10 Community Management Tools for Social Media

Fun fact: I could talk about Taylor Swift for hours. I’m in several social media groups dedicated to Swifties, not to mention the Taylor Swift Reddit thread that I proudly bookmarked on my laptop.

Why do you care about my Taylor Swift obsession? You don’t. But, believe it or not, you can cash in on these online communities as a business owner.

No, not Taylor Swift, but on social media communities. Social media groups bring people together and encourage discussion related to your business or industry. Work in HVAC? There are home improvement groups. Own a beauty salon? There are makeup-lover groups. 

Creating and running groups like these is a popular social media strategy for small businesses. And, in this post, I’ll explain how to do it with community management tools. We’ll explore these tools, learn how they work, and review the best ones for small businesses. Let’s get started. 

What are community management tools for social media?

A community management tool is software that helps you manage a group of social media followers. Whether it’s a community group or your business account, these tools increase engagement, improve brand loyalty, and make authentic connections with your audience.

Think of social media communities as word-of-mouth marketing opportunities. Managing a community on social media means responding to comments, replying to direct messages, and gathering insights on what your customers say about your business. Community management involves customer support (responding to customer questions), sales (answering prospective customers’ questions), and crisis management (addressing negative comments).

As a social media professional, I look for these features in a community management tool:

• Social Listening: This feature tracks online conversations and shows what people say about a topic, brand, or industry. Monitoring social media sites, online reviews, and forums helps businesses research customer opinions, trends, and concerns.
• Sentiment Analysis: Sentiment analysis determines if comments are positive, negative, or neutral. It helps businesses understand customer feelings by analyzing reviews, social media posts, and other text sources.
• Shared Inbox. A shared inbox gathers messages from multiple communication channels — like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram — into one place for easier management. It helps businesses respond more efficiently without switching between platforms.
• Review monitoring and replies. Review monitoring tracks reviews across various sites to improve your online reputation. This tool makes it easy to respond to customers, improve services, and maintain a positive brand image.
• Templated responses. Templated responses are pre-written messages that solve common inquiries. They help businesses respond faster, maintain consistency, and improve efficiency.

I’ve created a list of the top community management tools for social media. Some might seem similar, but each excels at different things. Consider your social media goals and choose an option that best fits your needs.

1. Thryv

Best For: Building Engagement

Thryv’s social media software helps you manage your online community with personalized engagement recommendations and a shared inbox for all your social channels. It includes reputation monitoring, letting you track and respond to reviews from Yelp, Google, Facebook, and more. It also has a listing management tool, which lets you update your profiles on business listing websites. Engaging with reviews strengthens customer relationships and builds trust, making it easier to grow your online presence.

Pros:

• Thryv gives you engagement recommendations.
• There’s a shared inbox.
• You can manage and respond to reviews from many platforms.

Cons:

• Designed for small businesses. Enterprise companies may feel limited by some features. 

Pricing: $228/month for Plus plan; $382/month for Professional plan; $533/month for Unlimited plan

2. Emplifi

Best For: Sentiment Analysis

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Emplifi’s community management tools make social media easier to handle. With a centralized inbox, you can manage customer messages from different platforms in one place. Plus, sentiment analysis helps you catch negative mentions fast so you can respond before issues escalate. If negativity spikes, you get an instant alert. Automated responses keep conversations flowing with quick replies and better customer service. These tools work together to improve engagement and strengthen your online community.

Pros:

• There are sentiment analysis tools that track negative mentions.
• Social listening is more straightforward with its community management tools.
• You have access to a unified inbox.

Cons:

• Pricing is not listed on the website, so you must book a demo.
• Extensive features might be complex.

Pricing: Contact for Pricing

3. Khoros

Best For: Creating Social Communities

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Khoros helps businesses manage social media communities with tools that track conversations, schedule posts, and respond to customers. Its AI social listening feature lets you see what people say about your company across different platforms and languages, helping you understand social media trends and customer opinions. There’s also a dashboard that helps you read and reply to messages without switching apps. 

Khoros also has tools to control who can post, approve content, and pause publishing if needed. The best feature is that you can manage your different groups, including Facebook groups, Instagram channels, and more.

Pros:

• Khoros manages social media groups and business pages.
• You can create your own community, separate from social media, with Khoros Communities.
• There are social listening tools.

Cons:

• Khoros is a complex platform.
• Set up may be difficult.
• Pricing is unavailable on the website, so you must contact the sales team.

Pricing: Contact for Pricing

4. Sprout Social

Best For: Social Listening

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Sprout Social’s community management tools help businesses engage with customers across multiple social media platforms. Its “Smart Inbox” centralizes messages, making monitoring conversations and responding easier. AI-powered sentiment analysis prioritizes important messages, while chatbots handle common questions outside business hours. The platform also includes social listening tools to track brand mentions, industry trends, and competitor activity.

Additional features include message spike alerts for crisis management and review management to track feedback from sites like Google and Yelp. These tools improve response times and streamline social media interactions.

Pros:

• You can create social listening feeds so you always know what people say about your business.
• Sprout Social sets up crisis management alerts to keep you engaged when someone says something negative about your company.
• You get access to a unified inbox to engage with all your communities in one place.

Cons:

• Engagement reports are not included in the Standard plan.
• The Standard plan is limited to five profiles. However, this shouldn’t be an issue for most small businesses.

Pricing: $199 per seat/month for Standard; $299 per seat/month for Professional; $399 per seat/month for Advanced; Contact for Enterprise pricing.

5. Statusbrew

Best For: Moderating Comments

Statusbrew offers community management tools with comment moderation features, like hiding or deleting comments in bulk. Its “Rule Engine” filters offensive content and efficiently routes it to your inbox so you can reply. The platform also includes sentiment analysis, helping teams reply to toxic or inappropriate comments faster. These tools make it easier for businesses to engage with customers while maintaining control over social media interactions.

Statusbrew also offers social listening tools that monitor brand mentions and track keywords across social platforms. These tools help teams stay informed about customer sentiment, industry trends, and competitors.

Pros:

• Comment moderation is a unique feature that many similar platforms don’t offer.
• You can manage conversations with a unified inbox.

Cons:

• You can’t connect a Pinterest account.
• There could be more reporting features.

Pricing: $69/month for Lite; $129/month for Standard; $229/month for Premium; Contact for Enterprise pricing.

6. Brand24

Best For: Monitoring Brand Mentions

Brand24 offers social listening tools that track your brand’s mentions across various social media sites. It provides sentiment analysis to identify positive, negative, or neutral mentions and analyze customer feedback. The platform measures brand awareness, tracks reach (how many people see your posts), and monitors competitors. You can also create reports that provide valuable insights into your community. These tools keep you informed and respond proactively to customer conversations.

The competitor analysis feature monitors your competitors and compares their reputations to yours. It tracks mentions and provides insights into your competitors’ online communities. The platform also identifies emerging trends and influencers, giving you an edge in strategic planning. This helps you stay competitive and adjust your approach based on real-time data.

Pros:

• There are advanced social listening and sentiment analysis tools.
• Brand24 sends you recommendations to engage with your community.
• It uses AI to help get the most out of your community.
• You can create custom alerts and notifications.

Cons:

• The mobile app lacks functionality.
• Some users have reported that the tool isn’t user-friendly.

Pricing: $119/month for Individual; $159/month for Team; $239/month for Pro; $399/month for Enterprise.

7. Sociality.io

Best For: Competitor Analysis

Sociality.io offers community management tools for social media engagement. This software helps you manage social inboxes across multiple channels from one place. It also provides social listening features to track keywords and hashtags. 

The content calendar makes publishing new content easy. It automates scheduling and publishing, and there are analytics that measure production over time. 

Socialitiy.io also has a competitor analysis feature that helps you track and compare social media performance against your competitors. It monitors competitors’ content, engagement levels, and audience growth to identify trends and uncover opportunities for improvement. This analysis helps you refine your social media strategies and stay competitive in your industry. 

Pros:

• It offers competitor analysis features that other tools don’t provide.
• There’s dedicated customer support with a guaranteed 30-minute response time.
• There’s a centralized inbox and social listening tools.

Cons:

• The Pro account only provides one user. Unlimited users are available with Business and Enterprise accounts. 
• You can’t add new users or pages as an “optional add-on” with a Pro account.

Pricing: $99/month for Pro; $199/month for Business; Contact for Enterprise pricing.

8. Taggbox

Best For: User-Generated Content

Taggbox helps with community management by letting businesses display social media content like posts, reviews, and hashtags on their websites. This lets you highlight customer content and encourage more interaction. The platform also includes moderation tools to ensure only appropriate content is shown. Taggbox’s social walls enable businesses to collect and showcase social media feeds, fostering stronger community engagement.

Pros:

• This tool helps you find customer content to increase followers in your social media communities.
• The platform is easy to use.
• Taggbox is known for having good customer support.

Cons:

• It doesn’t have typical community management features like social listening, a centralized inbox, or engagement tools.
• Some customers have noticed platform limitations, such as not supporting Facebook hashtags.

Pricing: Free for Startup; $17/month for Lite; $27/month for Basic; $41/month for Pro; Custom pricing for Enterprise.

9. Social Pilot

Best For: Social Media Conversations

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SocialPilot offers community management tools to help businesses engage and interact with customers. It features a centralized social media inbox for managing comments and messages, making staying on top of conversations easier. Additionally, it has tools for scheduling posts and tracking performance, helping brands maintain consistent engagement with followers.

You can also organize interactions across multiple platforms. The system prioritizes messages, reviews, and mentions based on urgency, ensuring that essential inquiries or issues are addressed quickly. 

Pros:

• You can stay on top of social media conversations with the shared inbox.
• Messages are ordered by priority so you can address urgent matters first.
• There’s also review management software available.

Cons:

• Customers have noted feature limitations.
• The software isn’t as intuitive as others.

Pricing: $25.50/month for Essentials; $42.50/month for Standard; $85/month for Premium; $170/month for Ultimate; Custom pricing for Enterprise.

10. SocialBee

Best For: Social Media Analytics

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SocialBee offers community management tools that help you manage interactions across various social media platforms. Like other tools on this list, it has a shared inbox and advanced reporting features that measure performance over time. 

SocialBee’s reporting features help you monitor and enhance your social media content. The platform has real-time analytics to track key metrics such as reach, engagement, and audience demographics across various platforms. This data helps identify top-performing content and areas for improvement.

Pros:

• There are advanced reporting features to help monitor social media communities.
• The tool offers basic community management tools like a shared inbox.

Cons:

• There are no social listening or sentiment analysis tools.
• The Engage tool is often described as basic.

Pricing: $24/month for Bootstrap; $40/month for Accelerate; $82/month for Pro

How to Use Community Management Tools

Before you get started with any of these tools, here are some quick tips on how to use them effectively:

• Get familiar with all the features available to you.
• Monitor brand mentions.
• Regularly review the data.
• Stay consistent with your brand voice.
• Set up automation.
• Research AI features.
• Respond to customer comments.

Build a Community on Social Media

Building a community on social media is a great way to improve your business. As your social media presence grows, you should use community management tools to keep your audience engaged. Use this list to get started.