You’re a busy person with places to go and people to meet. You can’t be chained to your laptop all day, monitoring your social media accounts to find out who said what and when–but you can’t neglect your valued followers either. What you need is a way to keep an eye on your brand’s social media presence while you’re out and about.

Thankfully, you can equip your mobile device with social media applications that will do exactly that–let you enjoy the freedom to come and go without ever losing touch.

Here are a few of the best apps for managing social media on the go!

HootSuite

No list would be complete without the most popular social media management tool–HootSuite. Yes, you can manage all of your social media platforms–Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ and more–all from one handy dashboard. How easy is that? Reply to comments and mentions, schedule automatic posts, view multiple streams at once, receive detailed analytics, measure campaign results, and check out a clock that tells you how much time using HootSuite has saved. And less time spent equates to longer battery life for your iPad or other mobile device.

Buffer

Never tried a social media management tool? Buffer‘s user-friendly design makes it a great place to start. Whether you long to schedule posts across multiple accounts including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+, measure the success of each post, or attach your Bit.ly account to shorten your links, Buffer enables you to do it all with ease.

Sprout Social

If you long to have eye-appealing reports, but lack the creative touch, Sprout Social may be the answer to your prayers. Besides boasting stunning graphics, this social media management tool also enables you to schedule posts to your brand’s Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn accounts from one spot, amalgamate your social media feeds into one stream, publish directly from your browser extension or mobile phone, compare your results to your competitors’, and integrate your Feedly account.

Spredfast

If you are part of a social media management team and have a hankering for a detailed data-gathering device, the Spredfast tool is the one for you. With a keen ability to gather and measure data from multiple social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube, Spredfast will generate an easy-to-use graph filled with useable info. It also creates a useful calendar that will let you and your team know the optimum posting times and allow you to coordinate your social media activity.

SocialOomph

Does your brand boast a bountiful Twitter following? SocialOomph not only enables you to manage your Twitter account–along with Facebook, LinkedIn, Plurk, and your blog–all from one dashboard, but it makes Tweeting a whole lot easier. You can schedule your tweets in advance and create some custom automatic responses too. And, in case you have some really embarrassing Tweets that you and the brand you represent would like to pretend never happened–um, a Justin Bieber obsession, heaven forbid–you can use the Purge Your Twitter Tweets option and begin a clean and Bieber-free slate.

Tweepi

If your brand is extremely popular–and, hopefully, it is–you may find managing your Twitter following a frustrating feat. Well, fret no further. Tweepi is here. (It is important to note that this app is not for faint of heart). Thanks to Tweepi, you can find out which people you follow don’t actually follow you back. Then, if you feel so compelled, you can flush them. You can also force creepy followers or bots to unfollow you. Thankfully, Tweepi has a warm and fuzzy side too, enabling you to follow everyone who follows you–avoiding the need for them to flush you in the future. And you can also easily find other people or brands to follow based on common interests.

So untie those tethers and escape the office. Inhale a deep breath of fresh air and go out into the world knowing that your mobile device will keep you connected. After all, you’ve got places to go, people to meet, and highly entertaining articles to read. Oh yeah, and a few social media accounts to manage.

What is your favorite social media management tool? What makes it special?

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This post was contributed by Kimberley Laws, a freelance writer, avid blogger, and social media addict. You can follow her at The Embiggens Project and Searching for Barry Weiss.