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Social media scheduling tools are essential for growing your business. They allow you to post consistently at the times that your ideal client is online. However, that’s not all they do. Scheduling tools are becoming more sophisticated and offer added bonuses like collaboration, analytics and social listening. Here are a few social media schedulers that will help you ace social media management.
Buffer – Buffer starts at free with limited accounts. The paid platform starts at $9.99 a month. This tool allows you to schedule your posts manually or by dropping them into slots that represent the best times for each platform. You can view your analytics to see how you are doing and easily click to reshare. One benefit of Buffer is the simple interface. It supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Plus and Linkedin.
Hootsuite – With Hootsuite, you can schedule your content, monitor your social mentions in feeds and check the analytics of your posts. You can create your posts offline and bulk upload them. The basic version, which is limited to three accounts, is free with paid programs starting at $29. Hootsuite supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and WordPress.
Sprout Social – Sprout Social includes CRM features alongside its social-media-scheduling program, which allows you to create a deeper relationship with your customers. You can also assign user permissions so that all members of your team can collaborate on your content strategy. You can increase engagement by using the ViralPost feature to determine the best times to post. It starts at $59 a month and supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus and LinkedIn.
EClincher – EClincher also lets you schedule and monitor, but adds some research capabilities. For example, you can search for influencers to help you boost a campaign and find relevant articles to share. EClincher integrates with Canva, which is a popular image-editing tool. It supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Google My Business, Blogger, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube and starts at $49 per month.
Agora Pulse – Starting at $49, Agora Pulse allows you to schedule and monitor your social media feeds and, also, those of your competitor. It allows you to collaborate with your team and run contests, quizzes and promotions. The supported networks are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube
CoSchedule – CoSchedule is great for working with teams. Not only can you schedule your social media posts, but you can add other aspects of your marketing calendar, as well, such as your blog and email campaigns. It can also automatically post in order to fill up your schedule. It works with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr.
Crowdfire – Crowdfire is a free platform that posts to social media accounts. You can also follow and unfollow people on Twitter. This will allow you to unfollow inactive accounts so you can keep your account under the follower limit or even try to master your following-follower ratio. Trust me it’s a thing. It also posts to Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Paid accounts start at $9.99.
PostPlanner – PostPlanner makes it easy to supplement your content by curating content. This helps to keep your posting consistent so you can keep people engaged. It starts at $3.
PromoRepublic - With access to 100,000+ social media templates and automatic posting tools, PromoRepublic provides a central hub to manage all of your paid and organic social media management.
Tailwind – Tailwind is a scheduler for Pinterest and Instagram. Many bloggers say that the Tailwind’s Pinterest tool accounts for most of their traffic. The Pinterest tool also lets you join tribes related to your website. Tribes are a type of shared engagement group. Another feature that Taiwind users appreciate is the ability to schedule posts when their people are most active. An additional bonus is the ability to drag and drop and visually curate your feed. The service starts at $9.99 for one account.
Later – Later is an Instagram-focused tool, but it also lets you post to Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest using its calendar-like dashboard. You can plan your grid for maximum aesthetic quality, which is important to many lifestyle and fashion feeds. If you are involved in product or affiliate marketing, it also has a free link tool for Instagram that can send people to your shop.
Are you interested in increasing your followers with a targeted content marketing campaign? Book a free discovery call to discuss your current goals and a strategy that will move your business or non-profit forward.
Shella Gardezi is a marketing, PR and SEO specialist with experience doubling website traffic and sales and getting features in national publications and on the airwaves.