Do you often forget to post content daily on your social media platforms? Keeping up to date on your social media presence can be challenging, especially if you’re a busy entrepreneur. You may get too wrapped up with bigger priorities than keeping your social media feeds active, and you’ll find you often forget it altogether. To prevent you from neglecting your social media presence, there are several hassle-free social media scheduling tools you can use.
This post is part of a series –
How to do Social Media for Business
Despite the naysayers who believe that scheduling takes away the spontaneity of social media, scheduling is actually a really good idea.
Why should I use social media scheduling tools?
- Scheduling gives you the opportunity to consider adapting your content before it is published. Spontaneous is all well and good but sometimes the message is bad and it’s better to spend time thinking about it and be sure you really want to post what you thought you did when you wrote it!
- You can schedule to post at the times your audiences are active, whatever time of the day (or night) that might be. You can relax on the evening and weekends because your content is already scheduled to post. This is especially important where your own schedule does not match the schedule of your audience.
- You can arrange a whole week of content in one sitting. Many people choose Sunday evening to get themselves ahead for the week, for example.
What are the best social media scheduling tools?
There are lots of social media scheduling tools to choose from; each with its own unique features. Which one is the most suitable for you and your business? Click To TweetHere are 9 social media scheduling tools that are worth checking out.
Buffer is free of charge for up to three social media accounts and a limited number of pieces of content. If you are on a tight budget this could be a good option for you. The key features of this are it is simple to use. You can create a marketing team and give each member a position, publish with queue and use analytics. It’s one of the most popular tools around, and for good reason. It’s certainly a good starting point for anyone looking to get involved their social media scheduling. You can schedule your posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.
Hootsuite is another popular scheduling tool. Most marketing managers prefer to use this due to its many features, even though using it can be a bit clunky and not overly intuitive. Hootsuite provides a 30-day free trial which allows you to cancel before the set period to avoid payments. It is a great way to sample all the given features and consider whether you think it is suitable. Other than that, you can use the free-plan for up to 3 social media accounts, but features remain limited. Hootsuite has got many, many features but things like advanced analytics are an optional (paid) extra. At Social Bods, we love Hootsuite as it’s economical for multiple accounts, but we don’t use all of the available feature. It lets you auto-post to Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn pages, LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pages, and also Pinterest (with the Tailwind extension).
MeetEdgar! is another well-established tool. Like Hootsuite, you can try this out free of charge for the first 30-days. You have the ability to categorise your social media content and generate posts using the browser extensions. It allows you to reshare your content after you have reached the end of your queue, and to create a library – all content you automate will be saved, so you can keep on track without having to run through all platforms to see what has been published. This tool lets you post content on Facebook, Twitter Instagram and LinkedIn.
If you are a female fashion company or an influencer who favours Instagram, then this tool is right down your street!
Sprout Social is a premium tool which provides an inbox with incoming messages from all social media accounts allowing you to instantly respond to users’ messages without missing any. This is a great way to build instant engagement with your audience and demonstrate a first-class impression. The same as Hootsuite and MeetEdger!, you can kick-start your scheduling and try out a 30-day free trial. Sprout Social is known for being one of the more expensive options, but this tool offers an excessive deep range of unique features, including analytics & easy report building. So, if you’re dreaming big with your marketing plan, then this tool is for you! For this, you can post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram Pinterest and Messenger.
TweetDeck is an official tool for Twitter only. You can manage your posts over multiple Twitter accounts and monitor the level of engagement from your users by using the metrics. Unlike most scheduling tools on the market, this one is entirely free! All you need to do a sign up using your Twitter account and then you are ready to begin scheduling. Tweetdeck is especially good if you’re running a Twitter chat. – See our tips for taking part in a Twitter chat
Similar to Planoly, Buffergram is another scheduling tool designed specifically for Instagram. It is very straight-forward to publish your content. All you need to do is schedule your content ready to be posted on your page. Dislike being committed to a subscription? No problem! There’s the opportunity to completely avoid subscribing and use credit by pay-as-you-go. If you want to go big by frequently posting and track the level of engagement, you can select a plan at a cost. Just to clarify that each plan has a limited amount as to what you can post daily and the choice whether you want to track or not. See what plan could work best for you.
Social Report offers a 30-day free trial on each plan, so you have a choice on what plan you would like to try without paying a fee. If the plan isn’t suitable and you need to use either more or less of the features, there is always the option to change. This tool allows you to keep up to date on your business reviews, track your competitors, plan your goals and objectives, and offer a rebranding solution. If you’re not a fan of using a search engine to learn what your competitors are up to then this is the tool for you. It’s gaining a lot of fans in the social media marketing world at the moment and is certainly worth a look. With Social Report, you can post content on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Tumblr.
Tailwind is the tool for you if you are concentrating more on Instagram and Pinterest. Marketers swear by using this due to its many benefits. It is less time consuming when you’re automating content as it allows you to upload images in bulk and use browser extensions to schedule multiple posts for both platforms. Also, you’re able to successfully reach your target audience using the recommended hash tags and hangtag finder. Tailwind offers an unlimited free-trial allowing you to schedule 100 pins on Pinterest and 30 posts on Instagram. However, if you’re wanting to schedule further ahead with more content and use more of the available features then you can upgrade to a paid plan. We love the Tailwind browser extension which allows you to fill up Tailwind on the fly
Which social media scheduling tool is the best?
Each tool has its pros and cons. We haven’t found one tool yet which will do absolutely everything we need it to do at a reasonable price. In reality, it may be that you choose a free tool for scheduling, but then use other means for monitoring and incoming mentions and messages (check out something like ZenDesk if you want better management of your growing enquiries), and another one for engaging with your audience. Often we find that working directly in the social media platform is easiest.
But if you’re finding that getting your social media content out there in an organised fashion is becoming a burden, then you really should try scheduling it and seeing if it helps. As a social media marketing agency, we couldn’t operate without scheduling our own and our clients’ content.
What’s your favourite social media scheduling tool?
