Top 20 Social Media Engagement Tools to Boost Brand Visibility

There’s no point arguing whether social media engagement tools are worth investing in…

…they are!

Hands down.

Considering the competitive landscape of social media marketing, not using engagement tools to manage engagement puts you at a serious disadvantage.

As for which social media engagement tools you should choose, that is a question worth exploring, especially since tons of tools are available online.”
It can get confusing.
R-E-A-L-L-Y confusing…

That’s why in this guide, we’ll share with you the top social media engagement tools that can help improve your brand visibility.

We did the vetting. We did the checking. And we’ve come up with the best tools…

What you’ll learn:

• What is a social media engagement tool?
• Why do you need social media engagement tools?
• What are the top 20 social media engagement tools to boost brand visibility?
• FAQs about social media engagement tools
• Why is Vista Social the ideal social media engagement tool for managing follower interactions?
• Use reliable social media engagement tools to improve your brand visibility

What is a social media engagement tool?

Social media engagement tools are designed to help brands, businesses, and individual users build stronger connections with audiences. 

The tools help you manage all your clients’ interactions, from messages to mentions, from one platform, ensuring no engagement opportunity slips through the cracks. 

Must read: Social Media Interaction Post Ideas This 2022

Many social media engagement tools can automate routine tasks, including sending auto-alerts when new messages, comments, or mentions come in. 

Many tools can also give you insights into optimal posting times, audience sentiment, and other features to optimize your engagement strategies and efforts to boost brand visibility. 

Why do you need social media engagement tools?

Using social media engagement tools offers the following benefits. 

• Efficiency. The right social media engagement tool can help you manage interactions across multiple platforms from one place, eliminating the hassle of switching between social networks to manage engagement
• Consistency. Reliable social media engagement tools with essential publishing features can help you maintain regular posting schedules, ensuring consistent audience interactions
• Ensure optimal content publishing. Key insights from social media engagement tools help determine when your clients’ audiences are most active. You can leverage this information to post content when they’re likely to get the most engagement
• Enhances audience engagement. Social media engagement tools help amplify your efforts to engage your clients’ audiences effectively. For instance, the tools streamline personalizing messages and responding to followers’ comments and messages, leading to positive interactions that boost engagement

Must read: 221+ Instagram Notes Ideas to Get More Followers & Engagements

What social media marketing leaders and influencers say about the importance of engagement

Essentially, social media engagement tools streamline, amplify, and supercharge your efforts to engage your clients’ audiences. 

Must read: Outsourcing Social Media Marketing: A Guide for Agencies

Learn from the social media marketing leaders’ insights, opinions, and tips on audience engagement below.

• Gary Vaynerchuk: Stop Worrying About How Many Likes You Get
• Jeff Bullas: Starbucks And The 4 Keys To Social Media Engagement
• Mark Schaefer: What is the true business value of social media engagement?
• Pam Moore: Social Media Engagement: Quit Hiding Behind the Avatar!
• Kim Garst: How to Grow an Engaged Social Media Community to Increase Your Brand Awareness, Leads, and Customers
• Neil Patel: 29 Ultimate Social Media Tips to Increase Engagement
• Mike Allton: Leveraging AI to Revolutionize Social Media Engagement

What are the top 20 social media engagement tools to boost brand visibility?

Start with the following tools to find the right social media engagement platforms to boost your clients’ online presence. 

1. Vista Social

Vista Social is a modern social media management and optimization platform with robust audience engagement features. 

If you want an all-in-one platform that offers everything from post scheduling and engagement management to analytics, Vista Social is your best bet. 

Key social media engagement features

• Smart social inbox 
• AI Reply Assistant
• Task assignment
• Conversation view
• Message tagging and sorting
• Internal notes for message management
• Engagement features right from the social inbox
• Optimal suggested posting times
• Engagement metrics tracking and analytics
• AI-powered hashtag generator
• Content creation tools to create engaging content, such as the Canva integration and AI Assistant
• Review management
• Social listening tool

Price

Vista Social offers a free plan with access to core features and a 14-day free trial with its paid plans. 

• Standard: $39/month
• Professional: $79/month
• Advanced: $149/month
• Enterprise: Starts at $379/month

2. Hootsuite

Image source: hootsuite.com

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows users to schedule, create content, analyze performance, and conduct social listening from one place. 

The platform’s social media engagement tools are designed to streamline responding to interactions and engaging audiences. 

Key social media engagement features

• Automated hashtag generator
• The best time to post graphs
• Social listening 
• All-in-one inbox with auto-responses, saved replies, and generative AI chatbot
• Social selling tool integrations
• Free engagement rate calculator

Price

• Professional: $99/month billed annually
• Team: $249/month billed annually
• Enterprise Custom: Request a demo to get a custom quote

3. Buffer

Image source: buffer.com 

Buffer is a social media management software that helps small businesses schedule posts, analyze content performance, and engage with audiences and customers. 

Buffer’s engagement feature makes it easy to track your clients’ most important interactions and turn followers into fans. 

Must read: Ultimate Guide: How to Track Engagement on Social Media

Key social media engagement features

• One dashboard to manage engagement easily
• Highlights the most important unanswered comments 
• Machine-learning-based smart alerts to determine a message or comment’s sentiment
• Keyboard hotkeys and smart emojis
• Grid view to spot unanswered comments quickly

Price

Buffer offers a free plan with limited features. 

The pricing of each Buffer plan can vary depending on the number of channels, which starts at $6/month for one channel with a 14-day free trial.

4. Later

Image source: later.com

Later is a social media management tool designed to simplify scheduling and managing posts efficiently. 

Must read: Social Media Management Tools for Churches

While Later doesn’t offer dedicated social media engagement features, it has tools to help you amplify your clients’ audience engagement efforts. 

Key social media engagement features

• Content scheduling and publishing
• Caption writer
• Social media analytics
• Content calendar
• Social listening

Price

Later’s paid plans (Starter, Growth, Advanced, and Agency include a 14-day free trial. 

The Starter plan starts at $16.67/month and is billed annually. 

5. Sprout Social

Image source: sproutsocial.com

Sprout Social is a social media management software that helps you manage your clients’ online presence from a centralized platform. 

The software’s engagement tools leverage AI and automation to streamline and remove manual tasks, such as handling massive social messages.

Must read: Top Real Estate Social Media Automation Tools

Key social media engagement features

• AI-based interaction summaries and need response detections
• Crisis notifications for message prioritization
• AI Assist recommended replies
• Salesforce Service Cloud integration
• Bot builder 
• Message tagging
• Case assignment
• Team reports
• AI-powered sentiment
• Consolidated inbox

Price

Sprout Social’s paid plans come with a free trial. 

The software’s Standard plan starts at $249 per seat/month (billed monthly). 

Additional charges apply for premium solutions such as Listening, Premium Analytics, Employee Advocacy, and Influencer Marketing. 

6. Tailwind

Image source: tailwindapp.com

Tailwind is a social media and email marketing tool for creating and scheduling posts across social channels. 

Tailwind doesn’t include dedicated engagement features but has optimization tools to help maximize your clients’ reach and engagement.

Must read: Top Features for Social Media Management Tools

Key social media engagement features

• SmartSchedule feature to visually plan and schedule your clients’ posts at the best times for optimal engagement
• Hashtag Finder
• Tailwind Communities
• Social media content design automation

Price

Tailwind offers a free forever plan with essential features.

The tool’s Pro plan starts at $24.99/month with monthly billing ($14.99 with annual billing). 

7. Zoho Social

Image source: zoho.com

Zoho Social is designed as an all-in-one social media management tool for agencies and businesses. 

Must read: Top Social Media Tools for Automotive Companies in 2024

The tool’s engagement feature centers around its Inbox, which lets you manage all your clients’ social conversations in one place. 

Key social media engagement features

• Unified interface for managing and responding to all your clients’ social interactions
• Zia AI Assistant
• Filters to sort and prioritize interactions
• Assignment workflows
• Inbox customization options
• Conversation history tracking

Price

The Zoho Social paid plans include a 15-day free trial. 

The Standard plan starts at $15/month and is billed monthly ($10/month with annual billing). 

8. Oktopost

Image source: oktopost.com

Oktopost is a Business-to-Business (B2B) social media management platform. 

It offers tools that equip sales teams to engage customers across social media, foster stronger relationships, and generate more business.  

Key social media engagement features

• Unified inbox for all comments, messages, and mentions
• Interaction and account histories you can connect to your marketing automation platform and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system
• Social reports to track team performance and responses
• Integrations to connect social media platforms to your service desk
• Assign social media conversations to team members
• Conversation tags
• AI Assist
• Audit trails
• Smart filters

Price

You must book a demo or contact Oktopost to get the platform’s pricing or a custom quote. 

9. Agorapulse

Image source: agorapulse.com

Agorapulse is a social media management platform with features including diverse content publishing, scheduling options, and in-depth reporting.

The platform simplifies social interaction management through a Social Inbox. 

Key social media engagement features

• Inbox Assistant that organizes your inbox automatically
• Assign inbox conversations to team members
• Message labeling
• UTM tracking codes within links in your messages and replies to measure campaign and interaction results
• Inbox filters and bulk actions
• GIPHY integration
• Ad comment syncing

Price

The Agorapulse plans come with a 30-day free trial.

The Standard plan starts at $79/user per month, billed annually ($99/user per month with monthly billing).

10. Brandwatch Social Media Management

Image source: brandwatch.com

Brandwatch’s social media management software has features to help businesses better understand consumers, markets, and other brands across online channels. 

The software’s customizable inbox lets you easily manage all your clients’ social engagement from one place. 

Key social media engagement features

• Iris AI Writing Assistant
• Team messaging workflow automation
• Salesforce Cloud integration
• Sentiment indicator
• Conversation and profile labeling
• Case management tools such as message prioritization options and an activity log

Price

You must request a demo to see the pricing plans for the Brandwatch social media management software. 

11. Sendible

Image source: sendible.com

Sendible is a social media management tool that helps agencies and brands manage social profiles at scale in one easy-to-use platform. 

The platform includes a Priority Inbox that allows you to scale your community management efforts, optimize response times, and work with teams efficiently. 

Key social media engagement features

• Engagement monitoring for specific social media profiles
• Message filtering and prioritization options
• Client Connect feature that lets you track client engagement without sharing passwords
• Options to assign messages to specific team members

Price

Sendible’s Creator, Traction, and Scale plans include a 14-day free trial. 

The Creator plan starts at $25/month and is billed yearly ($29/month with monthly billing).

12. Meltwater

Image source: meltwater.com

Meltwater is an online solution that offers social listening, research, and media intelligence tools.

Meltwater’s social media management suite includes a centralized inbox that streamlines responding to and engaging with your clients’ followers and audiences. 

Key social media engagement features

• Social media content publishing and scheduling 
• Access to full conversation histories
• Automated rules
• Advanced interaction organization and prioritization options
• Intuitive and customizable workflow tools
• Social listening
• Automated alerts
• Engagement reports
• Approval process

Price

Meltwater’s pricing plans are customizable based on your needs, so you’ll need to contact them to get a custom quote. 

13. NapoleonCat

Image source: napoleoncat.com

NapoleonCat is a social media management platform that helps you moderate, publish, grow, and analyze your clients’ content, performance, and campaigns. 

The platform’s multi-user social media engagement tool makes moderating and managing social media messages, comments, and reviews more efficient. 

Key social media engagement features

• One dashboard for moderating and managing social interactions
• Real-time notifications on conversations and team tasks
• Team collaboration tools, including assigning tasks
• Automated responses
• Audience insights
• Smart filtering options

Must read: 10 Social Media Collaboration Tools for Marketing Teams

Price

The price of NapoleonCat’s plans varies depending on the number of social profiles and team size.

The Standard plan starts at $27/month (billed annually). 

14. SocialBee

Image source: socialbee.com

SocialBee is an AI-powered social media management software that offers content scheduling, engagement management, and analytics tools. 

The tool includes a social inbox that centralizes and streamlines your community management efforts and workflows. 

Key social media engagement features

• Tools to manage and monitor your clients’ social media mentions
• One dashboard for all your clients’ social media conversations
• Customizable social conversation boards for easy tracking
• Organized conversation streams
• Notifications for new comments, mentions, and DMs

Price

SocialBee offers a 14-day free trial with its plans. 

The tool’s Standard Bootstrap plan starts at $24 monthly (billed annually). 

The Agency plans offer a wider suite and more advanced features. 

15. Sociality.io

Image source: sociality.io

Sociality.io is designed to be an all-in-one social media management platform for agencies and brands. 

The platform’s social media engagement feature can help you manage, scale, streamline, and grow your clients’ audience engagement. 

Key social media engagement features

• Social CRM tool integration
• Assign conversations to the right team members
• Multi-level access permissions
• Team collaboration tools such as internal notes and team member tagging
• Team performance reports to gain insights into optimizing engagement efforts

Must read: Social Media Guidelines: How to Create One for Your Team

Price

Sociality.io’s plans offer a 14-day free trial. 

The Pro plan starts at $83/month when billed annually ($99/month when billed monthly).

16. Reputation

Image source: reputation.com

Reputation is a platform with features that help you manage your clients’ online brand reputations.

The tool features a central inbox that simplifies collecting, tracking, and responding to your clients’ lead and customer feedback. 

Key social media engagement features

• Message templates
• Smart message routing
• Resolution assigning using internal notes
• Conversation reporting via a CRM system and inbox integration
• Mobile version of the app, including the social inbox feature
• Rule-based automated responses

Must read: When to Automate Social Media

Price

Reputation’s website doesn’t provide pricing plan details. You’ll need to contact them via the contact form to get pricing information. 

17. Loomly

Image source: loomly.com

Loomly is a social media management tool with features that empower marketing teams to collaborate on, publish, and analyze social media content and campaigns. 

Loomly’s unified interaction inbox can streamline core engagement management tasks, from responding to comments to assigning dedicated team members to conversations. 

Key social media engagement features

• Bulk actions to speed up the response process
• Interaction categorization options
• Saved replies for auto-responses
• Response tracking and interaction filtering
• Direct interaction options, including liking, hiding, and deleting comments
• Notifications for new interactions
• Message tagging
• Follow conversations in threads

Price

All of Loomly’s plans include a 15-day free trial. 

The tool’s Base plan starts at $32/month when billed annually ($42/month when billed monthly). 

18. Iconosquare

Image source: iconosquare.com

Iconosquare is a social media marketing and management tool with content scheduling, analytics, and listening features. 

The tool’s social media engagement tool seamlessly helps you manage all your clients’ social conversations and interactions. 

Key social media engagement features

• Social media comment moderation tools
• Response personalization options
• Essential conversation management tools
• Identify and retrieve mentions 
• Community sentiment analytics and report exporting

Price

The exact prices of the Iconosquare plans can vary depending on the number of social profiles and whether you pay monthly or annually. 

The tool’s Single plan starts at $49/month when billed annually. 

19. Eclincher

Image source: eclincher.com

Eclincher is an online platform with social media, reputation, and local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools to boost brand visibility, reach, and engagement. 

The platform has a Social Media Inbox that places all your clients’ social media communications into one space, allowing for more efficient responses and oversight.

Key social media engagement features

• Cross-platform coordination
• Consolidated interactions
• Instant notifications
• Simplified conversation tracking
• AI-generated responses
• AI-based automatic sentiment detection and analysis in messages
• Advanced interaction management tools, such as tagging, notations, and conversation assignment
• Detailed inbox analytics
• Advanced filtering options tailored to agencies

Price

Eclincher provides a 14-day free trial with its paid plans. 

The tool’s Basic plan for individual users and micro businesses starts at $58.50/month when billed annually ($65/month with yearly billing). 

20. MavSocial

Image source: mavsocial.com

MavSocial is a social media and reputation management software for franchise, multi-location brands, and agencies. 

Must read: The Best Social Media Management Tools for Franchises [2024]

The software’s all-in-one inbox helps you track, engage, and manage all your clients’ social interactions in one place to build and maintain follower and customer relationships.

Key social media engagement features

• Conversation tagging for easy tracking and management
• Response submission for approval
• Sentiment analysis
• Aggregate and track Facebook and Google My Business reviews
• Online reputation reporting 
• Conversation and comment assigning options to team members
• Community management reporting
• Social listening
• Filtered views for message prioritization
• Preformatted messages
• 24/7 alerts for proactive management and responses
• Facebook and Instagram ad comment tracking

Must read: Top Multi-Location Social Media Marketing Tools

Price

MavSocial offers a 14-day free trial with its Advanced and Pro plans. 

The Advanced plan starts at $24/month when billed annually ($29/month when billed monthly). 

FAQs about social media engagement tools

What’s the best social media engagement tool for agencies?

It depends on your agency and clients’ unique needs. 

Ideally, the best social media engagement platform should offer the essential features your agency needs, be easy to use, allow integrations with your current tools, and fit your budget. 

How can I get more likes and shares with social media engagement tools?

You can leverage the following social media engagement tool features to boost likes and shares:

• Analytics features to determine your clients’ most engaging content and use the insights to optimize their posts to boost engagement
• Social inbox to streamline managing and responding to messages, comments, and mentions
• Hashtag generators or suggestions to expand the reach of your clients’ posts, opening more opportunities to engage audiences

How can I build a strong community with social media engagement tools?

Use the tools’ community engagement features, such as consolidated inbox, auto-replies and templates, direct liking and reaction options, sentiment analysis, and more.

The features can help you engage more regularly and effectively with your clients’ audiences, fostering loyal and stronger communities.

How can I automate my efforts with social media engagement tools?

You can leverage social media engagement automation features to streamline your efforts, including the following:

• Auto-publishing 
• Automated replies
• Content reposting
• Social listening
• Engagement tracking
• Reply approval
• Sentiment analysis
• AI reply generators

Why is Vista Social the ideal social media engagement tool for managing follower interactions?

Vista Social offers all the essential and advanced features to supercharge your social media engagement efforts, making it an ideal solution for your team. 

Vista Social’s smart Social Inbox supports many social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok. 

Must read: TikTok Challenges to Generate Engagement: New Ideas for 2024

The Inbox provides an intuitive, easy-to-use interface for managing and responding to your clients’ comments, mentions, and DMs.

You can find messages quickly using the Search option. 

Responding to messages and other interactions is easy since you can simply select the message and type your reply. 

You can even use the AI Assistant to generate engaging messages or refine your reply in seconds.

You can also leave Notes for your team members if you need them to handle certain tasks related to the conversation or interaction.

The Social Inbox’s other features include the following.

• Filters. The Inbox includes options that let you control the specific messages you wish to view based on the type, status, and label
• Sentiment analysis. Each conversation in your Inbox will be automatically tagged with a sentiment icon, classifying it as positive, neutral, mixed, or negative

Must read: Social Media Sentiment Analysis: A Comprehensive Guide

• Message labeling. You can label conversations to simplify finding them later via the search box
• Assign tasks. The Inbox includes an option to assign conversations to your team members and create tasks to ensure someone handles the interactions promptly

• Direct interactions. You can like and mark comments and mentions as Favorites directly from your Vista Social Inbox (available for some social networks) 
• Mark conversations by type. The Social Inbox lets you mark conversations as spam, archive, or acknowledged. You can also star messages to highlight them. You can find the messages by type easily by clicking the drop-down arrow beside All messages.

Vista Social offers more features to level up your efforts to boost your clients’ social media engagement campaigns and strategy implementation. 

Content scheduling and publishing

The platform’s social media publishing feature makes creating, customizing, and scheduling your clients’ engaging posts for auto-publishing a breeze. 

The Publisher lets you schedule all types of content, including images, videos, carousels, Reels, and Stories (available for Meta Business Profiles). 

Must read: How to Share Reels on Instagram to Get More Engagements

You can customize the post by adding hashtags or using the hashtag suggestions tool. 

Use the AI Assistant to generate or suggest captions that will engage your clients’ audiences. 

You can also boost your clients’ posts to amplify their reach and visibility, opening more audience engagement opportunities. 

You must set a Boost configuration and enable it when creating and scheduling your clients’ posts.

Set an auto-publishing date and time, or choose from the platform’s suggested optimal posting times, and you’re all set. 

Uncover online conversations around your clients’ brands with Vista Social’s social media listening feature.

You can set up Listeners that track and pull conversations with mentions of your clients’ brand names and other related keywords that you can specify. 

You can also reply to conversations in your Listener via the Social Inbox.

You can leverage the information to inform and refine your audience engagement strategies. 

Another essential feature is the platform’s social media analytics. 

The feature can track, measure, and analyze your clients’ engagement data and extract valuable insights to optimize engagement efforts and strategies. 

For example, you can get a sentiment analysis report to understand sentiment across your clients’ mentions, comments, reviews, and messages and identify trends. 

The Team Performance Report can show how often and quickly your team members reply to social messages and accomplish assigned tasks to improve customer care and boost productivity. 

You’ll also get insights into key engagement metrics from your Social Profile Performance report. 

The report now includes a grid view of the connected profiles’ key metrics for easy tracking, analysis, and comparison.

The best part is that you can automatically schedule your reports to generate and send to your team members and clients. 

Must read: How to Create Automated Social Media Reports

If you don’t export your reports to CSV or PDF files, you can share them quickly with other users via a shareable link.

Vista Social also lets you create custom report templates. 

Use the platform’s review management feature to manage your clients’ online reputations and amplify audience and customer engagement. 

The feature includes alerts when new reviews come in, tracking options, reports based on review data, and an option to respond to Facebook and Google Business reviews right from Vista Social. 

Must read: Proven Strategies to Increase Customer Engagement on Social Media

Check out Vista Social’s other features:

• Content calendar
• Link in bio tool called Vista Page
• Employee advocacy
• Automated multi-stage approval workflows
• Canva integration
• Trending audio library
• Bulk scheduling
• Find content
• Link shortener
• Third-party tool integrations

Use reliable social media engagement tools to improve your brand visibility

The right social media engagement tool can make or break your efforts to amplify your clients’ brand visibility. 

Research and try the tool before investing to see if its features and functionalities suit your team’s and clients’ needs. 

You can’t go wrong with Vista Social, a powerful social media management solution with robust engagement features and other awesome tools.

Create your Vista Social account now.