When it comes to managing social media for your business, you’ll quickly discover that having the ability to schedule content is an invaluable asset. As a business owner, you wear many hats, and having to remember to post to Facebook at 2pm on a Thursday is at the bottom of your list. That’s where scheduling tools come in!
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Free Scheduling Tools We Love
If your budget is tight, there are several proprietary tools available to use from the major social platforms
- Facebook Creator Studio: this is a free tool that allows you to schedule posts to your business pages for both Facebook and Instagram. This includes Images, Videos, Stories, and more.
- TweetDeck: this is owned by Twitter and allows you to easily schedule tweets as well as follow specific hashtags, accounts, lists, and more.
- YouTube Creator Studio: this is built into your YouTube account backend. When you upload videos, you can seamlessly schedule them to publish in the future.
Paid Scheduling Tools We Love
If you have a marketing budget to devote to social media, a paid scheduling tool is more than worth the investment. There are a number of 3rd-party website tools and apps available, but which ones are the best?
Loomly
As you use multiple social media platforms, you’ll want to find a social media scheduling tool that works for you. Loomly is THE tool you need to help you stay organized across multiple platforms. Keeping all of your scheduled content in one place.
1. Social media scheduling across multiple platforms. You can post to multiple platforms at the same time with the ability to customize content for each. Posts then populate an easy-to-view calendar. If you have something that comes up and you need to move a post, you can click and drag it to another day. Social channels include: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, TikTok and more.
2. The ability to easily collaborate with team members and clients. Establishing an approval workflow has never been more simple. Tag teammates to check your work, notify clients that it is time to review their calendar, and correspond on required edits in post history/comments thread. BONUS, it has an easily accessible app.
3. The reporting is great! With a few clicks, you’ll get an incredible amount of data to see how you are performing on each of your linked platforms. If you love stats, you’ll love these reports.
💲 Free 15-day trial! Plans start as low as $26 a month for up to 10 social media profiles and unlimited calendars, posts, ads, and file uploads.
Tailwind
This offers unlimited scheduling for Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. For Pinterest, you can also create graphics for 15 free Pins in “Tailwind Create,” which generates posts based on your branding. For Instagram, you’ll get hashtag suggestions and a custom link to use in your bio to your important landing pages.
1. Hashtag exploring on Instagram. You can easily see how many times a certain hashtag has been used, as well as easily seeing how many times related hashtags are used.
2. It’s really easy to create a queue for times you’d like to post on both Pinterest and Instagram. You create your post and click “Add to queue” and you’re done. If something else comes up that you want to post earlier, you can easily slide posts to different times. Tailwind also recommends the best times to post for each platform. This helps with getting more traffic, engagement and followers.
3. The analytics are easy to access and easy to understand.
💲 Starts at $9.99 (with a discount for an annual subscription). Includes a free trial.
Why We Use Both Free & Paid Scheduling Tools
Even if you decide to opt for the 3rd party tool option (and you should if you can!), this doesn’t mean you can just write off platform proprietary tools. The best management strategy for your content is an arsenal of tools that work in tandem together.
- There are currently no proprietary scheduling tools for the following major platforms: LinkedIn, Google My Business, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok. That means that without a 3rd-party tool, you would have to manually post content to these channels. Don’t waste your precious time!
- While we prefer to schedule content through Loomly or Tailwind, these platforms have file-size limitations. Have a video over 1 minute to share? Most scheduling tools will require you to manually publish. By staying familiar with Facebook Creator Studio, you can easily schedule longer videos as needed.
- Scheduling stories can be a bit of a tricky situation with 3rd party platforms. Integration isn’t typically available to allow for scheduling the content. If it is, it is in a limited capacity. For Loomly, you can upload and “Schedule” your story, but it will email you the media and the copy, along with a push notification reminder to manually publish. Now, in the Meta Business Manager, you can schedule posts and stories and optimize the publishing time. You can schedule Facebook stories within the Creator Studio, but Instagram is only available through the Meta Business Suite at this time.
- If you’ve ever caught a glimpse of the available reporting from a 3rd-party tool, free analytics just won’t cut it any more! In reality, the more data you can get the better. This will allow you to better-understand your customer and what content is resonating with them! For detailed insights into post performance, your audience demographics, and more, a paid tool is a must!
If you like these tools, check out our blog 6 Incredible Digital Tools We Love for more!
Looking for help? The Social Ginger is here to be your partner as you continue to dive into and learn more about social media. Set up a FREE discovery call today.
