Exact Target, the company behind one of the web’s most popular Twitter management tools, CoTweet, announced last month that they will no longer be offering their free service. Instead, they will be offering SocialEngage, an enterprise-ready, premium social media management solution that comes at a high price.

While SocialEngage sounds great, many of the clients we work with are new to social media, or have limited budgets to spend on social media management. Paying for an enterprise-ready social dashboard just isn’t feasible or sensible for everyone. However, we’ve identified a fantastic alternative called Roost.

Roost is a social media management platform that aims to help companies manage their engagement through campaigns and individual posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Offered by Vertical Response, it promises to help smaller companies manage their social media properties and the best part is, it is currently offered free of charge.

What we really like about Roost is the option to schedule Tweets individually or for an extended period of time as a campaign. It even helps you draft your posts by asking for interesting links, quotes, updates and photos. We haven’t yet found another social dashboard that has this rich capability.

As with all PR activity, measurement is essential (we recently posted about the purpose of measurement). Roost provides a scorecard tool that helps you track your level of engagement, and the success of that engagement, on your social media channels. It can even provide tailored tips on how to expand your company’s audience.

If your company doesn’t have the budget to keep up with CoTweet, or if you’re shopping around for a social media management platform, we encourage you to watch the demo and give Roost a try. You can also explore other options to meet your social media needs. Mashable recently posted an article on other CoTweet alternatives to try.