Our top 5 social media scheduling tools that will save you time

From our research and discussions with clients, we have found that many don’t know about social media scheduling tools, never mind which one is best for them. We looked through the products available to see what the differences are between the different tools, focussing on our top five—Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Later, ContentCal and Buffer who all provide basic scheduling tools, but do vary slightly in its offerings.

What are social media scheduling tools?

Social media scheduling tools are designed to help you manage your social media output, allowing you to plan and schedule content in advance. These tools can help you with your content strategy, by allowing you to see all the posts for any given month in the content calendar. You’ll also find data on how well each post did in analytics, and be able to use these insights to plan future content. Using social media scheduling tools can also allow you to post on multiple platforms at the same time. 

Some of the products available focus on scheduling ahead of time (Hootsuite), some allow various team members to get involved in planning content and tasks (Sprout Social), and some provide in-depth analytics on your social media (Buffer). 

What are the best times to publish across all four major social media platforms?

Each platform will perform differently, and this all depends on your audience demographics as well as the type of content you’re putting out. For example, if your most popular age group is 25-34, they will most likely be working full time, so posting before work, during their lunch break, or after work is most likely when they will be on social media, and engaging with your content. Often, social media tools can predict your optimal posting time from your past posts and engagement.

However, research from Sprout Social suggests that there are some times that any type of content will generally perform well: 

Facebook - Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 9am-1pm 

Instagram - Tuesday 11am-2pm, Monday to Friday 11am 

Twitter - Wednesday 9am-3pm, Tuesday to Thursday 9am-11pm 

Linkedin - Tuesday to Thursday 9am-12pm 

Now you know what the ideal times to post are, do you want to know what our top five social media tools are? Find out below...

Hootsuite

What is Hootsuite used for?

Hootsuite is a social media scheduling tool that has been around for many years, leading to a customer base of over 16 million globally. One of the main perks of using Hootsuite is that on your dashboard you have ‘social streams’ which allow you to follow certain keywords whilst also monitoring and engaging with your audience. Also as part of the paid plan, you get access to account-specific analytics to see post insights for each platform. Or, you can create custom reports according to what you're looking for, adding only the metrics you need, like actions users take on  your post.    

Can I link all my social media accounts? 

Hootsuite allows you to link up your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Youtube accounts. That means you can schedule posts in advance for any of these platforms.

Is Hootsuite free?

Having recently updated its payment plans, the free version means you can schedule five posts ahead of time between two social media accounts. Find more information about the payment plans on Hootsuite.com. 

Sprout Social

What is Sprout Social used for?

The Sprout Social website displays its 4 main focuses as: 

1. Listening - understand your audience by discovering trends and insights that allow you to make business decisions and update your social media strategy

2. Publishing - reach your audience by planning, scheduling and organising your content with your team across all your social media accounts

3. Engagement - engage with your community by monitoring your socials and using the unified inbox to improve your communication and response time with your audience 

4. Analytics - measure your performance to help your decision making process with social media data and insights dashboards 

Can I link all my social media accounts?

Sprout Social supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Is Sprout Social free?

Similar to other tools, Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial, so you can gauge how useful it would be to your team, but after that it’s paid packages only. These packages range from standard to advanced, starting at $99 per user per month for five social profiles, social inbox, content calendar and more. 

Later

What is Later used for?

Later offers a visual planner to help schedule social posts a month in advance. The tool allows you to post with a drag and drop action, meaning you can schedule posts in seconds. Later also offers the option to post user generated content. For example, later will find on-brand content to which you can add your personal touch and share on your own socials. One benefit of using Later is the Linkin.bio feature. This allows you to drive traffic by adding links to each instagram post using a link in your bio. Later also collects data on who is clicking your links. You can view this information in the analytics feature, where you can get reports and personalised insights, helping you to understand what works for your company and how to optimise your social media. When adding your link in bio, another option is to schedule your ‘first comment’ to be posted at the same time as the post so if you need additional information or links with the post, you can automatically add it to the comments. 

Can I link all my social media accounts?

Later was originally designed with Instagram in mind, but you can now use it for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, with LinkedIn capabilities coming soon. 

Is Later free?

Yes, you can use Later for free, and it has one of the best free plans, with 30 posts per social media platform. It also offers three other paid plans that start at $12.50 per month for 60 scheduled posts per social media account. If you have all four accounts linked that means 240 posts to be scheduled monthly. 

ContentCal

What is ContentCal used for? 

ContentCal features include; post scheduling through the content calendar, keyword filtering, collaboration, feedback analysis, reporting, project management and more. ContentCal enables teams to collaborate in the content creation process, with a calendar view that users can publish from directly.

Can I link all my social media accounts?

ContentCal allows you to connect Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google My Business, but it also works with Zapier to post on other social media platforms. 

Is ContentCal free?

There is a free plan for ‘hobbyist’ which includes 1 calendar with 10 posts a month. The starting paid plan is the pro account at $17 per month for four social profiles with 150 scheduled posts in total per month. It also has add-ons for engagement features and advanced analytics. 

Buffer

What is Buffer used for? 

Similar to Sprout Social, Buffer offers; 

• Publishing: allows you to directly schedule your posts. It also offers a first comment feature (like Later) for your Instagram posts. You can also set up reminders for when your Instagram posts are scheduled to go live as Buffer doesn’t have the ability to post directly to Instagram. The reminder will come in via the web/mobile app. Buffer will send a notification to your phone that loads your photo into Instagram with your prewritten caption saved to your phone’s clipboard, ready to be pasted 

• Engagement: Buffer lets you see your unanswered comments in your dashboard—highlighting the most important ones for you. You can also set up ‘smart alerts’ which lets you know at a glance if a post has questions or comments 

• Analytics: again, Buffer offers one dashboard for all your social media analytics and reporting. You can compare paid results vs organic, track key engagement metrics for each social account, see story and post analytics and measure hashtags. Audience demographics are also available to help you ensure you're reaching the right audience 

Can I link all my social media accounts?

You can link your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest (on a paid plan) to Buffer. 

Is Buffer free?

Buffer do offer a free publishing plan, where you can have three social channels and schedule 10 posts per social channel per month, however this doesn’t run on Pinterest. It is worth noting that with the offering suggested above; publishing and analytics run on separate payment plans and analytics starts at $35 a month. 

There are a variety of social media scheduling platforms out there that can help with your content strategy, but so much choice can be overwhelming. It really depends on the size of your business, as well as your goals, to determine which one is right for you. For example, if you are a small business looking to try and boost your social media presence on a budget, Later’s free plan would be the best option for you. If you have a bigger budget and more complex needs, then Sprout Social will provide you with everything you could possibly want. If you have any questions about your marketing strategy or are looking for some help, get in touch with us.