Social media can take up a lot of time in your schedule. That’s why management and scheduling tools for social media can be really helpful.
Small business owners are a little bit all over the place. Not in a bad way; it’s just because they have to be! They have so many responsibilities on any one given day, their attention is divided constantly. We’ve seen far too many business owners decide social media isn’t worth it because they don’t have the time for it.
That’s why we wanted to provide some extra help with developing a marketing strategy, a content calendar, and show how social media scheduling can make it all so much easier. It is so important to be on social media these days, and we can help you check this off your list without adding tons of hours to your day.
While batching your content creation is a huge help, so is batching your posting schedule. If you can take a few hours each month to create your captions and images and an hour or so to schedule it all out, you won’t have to think about your social media content at all, which will make your life so much easier. You can get the benefits of social media without the constant strain on your time.
Are you ready to change the way you think about marketing? Check out this awesome list we have created with the best management and scheduling tools for social media!
Read more: 18 Social Media Post Ideas for Small Businesses
Keep reading to find out:
Management and Scheduling Tools for Social Media
In this guide, we are going to give you lots of options for management and scheduling tools. Some of them are free and some of them are paid. We tried to gather the best tools out there with the best benefits and value.
Some of these tools are more focused on just publishing, while some offer analytics and other features. For those of you who are just starting out with social media management, your goal might just be to schedule a few posts a week. In that case, you don’t need to get a paid plan with all the bells and whistles. Start with a basic free plan, get the hang of how it all works, then decide if you need to invest more in your social media marketing.
Okay, without any further ado, let’s go over the eight best tools for social media!
The 8 Best Management and Scheduling Tools for Social Media – With Free Options!
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most well known and most popular management and scheduling tools for social media out there. At first, the interface might look a little confusing, but you get used to it quickly. They allow you to manage all your social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) in one place. The other great thing about them is that they have a free plan where you can manage 3 social media accounts and schedule up to 30 posts!
Hootsuite supports multiple social media platforms like Twitter, personal and business Facebook pages, Instagram, LinkedIn profiles, and company pages. You can also use it to post on Foursquare, WordPress, Tumblr, YouTube, and many others.
Highlights:
- Offers a free plan
- Schedule up to 30 posts in the free version
- Manage up to 3 accounts in the free version
- Easy to use
- Supports all popular social media platforms
2. Buffer
Buffer is another very popular scheduling tool for social media. They are a trusted platform, (similar to Hootsuite), and they allow you to manage multiple social media profiles on different sites.
This platform offers basically the same functionalities as Hootsuite, but one feature that is pretty awesome is the suggested time tool. It suggests the best time to post based on your followers’ activity! That’s valuable information to have. The only downside to Buffer compared to Hootsuite is they don’t allow you to schedule as many posts in the free plan; they limit you to 10 posts and 3 social media accounts.
They do offer tools to analyze your posts, which is a great way to check which posts are performing better. Using this information, you can create content that resonates with your audience and hopefully, increases your engagement steadily over time.
To get their free plan, you just need to start a free 14-day trial. They don’t require a credit card, and at the end of your trial, you have the option to downgrade to the free plan.
With Buffer, you can post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (feed and Stories), Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Highlights:
- Offers a free plan
- Schedule up to 10 posts in the free version
- Manage up to 3 accounts in the free version
- Easy to use
- Supports all popular social media platforms
3. Later
Later is a very popular scheduling tool for social media, especially among Instagram users and content creators. They have a more fun and cool look, which appeals to a younger, trendier audience than the more traditional platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer.
Aside from just looking cool, Later is a great tool that integrates with the biggest social media platforms for free. And, if the free version doesn’t do everything you need it to, you have the option to customize a plan and pick which features you’d like to add.
The free version of Later includes one social set – which means that you can integrate one Instagram account, one Facebook account, one Twitter account, and one Pinterest account. You also get access to their visual Instagram planner – for those who want an organized Instagram feed – and their Linkin.Bio tool, which allows you to create a landing page directory for your Instagram bio that contains multiple links!
You can also upload up to 30 posts per social media profile per month with the free version.
Highlights:
- Offers a free plan
- Up to 30 posts per month per social media account on the free plan
- 4 social media accounts on the free plan – 1 Instagram, 1 Facebook, 1 Twitter and 1 Pinterest account;
- Instagram visual feed planner
- Linkin.Bio tool
Read more: 17 Instagram Feed Ideas for Businesses – and How to Organize Your Own Feed
4. Planoly
Planoly is very similar to Later, however, it only supports Instagram and Pinterest. Planonly’s focus is much more visual, so it makes sense why it works well with the most popular and visual social media channels out there.
This is a great tool for designers, photographers, brand agencies, and other visual-forward businesses. However, it’s also super helpful for those who just want to have a more visually attractive and professional profile.
Planoly has several products, but the main ones are the IG Planner and the Pin Planner. They offer a free plan, where you can link up to two social media profiles (one Instagram and one Pinterest account), upload up to 30 posts per month per profile – so, a total of 60 – and one user profile. This is not a free trial, you can use the free version as long as you want.
Just like Later, Planoly also offers users the option to create a landing page to drive traffic to your website through the link in the bio. Planoly’s version is called Linkit.
Highlights:
- Offers a free plan
- Up to 30 posts per month per social media account on the free plan
- 2 social media accounts on the free plan – 1 Instagram and 1 Pinterest accounts;
- Instagram visual feed planner
- Linkit tool
Read more: Instagram Marketing for Small Businesses 101
5. Loomly
Loomly is a great platform to manage and schedule social media posts, either on your own or with your team. Loomly offers automated publishing for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business. It also offers automated publishing for Facebook and Instagram Ads
What we like about Loomly is it gives you post ideas based on trending topics, RSS feeds, and even date-related events. They also make it super easy for you to visualize a post or ad before you publish it.
Loomly doesn’t offer a free plan, but their paid plan costs only $25 and offers a lot of benefits like multiple users, up to 10 social media accounts, and unlimited content scheduling.
Highlights:
- Supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business;
- Integration with email, Slack, and Microsoft Teams;
- Recommended post ideas
6. SproutSocial
SproutSocial is one of the big names when it comes to scheduling tools for social media. However, they are certainly not the cheapest one. The platform is trusted and well-respected and it offers support to all the most popular social media channels out there: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
They offer a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. So if you’re not sure if you want to pursue this option, you have a chance to check it out first with no obligation. You can sign up for the free trial on their pricing page. The basic plan – and their cheapest one – costs $99 per month and includes up to five social media profiles, a social content calendar, CRM tools, and more. SproutSocial is ideal for those who are looking for more advanced tools.
Highlights:
- Up to 5 social media profiles on the basic plan
- Advanced analytics tools
- Mobile app for iOS and Android
7. Tailwind
Tailwind is one of the cheapest paid scheduling tools for social media. However, it doesn’t support every channel. Tailwind is focused on Pinterest and Instagram, and they are actually an official partner of both. They are a Pinterest Marketing Developer Partner (or “MDP”), which means that they are approved to build software that helps marketers grow their business on Pinterest. As an Official Instagram Partner, Tailwind is one of the few companies out there who is able to offer Instagram post scheduling.
Their interface is very similar to most of the social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite, so if you’re already familiar with that, you’ll totally understand how Tailwind works.
The advantage of using Tailwind for Pinterest is that you have access to Tailwind SmartLoop and Tribes. The SmartLoop allows you to repost your pins automatically on a delay and Tribes helps you grow with the help of a community of like-minded creators and business owners.
Even though they don’t offer a free plan, it only costs $9.99 a month if you’re only using Pinterest OR Instagram. If you use both, it costs $19.99 a month.
Highlights:
- Official partner of Pinterest and Instagram
- Access to Tailwind SmartLoop and Tribes
- Very inexpensive compared to other paid platforms
Read more: Pinterest Marketing for Businesses
8. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a great tool if you’re not at the point yet where you need access to analytics for your channels. They don’t have a built-in way to analyze how your posts are doing, but it is a great social media scheduling tool. With MeetEdgar, you can manage your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram channels.
In addition to a traditional scheduling tool, you can bulk import content, which can save you a lot of time! It also integrates with Zapier so you can automatically add your articles and blog posts to your Edgar library for posting.
The only real downside aside from a lack of analytics is that the tool is not free. It’s also not super expensive. You can check out the prices here.
Highlights:
- Supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram;
- Simple scheduling tool without a lot of clutter
- Unlimited scheduled posts on the lite plan
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