Social media scheduling tools are now an important tool in online business. We know the importance of having a social media presence in today’s world, especially for your business, company, brand, or for those who would like to become an influencer. When your customers or followers see how active you are online, it makes them interact more with you and you will in the end, gain their trust and loyalty.
But how do you keep up with the demanding increase and quest for more content and knowledge from your followers and fans when you are not a bot?
The ability to keep an active social presence without it taking over more than 90 percent of your time and attention is a big challenge. And knowing that these social media platforms have different peak times when their users are most active is also another thing to keep in mind. Posting at these peak periods is what makes you engage with as many of your audience as possible.
Doing all this so as to keep up with your audience is almost near impossible; making valuable posts at peak hours, having live sessions, creating Q&A, and lots more. This is why tools providers had to come up with solutions to help you and me make social media scheduling and posting more manageable with the help of social media scheduling tools.
With social media scheduling tools, you can now design and bulk schedule multiple posts at once. This can be done at a convenient time and then use your tool of choice to deliver your posts at the best times. This gives you time to create and publish more content.
Below are the top social media scheduling tools you can try.
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#1 Hootsuite
If you have been searching online for a great social media scheduling tool for managing all your social media accounts, then you need to try the tool.
Hootsuite has proven to be one of the most established and popular social media scheduling tools for managing and marketing. This tool can be used to manage and schedule posts, receive in-depth reports, and even collaborate with team members, using the built-in teamwork features. This tool can be used to manage and schedule posts for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
You can use it to view multiple streams at once and monitor what your customers are saying which is are really cool features of this social media management tool. This is a great tool for those just starting out because it has a free limited plan available for 3 social profiles and up to 30 scheduled messages.
What does the Hootsuite free plan include? With this option, you get the ability to:
Manage 3 social profiles in one place
Schedule 30 posts in advance
Generate leads with social contests
The free plan also includes basic analytics for tracking followers and various growth and content statistics and two RSS feed integrations. This is a great place to start.
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#2 Social media scheduling tools: Buffer
Another great social media scheduling tool is Buffer. This tool is great for managing and posting content on your social media platforms.
Buffer helps you manage all your social media content and schedule your posts in one place. But that’s not all, the app also comes with analytics tools that help you keep track of your audience’s activity and figure out exactly the best time to post in the future. Buffer also has a chrome extension, that can be integrated seamlessly, so you don’t have to do much work. You can always you the extension to easily get things done as quickly as possible. With this, it is very easy and straightforward with more effective ways of managing your social media all that once, and the good thing is that you can do all this with just clicks of setting up all that you really need. Buffer supports over 7 different platforms including Instagram, Twitter. Buffer allows you to add up to 3 social channels on the free plan and the paid plan is just $5 per month.
Among the many features of Buffer, it also suggests the perfect moments to post your content based on follower activity – this is pretty awesome.
#3 Facebook & Instagram Creator Studio
As the name implies, this is typically for Facebook and Instagram content management and scheduling. This is a very good social media scheduling tool especially for those who want a totally free tool.
Because Instagram is part of the Facebook family, they both have similar features in terms of ad sets and content scheduling. This is why a lot of your settings and features, like ads, are managed via the Facebook platform. Face decided to launch the creator studio to help ease content management and posting and since it is part of the Facebook tool, this comes totally for free — and provides a central place to manage your Instagram and Facebook account as a brand, business owner, or an individual.
With Creator Studio, you can easily manage and schedule posts, monitor comments, track engagement rates, place in-stream ads, and manage multiple pages in one place.
The good thing about this is that Facebook is always cool changes that are improving the dashboard and user experience. For example, the Creator Studio was only available for Facebook Pages which has now changed to accommodate Instagram as well.
With the new Creator Studio dashboard, you have access to choose whether to use Instagram or Facebook to work with. And with the Instagram dashboard, creators now have access to manage and schedule Instagram posts with tons of new Instagram tools and features, including the ability to schedule IGTV videos. If you are on a tight budget, this is definitely a tool worth trying out.
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#4 Free Social Media Scheduling Tools: Later
You may probably have come across Later in your search for social media scheduling tools. Later has proven to be a great tool for planning, managing, scheduling, and posting your content across all major social media in a timely fashion.
We understand how difficult it is for business owners and brands to keep up with the work of managing, scheduling, and posting, and managing your social platforms shouldn’t consume all of your working hours. This is why Later comes in very handy. With Later, you can do all this within a short period of time thereby streamlining your workflow and getting your social strategy in order,
From crafting your post and nailing your Instagram aesthetic with their Visual Planner, to publishing across multiple platforms, and driving traffic to your business — you can achieve all this with Later.
What’s more, the Later inbuilt analytics tools can also help you track all your posts and ensure your content is doing what you want it to do.
The other amazing part of Later is that it is FREE to Sign up to and start managing, scheduling, and posting across all your social platforms at once with ease.
With their free plan, you can get 1 Social Set which includes Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and can be used to make 30 posts per social profile.
#5 Free Social media scheduling tools: Zoho Social
Last but not least on our list is Zoho Social. The reason I kept this as last is that it does not offer a lifetime free plan like others.
So, whether you’re starting a new business or you are an agency, Zoho Social got you covered. With Zoho Social, you can manage multiple profiles, research relevant keywords, work with team members, and finally, schedule and post your content from one dashboard.
Zoho Social offers almost the same features and tools and as the other platforms but some things set them apart, which are the Facebook lead ads, a Social-Share browser plugin, advanced reporting features, and CRM integrations. With Zoho Social, agencies, brands, and businesses have the choice of choosing between the business or agency plans. It all depends on what you want to achieve and also your pocket. Although they offer 15 days free trial, you can opt for one of their paid plans which range from $10 to $37.5 for the business plan and $200 to $300 for agencies. Zoho Social’s free plan enables you to manage 1 brand, with the URL shortener and Social-Share browser plugin included.
I understand that managing your social media presence and getting your content to reach more audience or go viral may be tasking, challenging, and time-consuming, lots of people feel they can handle all this themselves until they are faced with the issue of creating content regularly and meeting demands. So, when you hit that rock wall, then you realize that you could have made your work so much easier by simply using social media scheduling tools.
This is why I decided to put together these five amazing social media scheduling tools to help make your work easier and less stressful. All the tools mentioned in this post have free plans so you can experiment and find the platform that works best for your social strategy. One thing is certain, you can’t go wrong using social media management tools – it will surely save you time, grow your social presence, and possibly even make you some money in the long run.
I hope you will find these social media scheduling tools helpful. Good luck!
