5 easy to use marketing tools for auto scheduling
With over half of the population of the planet using social media, it’s no surprise that businesses and companies are constantly striving to generate some buzz around them on such platforms. While it is beneficial to have a blog for your website, social media presence is also crucial.
Constant activity on social media is often seen as an essential trust metric, meaning that brands and service providers are required to consistently post on different social media channels on a daily basis, which in itself can be extremely time-consuming and exhausting.
This process can be substantially eased with the help of some auto-posting tools, allowing marketing specialists to save a lot of time.
Most automated social media tools allow for posting across multiple platforms as well as for scheduling and content planning. Such tools also have built-in features like a grammar and spelling checker, trending topics finder and popular hashtags identifiers. All of these advantages make such online marketing tools a very lucrative option of social media and marketing experts alike.
Because of this, we are going to be focusing on 5 of the most popular automation tools currently on the market while also discussing their advantages and drawbacks! Let’s dive right in!
HootSuite - popular, tested & reliable
Hootsuite is one of the most popular tools on the market. As a matter of fact it is arguably the most utilized and well-known in the world. This, however, shouldn’t come as a surprise as the platform has existed ever since 2008.
Hootsuite doesn’t only allow you to post on multiple social networks, but also enables you to monitor how people are responding to your content. Because of this, the system is quite utilized by companies and businesses worldwide with over 20% of all companies relying on the tool when it comes to managing posting on their social networks.
Given the popularity of the platform, it offers a number of different pricing plans, each being tailored specifically for the size of your company, even helping businesses that have been recently imposed on the market. Each plan comes with access to a certain number of features, benefiting both small start-ups as well as established companies.
HootSuite can be integrated to work with all popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube among some of the most popular names and it can also work with other smaller networks that can be integrated through the app’s directory.
The following are the HootSuite pricing plans as of 2021. Keep in mind that these plans will change over time!
Buffer - new, diverse & analytical social media tool
Buffer is currently one of the best automated scheduling tools on the market. It allows social media experts to post content across multiple channels and has a large diversity of pricing plans which are tailored to fit most experts’ needs.
Another great benefit of Buffer is that the tool can offer marketing specialists an analytical tool and Chrome extension as well, which can be integrated seamlessly into their work process.
The platform also provides users with marketing calendars, which social media managers can utilize to plan future posts and activities. Buffer also allows for posts to be posted at a specific time, depending on the active followers on a particular social media platform. This means that if you are a US-based company for example, you can use Buffer to make posts in the EU at a more European-friendly time, allowing such international companies to gain more post impressions and interactions.
Additionally, with Buffer Analyze companies can also get detailed reports about the performance of their content.
In terms of supported social media platforms, Buffer can be integrated to work with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn and Shopify.
The prices for the subscription plans vary depending on the number of connected social channels and additional features that can be purchased.
Later - synchronization, simplicity & feed designer
Later is a really easy to use tool which offers a number of different features that can make content planning and automated posting a lot easier.
For starters, the platform allows for image synchronization directly with Dropbox and Google Drive, meaning that getting visual content on any social media channel can be done a lot quicker.
Secondly, Later also has a mobile app, allowing social media managers to easily upload photos from their phone directly in the tool which can then be used to create content. This is also made even more simpler by the existing drag and drop function that allows for an even easier calendar scheduling process.
Another great thing about Later is the Visual Instagram Planner feature that enables social media experts to design the company or brand’s Instagram feed.
In terms of integration, the tool works with Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter.
As for the pricing, there is a free individual and small team plan. There is also a premium option that offers a number of additional advanced features.
Socinator - Quora & Reddit integration
Socinatior is another easy to integrate tool for busy social media marketing experts and managers.
Its greatest advantage is that it can be integrated with popular platforms like Quora and Reddit, which is what sets Socinator apart from other automated scheduling tools. These platforms can be extremely useful if you have an idea about starting a business as they can easily gain you traction fast.
The tool also allows marketing professionals to automatically follow, unfollow, auto downvote, subscribe and unsubscribe from different communities or posts.
Overall, the platform can be integrated with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit and Tumblr.
In 2021 prices ranged between $9.96 and $69.95, depending on the size of the company, the overall pricing plan and the additional features. Similarly to HootSuite, the prices can be expected to change.
Crowdfire - great for TikTok content
Crowdfire is another great automated posting tool that can help with social media activity management.
As a matter of fact, it can be very useful to help you grow a TikTok audience in particular. In 2021, TikTok didn’t allow any third-party app to post on the platform, but Crowdfire was able to make sure that marketers were reminded to post regularly by sending notifications to post pre-saved content.
Another essential feature of the platform is that it can easily discover topics and images which are expected to be trendy or liked by users in a particular niche.
Finally, Crowdfire also keeps a queue of content and schedules posts to go out at an optimal time based on user activity, ultimately saving even more time by reducing configuration.
Similarly to Later, the platform also offers integration for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Do you need an automated posting tool?
Simply put, such a social media auto-posting tool can save you a lot of time and effort while also helping you grow the brand or business at the same time.
All of the aforementioned tools are a good option to go for with some being more useful at some aspects than others. Regardless of the platform that you choose, you can be sure that having such a tool will definitely make the process easier and will also save you time that you can then invest into creating better content without having to worry about posting schedules and additional research.