Top 5 Social Media Scheduling Tools to Save You Time

In this fast-paced world, every minute we have is precious. So if you’ve found yourself lost in the sea of Instagram posts, Tweets, and GIFs, it may be time to get organized with a social media scheduler. 

Social media schedulers are valuable tools for brands who spread themselves thin on multiple platforms. They enable us to batch our content, plan our marketing strategy, and connect with our audiences more efficiently and effectively. In this article, we will outline the best social media scheduling tools out there today.

5 Best Social Media Schedulers\

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is both a social media management tool and social media scheduling tool. It features automatic scheduling, performance reporting, social media monitoring, task management, and more. You can manage and schedule posts for a wide range of apps; there are currently over 150 apps available including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Reddit, Flickr, VK, Tumblr, and Foursquare!

There are plans available for different-sized companies, accommodating any budget. The Professional plan is priced at $49 a month and includes 10 social profiles and one user. The Team plan is $129 a month with 20 social profiles and three users. The Business plan is $599 a month with 35 social profiles and 5 users. The Enterprise plan has custom pricing for the largest companies.

We believe Hootsuite is a good product for any company; small to large. Basic tools are more affordable for small businesses, while Hootsuite also offers premium products for large-scale marketing teams. Save time with Hootsuite’s easy-to-use Bulk Composer. This feature allows you to schedule multiple posts simultaneously.

The content calendar view will give you an overview of all your published and scheduled content from your various networks, making it easy to map out your social media campaigns and fill any gaps in content. Not sure when to post? The tool gives recommendations for the best times to post based on your analytics metrics.

The analytics are specific to each account. You can track your successes on social media by time frame and use customized reports of analytics data to plan your social media strategy. Hootsuite has quality tools for content creation. The Composer tool allows you to make content for multiple social networks at once.

You can easily produce in batches and use templates to save time. Are you worried that you are not a pro photographer or designer? No worries, Composer is full of royalty-free media to choose from, as well as effective image editing tools to produce quality stress-free content. 

After you schedule content and have posted it, check out the Hootsuite Streams features. These are feeds connected to your social accounts that allow you to monitor their activity and engage with your audience all in one dashboard. 

Pros: 

• Monitor various social media accounts in one place
• Schedule social media posts in advance
• View analytics to make informed decisions
• Covers all popular social media platforms

Cons: 

• UI is difficult for new users to navigate
• Pay extra for additional features
• Customer support lags

2. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a social media content planning tool that allows you to curate content and manage your social profiles. It features automation, content repurposing, and pre-scheduling and is ideally suited for side hustlers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. The tool is currently available in two plans.

The Eddie Annual Plan is $24.91 a month and includes 5 social accounts and 10 weekly automations. The Edgar Annual Plan includes 25 of your social accounts and 1,000 weekly automations. MeetEdgar is all about getting your content out there, but not so much about managing existing campaigns. It allows you to focus on publishing and automation rather than social listening and advanced reporting.  

This is the only scheduling tool where you can create content and keep it in a content library. Other schedulers will delete the content right after you post. If you’re in a creative rut, MeetEdgar comes to the rescue by re-purposing evergreen content to fill that unused time slot.

Your followers will be happy to get a steady stream of content and will likely reward consistency with more engagement. Try this feature on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn and be amazed at the time you save! MeetEdgar also helps you curate content from your website or external sources by delivering recommendations to its corresponding content category.

Simply review while it says pending, and you can decide if it fits your marketing strategy. If it does, it is as easy as just hitting Publish and you’ve got some freshly curated content for your followers to enjoy. With the pre-scheduling tool, you can schedule your social content in advance and then manage all your accounts from one dashboard.

You can also optimize your publication schedule by following MeetEdgar’s posting time recommendations. These are recommendations are determined by the times your audience has responded the best to your posts in the past. 

Pros:

• Allows you to repurpose and recycle content
• Curates content from external sources
• Affordable

Cons: 

• Can’t manage paid ads

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media manager that has tools for managing scheduling, inbox, analytics, and mentions. It is optimal for larger businesses with a formidable presence online. Three main pricing plans involve different capabilities. The Standard Plan is $89 and includes 5 social profiles.

The Professional Plan is $149 and includes 10 social profiles, while the Advanced Plan is priced at $249 and has 10 social profiles but more key features like chatbots with automation tools. If you are the type to often miss messages, Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox tool can get you organized.

This allows you to view and reply to various types of messages across all of your social media platforms. For instance, on Instagram alone, you can see the comments on your posts, ad comments, DMs, story mentions, media tags, and regular mentions. To keep track of these messages, you can use the tag feature to organize the system.

You can also communicate internally with your team members in the Smart Inbox. Want to know what people are saying about your brand? Try out the Social Listening feature. This allows you to monitor the content that is posted on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, and the rest of the web.

It will search for specific keywords or hashtags and then scour the internet for them. Getting feedback from users allows you to understand what exactly your audience wants, and then you can tailor your content around that feedback. No more wasting time on content that doesn’t connect with your audience!

Within the social listening tool, you can reply, assign posts, forward posts, retweet, and retweet with comments. Another way to understand your audience is through data. Sprout Social provides reports that come in four categories: Strategy & Insights, Competitive Analysis, Content Performance, and Customer Care & Team Performance. 

Pros:

• Clean UI
• Easy to schedule multiple posts at once
• Team-based features allow for easy organization internally

Cons:

• Expensive
• Social inbox isn’t unified; you must toggle between social accounts

4. Buffer

Buffer is a social media management platform that specializes in the engagement of target audiences. This is a great option for small social media teams. Are you just starting your social media marketing journey? Try Buffer’s Free plan. It includes basic publishing tools for up to three channels and schedules up to 10 posts in advance.

For professionals who want to publish, analyze data, and increase engagement, try Essentials at $5 a month per channel. The Team plan is $10 monthly per social channel, and is made for teams who want unlimited user seating, need to collaborate, and analyze report data.

And finally, the Agency plan is the choice for brands with 10 or more social media channels at $100/month. Additional channels can be added for $5 a month per channel. Buffer is most known for its publishing tool, but if you add in social media monitoring and analytics, it can get pricey. There are three main products that each must have their subscription: Publish, Reply, and Analyze. 

Publish contains Buffer’s classic publishing tools. Reply allows you to upkeep your social media conversations. Analyze allows you to get reports. Buffer is best known for its publishing feature. It includes a social media calendar to give you a broad overview and to keep your workflow moving.

Posting content is pretty simple, and it includes a few extra features that make it even easier. As an example, if you’d like to share a link, Buffer will show you a preview of what it will look like on each social network after you’ve posted it. For Instagram posts, if you’d like more hashtags you can add them in a first comment that will be published along with the post. 

Buffer can integrate with many other apps and extensions, such as WordPress, Feedly, IFTT, and more. The tool is uncluttered, and simple to use. Set up the free plan quickly and use it for sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

Pros: 

• Clean UI, easy to navigate
• Can tailor posts with a publishing tool
• Responsive customer support

Cons: 

• Pay extra for products like Reply and Analyze
• No content curation
• Not ideal for collaborating with your team

5. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a social media management tool and scheduling software that specializes in publishing, post scheduling, and reporting. It is also helpful for team collaborations. There are RSS feed features, social listening, and analytics for monitoring. 

For those of you newbies, Agorapulse offers a Free plan that includes 3 social profiles for 1 user. The next tier is Pro for $79 a month allowing 10 social profiles and 2 users. Then Premiums is $199 a month for 20 social profiles and 4 users. You can also get Custom pricing for larger companies who want 40+ social profiles with 8+ users. 

Agorapulse has a social media CRM tool that helps you get to know your fans and followers. You can easily organize them with different labels. Check out which followers are most engaged with your content. The higher they are on the list, the more recently they have interacted. You can also see who are ambassadors or influencers, making it easy to reach out and talk about collaborating. 

Intuitive publishing features make this tool incredibly useful and easy to use, saving you time. For instance, you can create posts for several platforms from just one draft. The clean UI also makes it easily navigable and helpful for even the newbie social media marketer. 

Agorapulse’s unified inbox allows you to manage direct messages, reviews, comments, and ad comments. You can easily respond or assign them to members of your team in real-time. The Inbox Assistant feature helps you set up rules for your inbox as an auto-sorting mechanism.

For example, this means you can decide to delete comments if they contain a certain offensive keyword. The reports you get in analytics are available from all your platforms. Check out things like user activity, engagement, audience growth, brand awareness, and specific keywords that interest you. 

Pros:

• Engage with your audience with CRM feature
• Inbox Assistant saves you time by sorting your inbox

Cons: 

• There are cheaper tools for solopreneurs

Relax and Still Get Paid

Hootsuite is a good solution for small to large companies that manage profiles on a wide range of platforms. MeetEdgar helps you curate content when you’re running out of ideas, allowing you to repurpose and reuse valuable posts from your library. Sprout Social is an option for brands who want to connect to their audience through social listening and an all-in-one inbox.

Buffer is known for its publishing tool, and can be affordable if you only have a couple of social media profiles. Agorapulse allows business owners to streamline their scheduling, reporting, and publishing and benefit from a handy CRM feature. All of these tools have scheduling functionality to help you shave off time.

This allows you extra room in your day to relax– and still get paid with Tappie.