3 Best Social Media Posting and Scheduling Tools
Happy Monday!
Last week on Instastories and Facebook Stories, I shared a bit about my top 3 Favorite Social Media Posting and Scheduling Tools that i have used. Although I have tried several, these are the ones that I would recommend to anyone who is looking to preschedule their posts so they can focus on bigger things within their business.
As an entrepreneur, I often find myself doing SO many things at once. Prescheduling posts is not my most favorite things to do but it’s very important. Why you may wonder? Having posts ready to share on your feed such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn is great because it’s a way for you to stay engaged and ACTIVE. Often times people associate an inactive account as “business is not doing well” and that’s not usually always the case. Having an active account also serves as a good review platform for most people. Often times, before people make a decision on inquiring about your services, they will check all your profiles out to see what have you been up to. Lastly, when people visit your account, it’s important that you having your social media branding on point. Social Media Branding is when you manage your company’s image, and identity as perceived by the market, across digital networks (Quora). Social Media Branding is a whole OTHER topic that I won’t get into for this blog post but it definitely ties into your posting schedule.
Alright! Without further adue, these are my Top 3 Best Social Media Posting and Scheduling Tools that I have used. They range from lowest priced to highest priced, depending what kind of use you want to get out of it as well as your business needs.
Facebook Creator Studio
Pros: With Facebook Creator Studio, as long as you have a business page associated with your account, you can use this program to preschedule both your facebook posts and instagram posts. Facebook Creator Studio also allows you to preschedule IGTV! You can also review your analytics from the things you posts on both platforms and create quick and easy ads from your best performance posts.
Cons: If your image is too big to be shared on Instagram, it might post your image off centered. What I have done in the past, is resize my image to the dimensions of Instagram so that I can ensure the photos that I post for clients are seamless. The other con is that sometimes the photos that you resize, may get pixelated once they post directly to Instagram. So watch out and keep in mind for these two things. The other con is that, Facebook Creator Studio will not tell your peak times to post. You would have to refer back to your IG app for insights.
Free to use
Will post directly to Instagram
Can preschedule posts for IGTV
Offers Insights for both Facebook and Instagram
User Friendly
Sendible
Pros: Using Sendible is the start of an investment when it comes to social media posting. This program is reasonably priced in that the first package is only $29 a month. You can connect up to 12 accounts, and start gathering data right away. When you preschedule posts, you can actually pick the function that allows you to choose the optimal times for posting. So that way, you are hitting your target hour of the day each and every time. It has a pretty cool calendar view in which you get to see how much your posting throughout the month. You can also download a PDF of your content calendar and print if needed. What I enjoy about Sendible is that you can download a monthly, quarterly, yearly report of your social media engagement, increase in followers and much more. You can then print this out and share with your team or save it to your online files. It’s user friendly, and if you need help you can simply chat with someone to guide you. This platform, although third-party, CAN post directly to Instagram which I find very helpful.
Cons: Once you have maxed out your use of the first package, the second package gets expensive immediately. Their packages aren’t gradual like how some other platforms are. If you are sharing your account with a team, you would need to upgrade. Sometimes the images also need to be resized, and even then sometimes they come out pixelated. So just be aware that, whatever image you are going to post, that it is high resolution. Sometimes Sendible will let you resize it within their program, other times it doesn’t (not sure why.) You also can’t comment back under the Engage tab on your photos. Instead, you can click on the link and Sendible will take you to the photo where you can then engage via desktop. You can only engage directly from the account for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The last “con” is that I have had to reconnect my accounts a few times which can get annoying. I don’t know why this happens but it does!
$29/mo and can connect up to 12 accounts
Provides up to 8 Reports of analytics
Can download a PDF of Content Calendar
Will directly post to Instagram
Has “Optimal Time” to post option
Sprout Social
Pros: The basic package of Sprout Social can offer a lot of the things that you can find very useful. One of the things that it can do is, if you run a Facebook or Instagram Ad, it can track the performance of that Ad which then can be included in your overall reporting! You can also view your calendar and print a PDF Content Calendar to share with your team. You can input key words that you want it to alert you about, especially if something is trending. You can also boost a post directly from the program. One of the coolest things this program does, is you can compare where your social media stands against your competitors. This can be very enticing especially if you do social media for other clients. The reporting option on sprout social is very thorough and very detailed. It also will schedule your post at the optimal time as per your insights.
Cons: If you want to see where you stand against your competitors, you have to take the next package up. The starting package is $99, where, if you are not an agency this may not be worth it. However it’s good to have this on your radar so whenever you are ready, some of the biggest names in the business use Sprout Social for their own platforms. Sprout social will not post directly to Instagram but instead, notify you when it’s time to post through their app.
Basic Package is $99
Thorough Reporting
Can view (some) Insights to competitors
Can boost a post directly from program
Ad insight performance generated into reporting
All in one dashboard (except for posting to IG - push notification)
Other Honorable Mentions: Hootsuite and Buffer
Overall, if you are a small business and you want to focus on other parts of your biz, I would suggest giving one of these prescheduling tools a try. The most time consuming part of this is having to sit and preschedule the posts, but once you are done you are done! And if you REALLY don’t have the time to even do that, let’s chat!
Wishing you a wonderful week!
