Best Social Media Scheduling Tools for Small Business Owners
Jules Marie
Public Relations | Social Media & Digital Marketing Specialist | Grant Writer | Content Creator
Social Media Scheduling Tools reduce the amount of time spent on social media. Why post content to individual platforms when you can post to several simultaneously? Social media scheduling tools also allow you to schedule your posts days or months in advance, and at particular times, as needed, which enhances your marketing strategy.
Here are some social media scheduling tools to consider. I’m familiar with Hootsuite as I’ve used it for several of my clients. I like the ease of use, ability to schedule posts and easy-to-understand analytics.
Hootsuite offers free, paid and enterprise options. Advanced versions allow for increased scheduling options and analytics. It eases monitoring of customer engagement and conversations when ‘comments’ and ‘mentions’ are added to the customizable dashboard. It’s mobile-friendly and easily accessible on a tablet or mobile device. The free version allows you to schedule a limited number of posts on a maximum of three social platforms.
Now, here’s a hard-to-find resource--there's a FREE version of Hootsuite to get you started. You’ll be able to schedule up to five posts on two platforms for FREE. Here’s the link. https://hootsuite.com/plans/free?
Sprout Social?provides?social?media management tools for small businesses, agencies and enterprise accounts. Standard Plan pricing starts at $99 a month; the Professional Plan is $149 per month and the Advanced Plan is $249 per month. They offer a free trial version for a limited time. They work with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest. They also claim they can mine social data and activate social listening and they look for hidden engagement opportunities through its use of monitoring tools and analytics.
Like many scheduling tools, Buffer allows you to schedule posts, analyze performance and manage your social accounts all in one place. Buffer offers a free option allowing you to schedule up to 10 posts per social channel on a maximum of three social media platforms. Their “Essentials” plan allows for unlimited social channels but you pay based on how many posts you schedule. They also claim to offer a solution to make social engagement and conversations easier for an additional cost and also for a service they refer to as “Buffer Analyze”.
Iconosquare is a social media management tool for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok. Consider this scheduling program if you’d like additional marketing options and are willing to pay a minimum of $49/per month. ?
It also allows you to manage multiple brands on Instagram and Facebook on one dashboard. It allows tagging of users and accounts and it tracks the effectiveness of the hashtags used. They provide in-depth, easy-to-read analytics (they all say that!) and the ability to monitor competitor activity. Iconosquare’s “free tools” tab on the menu bar offers a free download of a social media calendar chockfull of content ideas.
Facebook has an easy-to-use scheduling feature in “Business Manager” which allows you to post to Facebook and Instagram. It also offers helpful insights to help you determine what works and what doesn’t.
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SkedSocial’s program allows you to post to multiple platforms including Google My Business. This program begins at $25 and can be customized based on needs.
Tailwind promotes its service as your marketing solution for winning on Pinterest and Instagram. Their tool allows you to discover content, schedule posts, monitor conversations, amplify reach and analyze results. The tool also recommends hashtags to use.?They offer a $10 per month Plus plan for bloggers and small businesses and an $800 plan for Professional accounts and customized pricing for Enterprise accounts.
CoSchedule claims they will “Build a seamless workflow from start to finish. Synch all your favorite tools and social platforms into one place. CoSchedule integrates with WordPress, Google Analytics, Evernote, Google Docs and more.” Pricing starts at FREE and goes up.
Plans range in price from $17/month to $68/month. They also offer a 50% discount to non-profit organizations, charities and full-time students. They appear to offer analytics and engagement which other tools don’t. They’re also able to re-use evergreen content. They also offer a balance of content ratios (content, quotes, videos, blogs).
They refer to themselves as “social media on autopilot” and they offer all-in-one tools for content posting, recycling, follower growth, engagement and more. They are a bit pricier than other services and their rates begin at $29/month up to $197/month. They also offer “concierge” services which provide you with access to a dedicated “social media bee”. Another appealing service is their “content curation”. The goal with posting is not to talk about yourself all the time and by working with a tool that provides you with content to share, your newsfeed will have a balanced content ratio.
This program is used primarily by agencies.
TweetDeck manages multiple Twitter accounts, follows specific hashtags, replies to other users and accesses real-time tweets.
Jules Marie is a certified social media manager, trainer, consultant and coach. Get to know her at 33Words or email her at [email protected].