As a digital marketer in today’s fiercely competitive social media climate, you should always be on the lookout for game-changing solutions that help you save time, make your job easier and won’t put a dent in your budget.
Social media managers understand best how the right tools can help improve the entire social media management process and boost ROI.
With that in mind, we looked at 8 social scheduling tools to help you better organize and plan your content ahead.
The best social media scheduling tools in 2023
-
8 best social media scheduling tools
5.1. SocialPilot
5.2. Social Bee
5.3. NapoleonCat
5.4. Planable
5.5. Later
5.6. Hopper HQ
5.7. Semrush
5.8. Sked Social
1. What are social media scheduling tools?
Social media scheduling tools are apps that post for you on social media, as well as unified team calendars that can help social media managers accomplish many of their day-to-day activities.
These tasks include scheduling and posting content across many platforms, and, in some circumstances, monitoring social media statistics.
2. Why use social media scheduling tools?
Solopreneurs and social media managers may use free social media posting tools to automate publishing to Facebook, Instagram, or even TikTok and other social media platforms.
How is posting from a single dashboard going to save you a ton of time? You may start by using that extra time to produce more material or improve your editing and copywriting skills, for instance.
Another advantage of using a social scheduling software is that you don't have to worry about being at the office, posting at the appropriate time every day, or working on weekends when a national holiday is celebrated.
What’s more, most social media scheduling platforms are often not limited to scheduling. They also include an array of useful features related to analytics, competition monitoring and more.
3. How to use scheduling tools for social media?
The majority of social media scheduling tools operate similarly.
These are the basic steps of using a post scheduler for social media:
- Authenticate with your credentials across the desired platforms
- Press the Create post button or similar
- Type in the copy text and add the images, videos, or links that you want
- Choose a date and time that works for you
- Press the Schedule or Publish button and wait for the magic to happen
4. Tips to make social media scheduling easier
Social media scheduling apps can do a lot of the hard work for you. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t take extra steps to make your life easier and let technology work in your favor.
- Save your most used hashtags - Keep a list of your most relevant hashtags handy when you’re planning and scheduling social media content.
- Include both evergreen and topical posts in your social media plan - Many social schedulers have the option to recycle evergreen posts so it makes sense to include them alongside new, topical posts in the queue.
- Track your content’s performance - It’s not enough to schedule content and let it do its thing. To keep creating and delivering quality, engaging social media content to your audience, you have to collect valuable insights about your target audience, their engagement levels, interests, activity details, etc.
5. 8 best social media scheduling tools
When choosing the best scheduling service for your brand, you should consider your business objectives, the tools they provide, and the pricing plans available.
Let's compare these 8 affordable and top-performing social media scheduling tools to find which one fits your needs best:
SocialPilot
Social Pilot is a powerful social media scheduling tool. It allows you to schedule posts across multiple platforms including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Google My Business, Tumblr, Pinterest and VK, all from one place.
💰 Pricing
SocialPilot offers a 14-day free trial. Following that, the best pricing plan for solopreneurs and small businesses is called Professional and costs only $30 per month.
👍 Benefits
Many users credit this social media planner app for having a user-friendly, very organized interface and a lot of features focused on automation and team collaboration.
Account management is also done very efficiently via SocialPilot.
👎 Disadvantages
Some users agree SocialPilot’s interface is quite outdated. The platform also has no free plan available for users.
SocialBee
SocialBee is well-known for its outstanding planning and sharing capabilities across multiple platforms.
The app supports Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Google My Business.
💰 Pricing
In comparison to enterprise-level competitors such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social, SocialBee's pricing plans are affordable and fit nicely within the budgets of small and medium businesses.
The Bootstrap plan - most suited for solopreneurs - is available at only $19 per month.
👍 Benefits
SocialBee provides a powerful set of features that are easy to use and understand.
With their comprehensive onboarding process, intuitive interface, step-by-step instructions, and monthly demo tutorials - users quickly become proficient in using this social media scheduling tool.
👎 Disadvantages
Although SocialBee is a great tool that allows businesses to easily manage their socials, it does have its drawbacks.
One of the primary disadvantages of using SocialBee is the limited video content publishing options available regarding Reels and Stories.
NapoleonCat
As its mighty name suggests, NapoleonCat is a well-rounded app that includes a lot of features for content planning and scheduling, customer engagement, competitor analysis and automated customer service.
NapoleonCat is obviously much more than just a social scheduling app tool.
It’s a perfect match for data-driven marketers because it offers much in the way of tracking and analytics for your published content.
💰 Pricing
Pricing for NapoleonCat starts at $31 per month for the Standard plan which allows for 1 user and 3 profiles.
Small businesses and solopreneurs can comfortably start by using the budget-friendly Standard plan and then scale up based on their needs.
👍 Benefits
A powerful feature of this social media scheduling tool is the social inbox, which allows you to manage conversations across multiple platforms from one central dashboard, without having to log in to each platform.
With NapoleonCat, you can also send out custom automated reports to your clients.
👎 Disadvantages
Some users complain the app has a slow loading speed and the interface is less than intuitive.
Planable
The Planable tool is an excellent way to automate your social media activities.
In addition to promoting content creation and teamwork, the platform has a strong visual focus.
All social media platforms can be easily integrated into Planable, including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google My Business, YouTube, and TikTok.
💰 Pricing
Like most social media scheduling apps, Planable has a free edition and three other price tiers. The most affordable paid plan available costs only $13 per user monthly.
The software is surprisingly flexible, allowing you to customize your plans for a price starting at just $11 per user annually.
The price plans will automatically adjust based on the number of workspaces and users you require.
👍 Benefits
Planable is very visually oriented. Feed, calendar, list, and grid view are all available in the app to help you create amazing content.
Its preview content feature also comes in handy when you want to take a quick look at your scheduled social media posts before publishing.
👎 Disadvantages
One significant disadvantage is that, for such a graphically oriented platform, Pinterest integration is not an option.
Later
Known for its aesthetic grids, Later claims to be Instagram's BFF due to its visual first approach.
When scheduling a post, Later asks you to start with an image and then add the text — regardless of the platform you're sharing content on.
You can store your graphic images in the Media Library. The Media Library shows you much information about each image you've used, separating new from used content.
💰 Pricing
Later's three paid options are available in monthly or yearly installments. The Starter plan starting at $15 is a great, incredibly affordable option for small businesses.
The Conversations module for managing Instagram comments is included in the higher pricing tiers.
This means that you can monitor your Instagram comments from your desktop computer and respond to them.
👍 Benefits
Later provides tools like hashtags and keywords to make content research easier.
You may organize your content calendar visually and save each media piece into the asset library.
This social media multi posting tool also provides advanced analytics for your connected channels, allowing you access to valuable data on metrics such as user engagement.
👎 Disadvantages
Even for services that don't require as many photos, Later won't let you publish on social media without them.
Also, the option to bulk upload posts is unavailable as of right now.
Hopper HQ
Hopper HQ offers fully automatic publishing, analytics, full image editing, a calendar and grid planner for bulk content preparation, and more.
It also places a big emphasis on hashtag discovery and tracking to increase content value.
💰 Pricing
Hopper HQ offers a 14-days free trial and a single customizable plan.
The pricing starts at $19 a month for one Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn profile and goes up when you add more profiles to each platform.
👍 Benefits
The software is very easy to use, even for absolute beginners. Social media scheduling is based on the best time for maximum user engagement.
Also, Hopper's customer support staff is credited for being highly responsive and helpful.
👎 Disadvantages
Some users point out that Hopper HQ has trouble syncing with Facebook. Also, the app does not include a social inbox to manage the messages and comments.
Semrush
We’re aware that Semrush is known for being a top-tier SEO toolkit equipped with game-changing features.
What some people may not know is that among these features there is also a social scheduling tool.
Semrush’s social scheduling functionality (called Social Media Poster) is quite powerful, and it integrates platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Google My Business.
💰 Pricing
For those willing to pay the extra buck for a large set of features, Semrush is the perfect choice.
The Social Media Poster is included with all plans and costs $119 per month. With this plan, you can publish to 10 social profiles and monitor 50.
The monthly fee grants users access to valuable Semrush core tools like backlink analysis, competitor research, and much more.
👍 Benefits
Semrush’s scheduling tool is easy to use. You can quickly set up your posts queue and see all the best times for publishing content at a glance.
The Social Media Poster feature is only one of the several social media dedicated tools inside Semrush. The rest cover other important segments such as tracking, analytics, social inbox and ads.
👎 Disadvantages
The social media scheduler included with Semrush’s paid plan is not the most advanced tool of its kind.
However, coupled with all the other features Semrush offers, it’s a great value for money.
Sked Social
The first thing you notice about Sked Social is that it is an Instagram-focused social media planner.
In fact, it’s more than that. Sked Social is a visual marketing platform that facilitates collaboration across organizations, enterprises, and agencies.
Your best Instagram material, on the other hand, may be created, sourced, shared, and cross-posted to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.
💰 Pricing
Sked Social allows you to trial their product for a week for free.
Following that, you can choose between three pricing levels, with the standard one (best for solopreneurs and small businesses) starting from $25 per month.
👍 Benefits
The software is straightforward and well-designed.
Hopper lets you schedule an infinite number of posts per month and 50 ahead of time.
Additionally, Hopper's customer support staff is highly responsive and helpful.
👎 Disadvantages
The app does not include a social inbox to manage the messages and comments.
Wrap up
Social media scheduling tools are more than a quick way to schedule updates on social media.
The right free social media posting tools can make a world of difference by improving your whole social media management process, giving you more time to create fantastic content and helping you build real-time connections with your followers.
