Best CRM for social media

As a social media user, managing interactions, tracking engagement, and nurturing relationships across multiple platforms can quickly become overwhelming. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system tailored for social media can help you streamline these tasks by organizing your followers, automating responses, and tracking engagement metrics—all in one place. With the right CRM, you can improve your social media strategy, build stronger relationships, and maximize your online presence.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the best CRM options for social media users like you, focusing on tools that will help you manage your interactions efficiently and grow your audience effectively.

Why you need a CRM

There are a few reaons why you might need a CRM. From the challenges of managing contacts that are spread out everywhere to, the ability to create consistency across your communication channels. Below we've rounded up the main challenges you might already be experiencing without a CRM, and some direct benefits having the right one can bring.

Challenges without a CRM

• Disorganization: Without a CRM, managing contacts, interactions, and data can become chaotic, leading to inefficiencies.
• Missed opportunities: Important leads and follow-ups can easily slip through the cracks without a centralized system.
• Inefficient processes: Manual tracking and data entry consume valuable time and resources.
• Lack of insight: Without analytics, understanding customer behavior and campaign performance is challenging.
• Inconsistent communication: Maintaining a uniform message across multiple platforms becomes difficult without automated tools.

Benefits of a CRM

• Centralized information: A CRM consolidates all customer data, ensuring easy access and management.
• Enhanced efficiency: Automating routine tasks frees up time for strategic activities.
• Improved customer relationships: Personalized interactions and timely follow-ups enhance customer satisfaction.
• Better decision-making: Data-driven insights help in crafting effective strategies.
• Increased sales: Streamlined processes and better lead management boost conversion rates.
• Consistent communication: Automated messaging ensures a uniform brand voice across all platforms.
  

How to evaluate and choose a CRM platform

If you're considering a CRM for the first time, we've rounded up some useful pointers for your consideration in your decision-making process.

1. Define your requirements

When evaluating the best CRM for social media, start by identifying the key features that align with your business needs. Look for functionalities such as social media integration, social listening, and engagement tracking. Prioritize tools that offer seamless connectivity with platforms like LinkedIn, X, and Instagram, and provide analytics to measure social media performance. This will ensure that the CRM can effectively manage your social media campaigns and interactions.

Key features of a CRM for social media

• Automated processes: Streamlines tasks by automating repetitive workflows, freeing up time for strategic activities. This feature is crucial for founders aiming to scale their social media-driven businesses efficiently.
• Contact enrichment: Automatically finds Leads and Customers' email addresses and contact information, enhancing efficiency. This ensures you have all the necessary details to engage with your audience effectively without manual data entry.
• Structured pipeline: Tracks Leads and Customers through defined stages, ensuring process clarity and effectiveness. A well-structured pipeline helps in visualizing the customer journey, making it easier to manage and convert leads.
• Mail merge and email sequences: Increases communication efficiency with follow-up templates and automated sequences. This feature is particularly beneficial for maintaining consistent engagement with your audience, ensuring no lead falls through the cracks.
• Social media integration: Seamlessly imports contacts from LinkedIn, Instagram, X and tracks contact information within the CRM. For social media-driven businesses, integrating this can significantly enhance networking, social selling and lead generation efforts.
• Analytics: Provides essential data analysis and predictive insights for better planning. Access to robust reporting tools helps in making informed decisions, optimizing campaigns, and forecasting future trends.

2. Budget considerations

Balancing cost and return on investment is crucial when selecting a CRM for social media. While it's tempting to go for the cheapest option, consider the long-term benefits of a more robust platform that can drive better engagement and higher conversion rates. Evaluate the pricing models of different CRMs and determine which offers the best value based on the features and support provided. Remember, investing in the right CRM can significantly enhance your social media marketing efforts.

3. Selection process

Choosing the right CRM vendor involves thorough research and comparison. Start by making a list of potential vendors that specialize in social media features. Read reviews, request demos, and consult with other social media-driven businesses to gather insights. Evaluate each vendor's customer support, scalability, and ease of use. This process will help you narrow down your options to those that best meet your specific requirements.

4. Get a demo

Before making a final decision, trial different CRM platforms to see how they perform in real-world scenarios. Take advantage of free trials or demo versions to test the CRM's social media capabilities, such as scheduling posts, tracking engagement, and generating reports. Compare the user experience, integration options, and overall efficiency. By thoroughly evaluating each platform, you can make an informed decision and select the best CRM for managing your social media leads and campaigns. To get a demo of folk CRM, click here.

3 tips for implementing a CRM

At this stage, it's time to get excited about your new CRM. We've rounded up the following tips for you to keep front of mind and make the most of your onboarding.

1. Import your data in your new CRM

Transitioning to a new CRM involves migrating your existing data. Start by exporting your current data as a CSV file. This step ensures that all your social media contacts, interactions, and analytics are seamlessly integrated into your new CRM.

2. Create a first pipeline

Once your data is imported, it's time to set up your first pipeline. Tailor the pipeline stages to reflect your social media workflow. For instance, you might have stages like "New Lead from Social Media," "Engaged on Social," "Follow-Up Required," and "Converted." This customized pipeline helps you track the progress of your social media interactions and campaigns effectively.

3. Customize it according to your workflow

Effective CRMs should work for you, not the other way round. Make sure you spend some time to explore what integrations or automation features it has so that you can fully personalize it according to your tech stack.

The 5 best CRMs for social media

1. folk

folk is a modern CRM platform for managing contacts, workflows, and relationships, offering customizable pipelines, AI-driven tools, and integrations to enhance deal management and prospecting.

Key features

• Contact enrichment: Automatically enriches contact details by finding emails and LinkedIn URLs, enabling efficient outreach without manual data entry or additional costs for email services.
• Social media integration: Seamlessly import contacts from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, X and more to track all your contact information within folk, and use templates for quicker, streamlined communication.
• Mail merge and email sequences: Full email sync, templates, and tracking features, enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• AI-powered features: AI tools assist in managing contacts and relationships, automating routine tasks, and suggesting actions to improve productivity.
• Personalization: folk integrates seamlessly with over 6,000 apps, including Gmail, Zapier, and Make, allowing users to centralize their workflow and reduce manual data entry.

Pros

• Ease of use: folk is praised for its intuitive interface, making it accessible even to non-technical users with quick onboarding and a minimal learning curve.
• All-in-one: folk streamlines your workflow by allowing you to import contacts from LinkedIn, automatically find their emails, reach out through customizable email sequences, and track interactions in a pipeline, eliminating the need for multiple tools and saving time and money.
 
• Customizability: Custom fields, pipelines, and workflows.
• Integrations: folk integrates seamlessly with over 6,000 apps, including Gmail, Zapier, and Make, allowing users to centralize their workflow and reduce manual data entry.

Cons

• Reporting: Currently lacks reporting features, but there are plans for future implementation.

Prices and plans

You can try Folk for free with a 14-day free trial. After that, a monthly or annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $60 per user, per month.

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2. HubSpot

Hubspot CRM is a user-friendly, scalable platform offering integrated tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations efficiently.

Key features

• Marketing Hub: Includes email marketing, ad tracking, landing pages, and lead generation tools.
• Sales Hub: Provides deal tracking, pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting.
• Service Hub: Offers customer service tools like ticketing, live chat, and knowledge bases.
• Lead scoring: Prioritize leads with predictive scoring to improve sales efficiency.
• Social media management: Integrates social media management tools, allowing businesses to manage and schedule posts directly from the platform.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: HubSpot is known for its intuitive and easy-to-use interface, making it accessible for users of all skill levels.
• Comprehensive free plan: Offers a robust free version that includes essential CRM features, making it ideal for small businesses and startups.
• Seamless integration with marketing tools: HubSpot integrates smoothly with its marketing, sales, and service hubs, creating a unified platform for inbound marketing and customer management.
• Automation capabilities: Provides powerful automation tools for tasks like email marketing, lead nurturing, and sales workflows, helping businesses save time and improve efficiency.
• Social media management: Integrates social media management tools, allowing businesses to manage and schedule posts directly from the platform.

Cons

• High cost at higher tiers: HubSpot’s pricing can become expensive as you move to higher tiers, which may be prohibitive for small businesses as they scale.
• Limited customization in free plan: The free plan and lower tiers have limited customization options, which can restrict flexibility for growing businesses.
• Complexity in advanced features: Some advanced features, such as custom reporting and workflows, have a steep learning curve and may require additional training.
• Email marketing limits: Email marketing functionality in the free plan is restricted by limits on the number of emails you can send, which can be a drawback for businesses with larger lists.
• Dependence on HubSpot ecosystem: The platform works best when fully integrated with HubSpot's other tools, which can limit flexibility if you use other software.
  
  

Prices and plans

Prices and plans for HubSpot's marketing suite are as follows for an annual subscription.

• Starter plan: Starts from $15 per user, per month.
• Professional: Starts from $800 per user, per month
• Enterprise: Starts from $3,600 per user, per month.

3. Zoho

Zoho is a CRM system with a strong sales focus. Its got features such as journey orchestration, sales process management and workflow automation. There's also something for marketing teams, including lead hurting, event management and customer segmentation.

Key features

• Social media integration: Zoho Social plan integrates CRM with social media platforms to capture leads and engage with customers directly.
• Lead and contact management: Manages customer information, tracks interactions, and segments contacts for targeted social media campaigns.
• Multi-channel communication: Integrates with email, phone, social media, and live chat to manage customer interactions seamlessly.
• Marketing automation: Integrates with marketing tools for automated social media campaigns and lead nurturing.
• AI-powered sales assistant (Zia): Provides predictive analytics, task automation, and intelligent suggestions to enhance social media marketing performance.

Pros

• Affordability: Zoho CRM offers competitive pricing, making it accessible to social media-driven startups and businesses.
• Multi-channel communication: Supports email, phone, social media, and live chat, allowing seamless management of all customer interactions from one platform.
• AI-powered features: Zia, the AI assistant, offers intelligent insights and predictive analytics, boosting social media marketing efficiency.
• Integration with Zoho Suite: Seamlessly integrates with other Zoho products, creating a comprehensive ecosystem for managing social media and other business functions.
• Customization: Extensive customization options allow businesses to tailor the CRM to their specific social media needs, including custom fields and workflows.

Cons

• Steep learning curve: The extensive customization options can be overwhelming for new users, requiring significant time to master the platform.
• Complex setup: Initial setup and configuration can be complex, particularly for businesses without technical expertise or dedicated IT resources.
• Limited third-party integrations: While Zoho integrates well with its suite of products, integration with third-party social media tools can be limited or require additional effort.
• Performance issues: Occasional reports of slow performance, especially with large datasets or complex operations, can hinder productivity.
• Feature limitations in lower tiers: The lower-priced plans may lack advanced features, pushing users to upgrade to more expensive tiers for essential social media functionality.

Prices and plans

Zoho's free plan limited to three users. After that, an annual subscription plan is as follows. Access to Zoho Social is through an additional plan.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Professional: $35 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $50 per user, per month.

4. Salesforce

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform for large enterprises, offering tools for sales, marketing, service, and analytics, with extensive scalability.

Key features

• Comprehensive ecosystem: A unified platform offering CRM, marketing automation, customer service, and custom app development, suitable for managing social media interactions and campaigns.
• Customization and scalability: Highly customizable and scalable, allowing businesses to tailor the platform to social media workflows and manage growth effectively.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration: Salesforce Einstein provides AI-driven insights, helping optimize social media strategies and engagement.
• Extensive integration capabilities: Integrates with a wide range of third-party social media tools, ensuring seamless operation across different platforms.
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance: Offers robust security measures, critical for handling sensitive customer data from social media interactions.

Pros

• Comprehensive feature set: Covers sales, service, marketing, and social media management, making it a powerful tool for managing customer relationships and social media campaigns.
• Highly customizable: Allows businesses to tailor the platform to specific social media needs with custom fields, objects, and workflows.
• Extensive integration capabilities: Integrates with a vast array of social media applications, enabling seamless data flow across platforms.
• Scalability: Suitable for businesses of all sizes, with the ability to grow with your social media-driven business.
• Advanced analytics and reporting: Provides powerful analytics and reporting tools, allowing businesses to gain deep insights into their social media data and make informed decisions.

Cons

• High cost: Can be expensive, especially for small to medium-sized businesses, with high licensing fees and additional costs for social media integrations.
• Steep learning curve: Requires significant time and training for users to become proficient in managing social media workflows.
• Complex setup and customization: Initial setup and customization for social media use can be challenging and often require expert help, adding to the overall cost.
• Overwhelming for small teams: Robust features may be overkill for smaller teams, leading to underutilization of the platform’s social media capabilities.
• Integration complexity: Integrating with third-party social media applications can be complex and require technical expertise.

Prices and plans

• Starter Suite: $25/user/month provides basic CRM features for small businesses.
• Pro Suite: $100/user/month includes advanced tools for growing businesses.
• Enterprise Plan: $165/user/month offers extensive customization and automation for large companies.
• Unlimited Plan: $330/user/month provides comprehensive features for large enterprises.
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month provides AI-driven insights and advanced features for large enterprises.

5. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a web-based CRM for small businesses, offering lead management, automation, email integration, and customizable pipelines to optimize sales.

Key features

• Lead and deal management: Centralized tools to manage customer data, interactions, and social media campaigns, helping teams act quickly on opportunities.
• Email integration: Full email sync, templates, and tracking features, enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM, including social media follow-ups.
• Advanced reporting and analytics: Real-time data analytics and custom reporting tools to track social media performance, forecast engagement, and gain actionable insights.
• Sales automation: Workflow automation to handle repetitive tasks, such as lead routing, follow-ups, and social media post scheduling, allowing teams to focus on engaging with customers.
• Customization and security: Options to customize pipelines, fields, and user permissions, with robust security measures to protect social media data.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: The CRM is known for its intuitive and visually appealing interface, making it easy for users to navigate and manage their social media interactions.
• Customization: The CRM allows for a high degree of customization, enabling users to tailor the platform to their specific social media processes with custom fields and workflows.
• Automation features: The CRM includes automation tools that help streamline repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up messages and scheduling social media posts, saving time and boosting productivity.
• Lead management: The CRM offers effective lead management features, including lead scoring and tracking, which help social media teams prioritize and convert leads more efficiently.
• Third-party integrations: The CRM integrates with a wide range of third-party applications, such as Google Workspace, Slack, and Zapier, enhancing its functionality and flexibility for social media management.

Cons

• Limited advanced features: The CRM lacks some of the more advanced features, such as extensive marketing automation and AI capabilities, which are available in other platforms.
• Basic reporting in lower tiers: The reporting and analytics features in the basic plans are somewhat limited, requiring upgrades to access more in-depth insights.
• No built-in email marketing: The CRM does not include built-in email marketing features, requiring users to integrate with third-party email tools for such functionality.
• Price increases with add-ons: The cost of the CRM can increase quickly when additional features or integrations are added, making it less cost-effective for businesses with growing needs.
• Learning curve for new users: Although generally user-friendly, the CRM may still present a learning curve for users unfamiliar with CRM systems, especially in understanding the full capabilities of the platform.

Prices and plans

An annual subscription plan basis with Pipedrive is as follows.

• Essential plan: Starts from $24 per user, per month.
• Advanced plan: Starts from $44 per user, per month.
• Power plan: Starts from $79 per user, per month.
• Enterprise plan: Starts from $129 per user, per month.

Conclusion

Choosing the best CRM for social media can significantly enhance your business's efficiency, engagement, and growth. Each of the platforms we've reviewed—folk, HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, and Pipedrive—offers unique features and benefits tailored to different needs and budgets. Whether you prioritize ease of use, advanced analytics, or seamless social media integration, there is a CRM solution that fits your requirements. To truly understand which CRM aligns best with your social media-driven business, take advantage of free trials and demos. For a hands-on experience with one of the top contenders, try folk for free here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do social media-driven business use as a CRM?

Social media-driven businesses often use CRMs like folk, Hubspot, Zoho, Salesforce, and Pipedrive. Folk stands out for its intuitive interface and seamless LinkedIn integration, Hubspot offers comprehensive marketing tools, Zoho is known for affordability and AI features, Salesforce provides extensive customization, and Pipedrive is praised for its user-friendly design and automation capabilities.

Do I need a CRM?

Yes, depending on the complexity of your process. A CRM can streamline your operations, enhance customer relationships, and drive growth, especially if you manage a high volume of social media interactions and leads. It helps in organizing data, automating tasks, and providing insights, making it indispensable for scaling your business efficiently.

How much does a CRM cost?

The cost of a CRM varies widely based on features and user requirements. Generally, prices range from $15 to $500 per user per month. For example, Folk starts at $20 per user per month, Hubspot ranges from $15 to $1,500 per user per month, Zoho starts at $20 per user per month, Salesforce ranges from $25 to $500 per user per month, and Pipedrive starts at $24 per user per month.

Does folk’s CRM respond to social media needs?

Yes, folk’s CRM is highly responsive to social media needs. It offers seamless LinkedIn integration, enabling easy import and management of contacts. Its contact enrichment feature finds emails and LinkedIn URLs automatically, enhancing outreach efficiency. Folk also supports customizable pipelines, AI-driven tools, and integrates with over 6,000 apps, making it a comprehensive solution for social media-driven businesses.