Artificial intelligence (AI) social media apps enhance and optimize social media marketing efforts by helping automate content creation and scheduling, providing better monitoring and audience-targeting capabilities, and increasing engagement. Some AI tools even offer advanced capabilities that enable analyzing data, identifying trends, making data-driven recommendations, and helping businesses better understand and reach their target audience on social media platforms. I evaluated the top AI social media software on key features and pricing to help you discover the right platform for your company. Here are my picks for the best AI social media tools in 2024:
- Canva: Best for Creating Social Media Assets
- HubSpot Marketing Hub: Best for Reporting Social Media ROI
- ContentStudio: Best for Scheduling Posts
- Zoho Social: Best for Tracking Social Engagement
- Buffer: Best for Repurposing Content
- Hootsuite: Best for Managing Multiple Social Channels
Top AI Social Media Software Comparison
To personalize user experiences on various social channels, social media tools use AI to analyze customer data and AI algorithms to curate content feeds and recommend products or services. The table below shows how the six leading AI social media platforms compare in pricing, segments served, and key features.
Best For | Free Plan | Free Trial | Starting Price | Top Feature | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Canva | Creating social media assets | Yes | 30 days | $14.99 per user, per month | More than 100 million photos, videos, graphics, and audio |
HubSpot Marketing Hub | Social media ROI reporting | Yes | 30 days | $15 per seat, per month | Campaign ROI reporting tools and ROI calculator |
ContentStudio | Scheduling social media posts | No | 14 days | $20 per user, per month | Multi-platform support across social media channels |
Zoho Social | Tracking social media engagement | No | 15 days | $10 per user, per month | Real-time stream of social engagement across all channels |
Buffer | Repurposing content | Yes | 14 days | $5 per channel, per month | New post generation from existing content available for all plans |
Hootsuite | Managing multiple social media platforms | No | 30 days | $99 per user, per month | Centralized platform to manage multiple accounts simultaneously |
Overall, I picked Canva as the best AI tool for social media, ranking first in cost and ease of use. Continue reading to learn more about each social media tool’s use case, pricing, and key features, or skip ahead to see my scoring logic.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Canva
Best for Creating Social Media Assets
Overall Rating: 4.6/5
- AI Core Features: 4.2/5
- Cost: 5/5
- Ease of Use: 5/5
- Customization: 4.7/5
- Integrations: 4.8/5
- Customer Support: 3.6/5
Canva is an online graphic design platform that allows you to create visual content, such as flyers, posters, social media posts, and presentations. It offers a user-friendly interface with pre-designed templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and a wide range of design elements and customization options. Canva provides templates for popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and Pinterest that let you easily create posts, stories, cover photos, and ads for your social media profiles.
Product Design
Canva’s user-friendly drag-and-drop design tools, which have virtually no learning curve, make it simple for anybody to create stunning creative assets. Beginners can explore and experiment with the platform’s thousands of templates to easily create Facebook posts, reels, Instagram stories, and more. You can easily locate and organize your designs using different folders and collaborate with your team in real time by adding them to the project you’re working on.
Canva Pro users can use the platform’s latest AI tools to generate images, videos, and graphics from text prompts or reference media assets. Its text-to-video feature, powered by Runway AI, also allows you to generate short clips through user prompts. However, its video generation feature is still in its beta version, so there might be more product updates and improvements over time.
Why I Picked Canva
Canva is a powerful and accessible design tool that provides thousands of social media templates, allowing users to create stunning social media assets. It offers a library of images, icons, fonts, and other design elements that can be used to customize social media graphics and make them eye-catching, making it a valuable tool for content creators and businesses.
The wide range of templates, assets, and AI tools also help you ensure that your content meets each platform’s specific size and layout requirements, making it easier to create professional-looking posts. Canva is also intuitive and easy to use, enabling beginners to use the platform with minimal to no learning curve. It also offers a free forever plan and affordable pricing tiers accessible to individual users and businesses of all sizes.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Minimal learning curve and intuitive interface | Free plan storage limited to 5GB |
Excellent value for both free and paid versions | Relatively restrictive for users with complex design requirements |
Pricing
Canva includes four subscription plans and a 30-day free trial:
- Free: One user
- Pro: $120 per user billed annually; $15 per user billed monthly
- Teams: $100 per user billed annually; $10 per user billed monthly
- Enterprise: Contact sales for quote
Features
- Easy drag-and-drop editor
- More than 100 million photos, videos, graphics, and audio
- More than 20 AI-powered design tools
- Real-time collaboration tools
- Offers up to 1TB of cloud storage
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Best for Reporting Social Media ROI
Overall Rating: 4.4/5
- AI Core Features: 4.2/5
- Cost: 3.9/5
- Ease of Use: 4.3/5
- Customization: 4.6/5
- Integrations: 5/5
- Customer Support: 4.7/5
HubSpot Marketing Hub is an AI-powered software that helps you generate leads and automate nurturing campaigns. Its suite of free tools and advanced features helps businesses attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers through effective email campaigns, social media management, website analytics, and more.
HubSpot has an artificial intelligence social media post generator that helps businesses create, refine, and automate their social media posts. With this generative AI tool, you can overcome writer’s block, generate more leads, and save time by letting the AI assist with the conception and creation of social media content. The AI social media post generator not only helps you rewrite but also expand upon your initial post ideas, ensuring the content is engaging, relevant, and tailored to your brand’s tone of voice.
Product Design
HubSpot is well known for its user-friendly platform. Thanks to its drag-and-drop interface and customizable templates, social media managers and marketers can tailor assets to meet their specific demands. HubSpot Marketing Hub’s recently introduced Breeze social media agent tool in beta, which allows you to scale your social media strategy with its AI-powered recommendations. The platform also features Breeze Copilot to assist you with your social media tasks and Breeze Agents to automate your work from planning to execution. Additionally, Breeze Intelligence enriches your social media data so you can make more informed decisions.
Why I Picked HubSpot Marketing Hub
HubSpot is a robust all-in-one that offers a centralized platform for managing marketing activities, social media, lead generation, and more. Its free marketing tools also allow users to explore standard features and social media capabilities. I chose HubSpot Marketing Hub for its powerful reporting tool for measuring and visualizing your return on investment (ROI) in your social media campaigns.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Feature-rich free and paid plans | Low-tier plans lack support for social media capability |
AI-assisted social media post performance is easier to track | Only Enterprise plan users can access predictive lead scoring |
Pricing
HubSpot Marketing Hub includes four subscription plans:
- Free Tools: Up to two users
- Starter: Starts at $15 per user, per month, billed annually; $20 per user, billed monthly
- Professional: Starts at $800 per month for three users, billed annually; $890 per month for three users, billed monthly
- Enterprise: Starts at $3,600 per month for five users
Features
- Reporting dashboard
- AI-powered social post generator
- SEO recommendations and optimizations
- Multi-language content creation
- Built-in A/B testing
ContentStudio
Best for Scheduling Posts
Overall Rating: 4.4/5
- AI Core Features: 4.2/5
- Cost: 3.6/5
- Ease of Use: 4.7/5
- Customization: 5/5
- Integrations: 5/5
- Customer Support: 4/5
ContentStudio helps creators manage and publish content across various digital channels, such as websites, social media, and email marketing. It typically provides AI tools for creating, scheduling, optimizing, and analyzing content to help businesses enhance their online presence and engage with their audience. From AI-generated captions and images to hashtag suggestions and emoji integration, ContentStudio offers a range of tools to enhance your social media presence. You can also manage your social campaigns, schedule posts, and analyze performance all in one place.
Product Design
ContentStudio is a unified social media platform that enables you to manage all your social accounts from one dashboard. You can plan, manage, and organize your social content in a shared content calendar. The platform’s clean design and intuitive interface make it easier for you to visualize your social strategy. Features like hands-free scheduling and content approvals also enable you to seamlessly automate your workflow process and gain instant feedback from clients and teammates.
Why I Picked ContentStudio
ContentStudio’s scheduling feature helps you plan, create, and schedule posts automatically published to the proper channels at the right time. The platform allows you to set your posting interval or each social media campaign to get the most optimized posting frequency. You can even create a custom schedule by picking the best days and times for publishing posts.
ContentStudio is also highly visual, enabling social media managers to maintain a clear and organized calendar view, so you don’t miss a post and have a consistent flow of content for your audience. Marketing teams can also easily collaborate in ContentStudio through its multi-view interactive content calendar that’s shareable to each member.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Offers list, feed, and grid views | Limited media storage |
Multi-channel social analytics | Starter plan lacks social inbox capability |
Pricing
ContentStudio has three pricing tiers and a 14-day free trial:
- Starter: $20 per month, billed annually; $25 billed monthly
- Pro: $20 per month, billed annually; $49 billed monthly
- Agency: Starts at $80 per month, billed annually; starts at $99 billed monthly
Features
- Hands-free scheduling
- Interactive social media calendar
- Content approval workflow
- A wide range of supported social networks
- Content and influencer discovery
Zoho Social
Best for Tracking Social Engagement
Overall Rating: 4.1/5
- AI Core Features: 4.3/5
- Cost: 3.6/5
- Ease of Use: 4.3/5
- Customization: 4.7/5
- Integrations: 4.7/5
- Customer Support: 2.5/5
Zoho Social is a robust social media management platform that helps marketing teams and businesses grow their online presence. It goes beyond scheduling posts but also offers a suite of features that streamline workflows from content creation to publishing, monitoring, and analytics. The platform offers advanced tools, AI-powered features, and a centralized dashboard to help you stay on top of everything happening across all social media accounts you manage. This way, you can have a consistent brand voice and increase your engagement on social media.
Product Design
Zoho Social offers a centralized platform for monitoring past customer interactions, brand reviews, mentions, keywords, and more. With its live stream feature, you can view social interactions in real-time, respond to brand engagements, and gain deeper insights into your audience. Zoho also allows you to easily manage all your social channels with its multiple views and filters, making it easier for you to follow recent social updates without switching between tabs.
The latest development in Zia AI for Zoho Social applies OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate better content and automate publishing tasks. With Zia’s generative AI capabilities, you can easily create content across your social media channels.
Why I Picked Zoho Social
Zoho Social helps teams and businesses monitor keywords, brand hashtags, product reviews, and what people are saying about their brands across social channels. Its real-time stream of updates enables social media managers to learn more about their audience and respond directly to engage with them. Zoho Social has a monitoring column that offers in-depth tracking for hashtags, page reviews, user profiles, and more.
The platform’s message inbox also allows you to see all direct messages from your audience on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) in a single, chat-style interface. Zoho Social also lets you receive alerts whenever someone mentions or likes your posts through the mobile app, so you can track your brand anytime, anywhere.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Customizable interface | Can be expensive for larger teams |
Affordable pricing plans | Limited customer support solutions |
Pricing
Zoho Social includes five pricing plans and a 15-day free trial:
- Standard: $10 per month, billed annually; $15 billed monthly
- Professional: $30 per month, billed annually; $40 billed monthly
- Premium: $40 per month, billed annually; $65 billed monthly
- Agency: $230 per month, billed annually; $320 billed monthly
- Agency Plus: $330 per month, billed annually; $460 billed monthly
Features
- Social listening dashboard
- Zia’s generative AI features
- Social engagement live stream
- Monitoring columns
- Direct message inbox
Buffer
Best for Repurposing Content
Overall Rating: 4/5
- AI Core Features: 4.3/5
- Cost: 4.2/5
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Customization: 2.8/5
- Integrations: 4.8/5
- Customer Support: 4/5
Buffer is a social media management platform that helps you grow your audience by easily creating engaging content for different channels. The platform’s AI assistant allows you to generate ideas and repurpose existing content you can post on various social accounts. You can even personalize each post for different audiences to improve engagement and use its A/B testing tool to determine the most effective approach and the best content to publish. You can also easily schedule and publish content on Buffer across diverse channels like Facebook, Instagram, and X from a single unified dashboard.
Product Design
Buffer AI boasts a user-friendly interface designed to make social management seamless. Its intuitive interface and simple layout allow you to easily schedule posts on various platforms, analyze performance, and engage with your audience. Buffer’s AI assistant enables you to easily create ideas, stay consistent with your brand and style, and repurpose posts to maximize your reach. The AI assistant provides a wide range of ideas for social media posts, such as trending topics, prompts for quotes, industry-specific content, current events, and more.
Why I Picked Buffer
While Buffer is soon to sunset its Remix tool for repurposing content, you can use its AI assistant to create ideas and transform existing posts into dozens of variants. Its AI assistant, based on OpenAI’s propriety API, uses advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyze trends and patterns in social media data and generate ideas based on that information. You can condense long-form content into a LinkedIn post and then turn this post into an Instagram thread. Additionally, you can customize the ideas generated by Buffer’s AI assistant by adding specific keywords or topics to tailor them to your brand’s voice and tone.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Supports a wide range of social media channels | Can be expensive in the long term |
Intuitive and user-friendly interface | Not ideal for large enterprises with complex workflows |
Pricing
Buffer offers four pricing plans and a 14-day free trial:
- Free Plan: Connects up to three channels
- Essentials: $5 per month for one channel, billed annually; $6 for one channel, billed monthly
- Team: $10 per month for one channel, billed annually; $12 for one channel, billed monthly
- Agency: $100 per month for 10 channels, billed annually; $120 for 10 channels, billed monthly
Features
- Supports a wide range of social channels
- AI assistant for content repurposing
- Scheduling and publishing
- Social media analytics
- Landing page builder
Hootsuite
Best for Managing Multiple Social Channels
Overall Rating: 3.8/5
- AI Core Features: 4.4/5
- Cost: 1.5/5
- Ease of Use: 4.7/5
- Customization: 4.4/5
- Integrations: 4.7/5
- Customer Support: 3.1/5
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows users to manage all their accounts from one centralized dashboard. Hootsuite lets you schedule posts, engage with your audience, monitor analytics, and run social media advertising campaigns. It also offers features for social listening, collaboration among team members, and reporting on social media performance. With Hootsuite’s AI-powered real-time monitoring and social listening capabilities, you can track mentions of your brand, company, products, and competitors to stay informed and respond effectively.
Product Design
Hootsuite features an uncluttered and intuitive user interface, making it easier to manage multiple accounts for various social channels. The platform’s key features are easily accessible in its dashboard, which lets you use tools for planning, publishing, content creation, and analytics without opening another browser. Its advanced capabilities also allow you to engage with your audience from different accounts, such as automating direct messages, comment replies, and mentions with Buffer’s advanced inbox. Aside from managing messages and comments, you can also monitor and analyze your performance across all social media channels in one place, track paid and organic content, and follow online conversations about your brand.
Why I Picked Hootsuite
I chose Hootsuite for its ability to seamlessly manage multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard. The platform supports Instagram (business and personal profiles), Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook (profiles, pages, and groups), LinkedIn (profiles and pages), and YouTube channels. Hootsuite also provides crisis management capability, including automatic alerts and response planning, to help you navigate any unexpected situations or spikes in social activity.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Unlimited posts with all plans | Professional and Team plans lack advanced messaging and customer service capabilities |
Schedule and publish posts directly from Hootsuite | Subscription plans can be expensive |
Pricing
Hootsuite includes three subscription plans and a 30-day free trial:
- Professional: $99 per user, per month
- Team: $249 per month for three users
- Enterprise Custom: Starts with five users; contact sales for quote
Features
- LinkedIn page target audience
- Content discovery streams
- Asset and content library
- Team productivity reporting
- Bulk scheduling
5 Key Features of AI Social Media Tools
When selecting the right AI social media tool for your team and business, look for core features that will help your content creation, scheduling, and publishing easier.
Scheduling and Publishing
The best AI social media tools allow you to automatically schedule and publish your content across multiple social media platforms at optimal times. Intelligent algorithms can help improve the process of scheduling and publishing by analyzing data such as audience behavior and platform trends. Using these tools, you can determine the ideal time to post content and the ideal post to publish based on relevant topics. The best AI social media tool allows you to schedule multiple posts at once and visualize your content in an interactive calendar for better planning and coordination.
Content Personalization and Repurposing
Artificial intelligence tools can help generate personalized content suggestions based on your customer data. By analyzing this data, AI can adjust content based on individual preferences, which will drive engagement. Additionally, generative AI enables you to reuse existing content and transform it into various formats to extend its reach and lifecycle. For instance, you can turn long-form content into a LinkedIn post, an Instagram thread, and an idea for a YouTube short.
Social Listening
Social listening tools use AI technologies like machine learning and text analysis to understand social media discussions and generate actionable brand insights. Social media managers can use AI-powered listening tools to track mentions of their brands, products, or competitors across social media platforms. You can also gauge the public’s opinion towards your brand and identify potential risks and opportunities through sentiment analysis.
Reporting and Analytics
Reporting and analytics in social media refers to collecting data and metrics that will help you gauge your overall performance. For instance, you can measure the success of your social media campaigns by tracking metrics like engagement, reach, and conversions. You can also use AI to generate data-driven insights that will help you better understand the behavior of your audience and provide further context for their preferences. This way, you can optimize your strategies and allocate your budget to the right channels.
Templates and Assets
Social media platforms should provide a wide range of customizable templates for various posts in different formats. Using templates instead of starting from scratch can save time when creating professional-looking content for social media. Aside from a wide range of templates, graphics, and royalty-free stock images, AI-powered social media tools can generate images, videos, and graphics using text prompts or existing media assets.
How I Evaluated AI Social Media Tools
In assessing AI social media tools, I scored each option against six major criteria for teams and businesses needing a cost-effective platform. From there, I divided each category into weighted subcriteria and assigned an overall score out of five to identify the winner for each category.
Evaluation Criteria
In scoring the AI social media solutions, I put the highest weight on core features and cost, followed by ease of use. I also evaluated each platform’s customization capabilities, integrations, and customer support solutions.
- Core Features (25 percent): The feature set of the AI social media software is crucial in determining its capabilities and effectiveness. The key capabilities considered include scheduling and publishing, reporting and analytics, personalization, and more. Criteria Winner: Hootsuite
- Pricing (20 percent): I wanted to ensure that the software was affordable and provided good value for its features. For this category, I looked into the free version or trials offered, pricing plans, and billing options. Criteria Winner: Canva
- Ease of Use (15 percent): Ease of use is another key aspect when evaluating AI social media software. I assessed the software’s user-friendliness, including the interface design, user experience, and the knowledge base. Criteria Winner: Canva
- Customization (15 percent): Flexible social media platforms allow you to create hyper-targeted campaigns and personalized content. I assessed each platform in terms of multi-language support, editing tools, and template library. Criteria Winner: ContentStudio
- Integrations (15 percent): Here, I looked into how each solution connects to social media channels and third-party apps. Criteria Winner: HubSpot Marketing Hub, ContentStudio
- User Support (10 percent): Good customer support is essential when using any software, including AI social media software. I evaluated the support solutions offered by each social media platform via live chat, email, and phone. Criteria Winner: HubSpot Marketing Hub
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
AI social media tools are AI-powered software built to automate and optimize social media marketing tasks and strategies. These tools can help businesses analyze data, plan and schedule posts, engage with followers, and optimize a business’s social media strategy. AI social media tools can also help automate responses to comments and messages, track sentiment, and identify potential influencers or brand advocates. By analyzing vast amounts of user data, generative AI companies and AI startups continue to improve these tools to create more advanced social media solutions that deliver personalized interactive experiences.
Yes, AI tools are fully capable of analyzing social media engagement. They can track metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and followers and provide insights on user engagement, sentiment, and trends. AI tools can also analyze audience demographics and behaviors to help businesses better understand and target their audience.
By understanding how AI algorithms work, you can effectively use these tools for the decision-making process as a social media marketer or manager. If you’re still learning how to use AI tools, you can start by looking into AI certifications that can help you interpret AI-generated data, identify trends, and optimize your social media strategy.
Yes, you can post AI-generated images on social media. While copyright laws currently protect images created by humans, not AI, there are still ethical and legal considerations to keep in mind. However, it’s important to be transparent with your audience whenever using AI-generated images to maintain authenticity. You should be cautious about using AI to create images that infringe on existing copyrights or trademarked works.
Using AI, you can generate captions, articles, blog posts, and draft content ideas tailored to your audience and your brand’s voice. AI-powered tools can also suggest topics, themes, keywords, and relevant hashtags, as well as repurposing existing content suitable for a specific platform. You can analyze your audience’s preferences and interests to create content that resonates with them and improves engagement.
If you’re new to generative AI and all its applications, a great place to start is by learning more through certifications and AI courses you can take online. These certifications can provide knowledge and skills to use AI tools for social media management and other applications.
Instagram has developed tools to detect AI-generated content by scanning the metadata and analyzing visual patterns. While it isn’t perfect, once an image is determined to have been generated by AI, it is appropriately labeled.
Bottom Line: AI Social Media Tools
The right AI social media tool can transform the way businesses interact with their audience online, leading to increased engagement, brand loyalty, and success. Moreover, AI social media apps are reshaping social media by enabling users of these tools to become exponentially more effective at leveraging the power of social media.
Clearly, by leveraging the power of AI, organizations can greatly improve their social media reach and achieve far better results. AI social media software can help companies maintain a consistent online presence, from creating personalized content to analyzing data and optimizing campaigns. Choosing the best AI social media software can give companies a competitive edge, drive engagement, and increase ROI.
For a full portrait of the AI vendors serving a wide array of business needs, read our in-depth guide to the top AI companies of 2024.