Best Social Media Scheduling Tools in 2019 and Beyond (Free & Paid)
Scheduling your content across all of your social media profiles can be time-consuming without the right tools.
Social media marketing is an essential element of building an online presence and harnessing the power of digital marketing; however, managing this manually across the ever-increasing range of social media platforms can be a time-consuming task.
Boosting productivity using the best social media scheduling tools doesn’t have to come at a huge expense and, here, we give you some free services for 2019 that can help you manage your online social media marketing.
Some of the social media platforms offer their own scheduling tools that are built in to the post creation process.
Facebook, Tumblr and YouTube, for instance, all allow you to schedule content when you create it, choosing exactly when it hits your pages.
Business users on Instagram and Twitter also have access to this kind of scheduling but many other popular platforms, including sites like Linked In, don’t provide this function meaning users can only post their content when it is created. Though this kind of feature is useful, it does mean that you have to access your individual social media profiles and accounts to take advantage of them.
So, what about those social media scheduling tools that offer comprehensive coverage for this important online marketing task?
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most comprehensive and, in our opinion, best social media scheduling tools available. It integrates with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and Linked In.
You can manage up to three social profiles under their free plan which gives you 30 posts you can schedule at any one time. The premium plan gives you more analytic tools and additional scheduling power but for a free service, Hootsuite offers one of the best on the market.
Hootsuite is easy to set-up, use and has lots of great analytic tools.
Buffer
Like Hootsuite, Buffer offers a free plan for businesses but with limited functionality and a maximum of 3 social media accounts and 10 scheduled posts per account. Buffer works with the main social media platforms including Google+, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.
Friends+ Me
Friends+ Me offers a limited free version of their powerful social media management service which works with Google+, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked In and Tumblr. With this plan you only get a couple of ‘Queues’ and just 5 posts per ‘Queue’ so the benefits are reduced. Plans start at $7.50 per month and increase usability to up to 500 posts per ‘Queue’.
Cross-promotion tools, URL shortening and bulk scheduling work with both mobile and desktop applications which can all help to reduce time spent managing content publication.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a powerful free scheduling tool designed to work with multiple Twitter accounts. As a result, this is not a solution for all your social media posting needs but is useful if you manage more than one profile on Twitter.
As well as managing the notifications, messages and follow activity for all of your accounts, you can schedule and manage your Tweets easily.
SocialOomph is a comprehensive social media management service but the free version really only allows you to manage your Twitter profiles.
However, this does come with keyword tracking tools and some time-saving tools like purge, view @metions and retweets plus URL shortening.
The paid plans cover Facebook, Pinterest, Linked In, RSS feeds, blogs and even Plurk.
Social media marketing is essential for building up your online presence but, without the right tools, can take up a lot of time.
Social Pilot covers all of the major social media platforms from Google+, Vk and Linked In to Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook. Their service is backed up with powerful analytics software, client management and content curation plus bulk scheduling and a useful social media calendar.
The rub is that SocialPilot is only free for the first 14 days of a trial. After this, premium pricing does kick in. Currently this is around $10 a month for 10 accounts and $30 a month for 50 accounts.
Like SocialPilot, Zoho Social isn’t free forever but does offer a free-trial and some pretty well-priced plans to manage your social media scheduling. They cover all of the main platforms and, for a cost of $8.33 per month, you get up to 8 channels to publish on.
There are some great tools available with the premium plans including performance monitoring, SmartQ, CRM and desktop integration plus bulk scheduling. Enhanced plans also work with Facebook Lead Ads and Forms.
Here at Opace, we offer a fully managed social media service to extend your marketing reach, increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your site. With over 150+ years combined experience on our team, we bring the essential skills and creativity to make your social media strategy shine. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your online marketing goals for 2019.
Image Credits: Wikipedia, Flickr and Pixabay.
« Back to Glossary Index
