media marketing software

The first step in selecting the right social media marketing tool for your business is to understand the common features of the software. This knowledge will help you select products based on your business requirements.

What type of buyer are you?

The next step is to learn about the types of buyers in the market. This knowledge will help you select products based on the type of business you are in:

• Agency buyer: If you own a social media agency, marketing agency, or PR firm, you need strong reporting functionality so that you can provide accurate cost, campaign performance, and return-on-investment reports to your clients. You also need multi-account functionality, as you'll need to manage different accounts for different clients.

• Business buyer: If you are a social media manager working at a business, you'll need software that lets you manage all the social media accounts of your business. You'll also need cost-tracking functionality to ensure that the costs of the campaign don't exceed the designated budget.

Benefits of social media marketing software

Understanding the benefits of the software will help you build a strong case for a software purchase.

• Improved response time for customer inquiries: According to a recent survey, 72% of Facebook users expect a response in less than 24 hours after posting on a brand's social media account. It's essential for marketers to ensure that each post is responded to within this timeframe. Social media marketing tools provide you with a unified inbox where you can view all comments, assign them to the right agent, and therefore reduce time-to-response.

• Accurate reporting: Social media marketing software provides you with real-time reports on campaign performance metrics, such as the number of leads, cost of paid ads, and revenue. These reports give you a complete view of your social media campaigns and help you make decisions for future campaigns.

• Efficient customer relationship management: A social media marketing solution helps you not only capture leads on social media, but also manage interactions with prospects. You can assign leads to agents, schedule appointments, and track the real-time status of each prospect.

Market trends to understand

The social media marketing landscape is evolving fast. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to be aware of recent trends that are disrupting the market. You also need to ensure that the social media marketing vendor you select is incorporating new technology.

Two prominent trends to be mindful of are:

• Chatbots will drive engagement in social media marketing campaigns: End-user engagement is the key to successful social media campaigns. Chatbots can provide visitors with instant answers to basic questions, thereby increasing engagement with prospects who would otherwise have to wait for a response. As more and more businesses look for ways to make marketing campaigns more engaging, we expect chatbots to be integral social media marketing software functionality by 2022.

• Video content is the next big thing on social media: Social media posts with videos get 48% more views than those without videos. As more and more businesses start using video-based advertisements in their social media marketing campaigns, we expect to video creation and publishing tools to become a core functionality by 2022.