Social media has become an inseparable part of modern life. As an individual, your social media profiles are a way to convey your desired persona to people who don’t really know you yet. Whether it’s a potential life partner or a future employer. For others, social media is a necessity for making money.
Influencers use social media to promote products in return for a fee, while freelancers and businesses use it to attract new clients. All of this has made the task of keeping your social media accounts updated even more important.
But there’s no need to let social media take over your life. Numerous tools let you schedule posts to a number of platforms at the same time, with other features including curation, reposting, and more. Here are our top picks.
1. Hootsuite
If you’ve ever felt that you’re copying and pasting the same post from one social media platform to the other, Hootsuite may be the perfect solution for you. With its free plan, you can add up to three social media profiles and schedule 30 posts per month, which should be enough for most individuals.
Those who use social media for work may want to invest in a Professional account, which bumps the limit up to 10 profiles, with no limit on posting. When creating a new post, you can choose where you want it to be published, and Hootsuite will provide a preview for each one.
Hootsuite also has a planner, which offers a more visual way to spot gaps in your schedule. Another cool feature is the Audience Listening. This allows you to create Streams that show all of the posts from a certain hashtag or all of the places where you were mentioned. And you can comment and reply directly within the app.
The platform currently supports Twitter, Facebook (as well as groups), LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest---with some limitations for each platform. For instance, you cannot post a video to a LinkedIn profile, or view mentions on Instagram. We've taken an in-depth look at Hootsuite elsewhere on the site.
2. Later
The free plan on Later is a little bit more extensive than Hootsuite's, allowing you to schedule not 30 posts in total, but 30 posts per platform. The choices for social media platforms, however, are slightly less impressive---providing a connection only to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.
With its visual calendar, you can drag and drop images to your desired day and time, and then just fill in the text---for all of the platforms at one go. You can even create regular time slots on the calendar that you want to be filled on a regular basis (let’s say three times a day---morning, afternoon, and evening) and see it clearly on the board to ensure you’re not missing anything.
The upgraded plan offers additional perks, such as suggested trending hashtags and the possibility to respond to Instagram comments directly from the platform. It also suggests the best time of the day to post and allows for story posting---which the free version does not.
3. SmarterQueue
This website does not offer a free version, only a 15-day trial, which may make it more suitable for people who use social media for business. However, the features here are much more extensive than our previous option, and therefore worth looking into.
With the most basic plan (which is the Solo), you can connect up to four social media profiles, and post up to 10 times a day on any one. The platforms supported are Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Facebook (including groups). It’s important to note that in order to use Instagram, however, you’ll have to install it on your phone as well.
Some of SmarterQueue’s best features are related to organization. You can assign each piece of content a Category, such as articles, testimonials, inspiration, etc. This will help you spread out the content on your visual calendar, according to what you wish to promote in any given day.
Additionally, with the basic plan, you can queue up to 500 posts, and then just drag and drop the type of post you want to publish---or predetermine when you want to push each category. You can also decide to make some posts Evergreen, which means that they will keep posting on a loop. And the Instagram visual grid can really improve the look of your feed, in terms of branding.
4. dlvr.it
This website has a lot of features similar to SmarterQueue, but, unlike SmarterQueue, it has a free version. With that, you can connect two social media profiles, schedule three posts a day, and queue 15 posts for each channel. With a Pro plan, you can bump up the social channels to 10, with unlimited posting.
With regards to social platforms available, you’ll find Facebook (with groups), Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Blogger, Slack, and even WordPress. It is evident that this platform is less for the visually-minded, as Instagram is sorely missing. However, you can connect your account to the queue, and whenever you post on Instagram, the same will be posted on your other socials.
Dlvr.it shines when it comes to automation. You can set up automated posting from different feeds, such as your Instagram, as previously mentioned, your YouTube, or your blog. You can also curate posts from other websites related to your field by simply adding their RSS feed. All of these will either be added to the queue or posted right away.
Much like SmarterQueue, you can also arrange your posts---those you write or automate---by Categories, to ensure you mix up your content. However, this is not included in the Basic plan. Another great feature with the Pro plan is the Everqueue, which works the same as SmarterQueue's Evergreen feature.
How to Choose the Best Social Media Scheduler
When it comes down to picking the best social media scheduler, you need to consider several elements. First will be your budget---if you’re even willing to spend any money on a scheduling tool. Second, you need to think about the social media platform you use the most. If it’s Instagram, for example, there’s no point in you using dlvr.it. But if it’s Facebook groups, that may be the best option for you.
Lastly, don’t forget that you can also mix-and-match the tools to better suit your needs. Many platforms, like Twitter, have their own scheduling options. Facebook also lets you schedule for both Instagram and Facebook pages---so you may want to mix those with one of the tools above. Unfortunately, these tools can't help you actually get noticed on social media, which is an artform in its own right.
