Social media is one of the most dominant aspects of our lives. With billions of users across the globe, social media has truly been a revolution in how we communicate and interact with each other. Of course, while sharing pictures of fluffy cats and videos of your last summer vacation is fun, social media has evolved to become much bigger. Its about brands interacting with their audiences. Since just about everyone uses social media daily, it only makes sense for brands to want to post content and engage with their audience there. However, unless you’re a social media wizard, chances are, your brand could make use of some social media scheduling.
A Look at Social Media Scheduling
Social media isn’t just limited to Facebook or any of its acquired platforms like Instagram or WhatsApp. It includes many other platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, and even Snapchat. The fact is, people use more than one of these platforms on a regular, daily basis. Internet packages like Cox internet preferred have penetrated the market deeply. Add to that the free-to-use nature of social platforms (at least for people). It is no surprise that social media addiction is quickly becoming a real thing.
Any marketing professional will tell your brand to go where your audience is. That means you can’t stick to one platform and expect to achieve your marketing goals. You have to be on any and all platforms that your audience frequents. How you determine your platforms will depend on a lot of market research and careful strategy. However, once you select them, you have to ensure you deliver a clear and consistent brand message across all of them. This is where social media scheduling comes in handy. This blog explores the best scheduling tools that you can leverage, including the following:
- Postcron
- Buffer
- DoShare
- Buffero
- Hootsuite
- Timely
Read on to find out more.
Postcron For The Casual Poster
Postcron is an intuitive and easy to use scheduling tool that many social media managers use on a daily basis. Users will recognize the similarity between Postcron’s interface and the main page you see when you log into your Facebook account. The options for adding and scheduling posts are very simple but don’t offer a lot of flexibility. Postcron is best for beginners or brands that don’t require a huge volume of content to be scheduled early on.
Buffer For Scheduling On Browsers and Phones
What makes Buffer different from a lot of other scheduling software is that it is compatible with both desktop browsers as well as mobile phones. The Buffer app makes your social media scheduling as easy and as intuitive as adding posts with a simple tap. The app allows you to add text, photos, videos, and even statuses very easily. Once you have added all the information, the software will “buffer” them and release them slowly as scheduled. Buffer isn’t just compatible with Twitter and Facebook, but LinkedIn as well. This makes it a very useful tool to have.
DoShare by Google+
Google+ never really caught on as a social media platform. But it still resulted in several very useful extensions for the Google Chrome browser. DoShare is a bare-bones scheduling tool that has all of Google’s intuitive UI design and simple functionality. The extension has a text editor and a scheduler, as well as an automatic draft saver. The only problem is, DoShare only schedules posts to Google+ so you might want to consider more all-encompassing options.
Buffero for Scheduled Tweeting
Buffero is primarily a tool for scheduling posts on Twitter. You can sign up for the service using your Twitter account, after which you get access to a secret email address. You simply email the tweets you want to schedule to that account, which will collect a buffer of information. You can then schedule Buffero to release one tweet thrice a day. Under the free plan, Buffero allows you to schedule up to 15 tweets at one time. If you want to post more, you may have to upgrade to their paid service.
Hootsuite for Mulitple Platforms
Hootsuite is perhaps the best-known tool to schedule social media posts. It has a great and easy-to-use interface with a lot of functionality. It allows you to schedule posts across different social media platforms based on your social media calendar. All you have to do is create the content you want to post beforehand and schedule it to be posted at specific times. Hootsuite allows you to plan your entire social media calendar and then simply automate it. In terms of sheer functionality, Hoostsuite is undoubtedly one of the best.
Timely for High-Impact Posting
Timely comes with complex analytical tools that comb through the last 200 tweets on your Twitter account. Once you schedule a list of tweets, Timely begins to work its magic. It analyzes your Twitter account to determine the times with the highest impact for your scheduled tweets. It then publishes them according to the analysis it derives. This takes out a lot of guesswork from the scheduling aspect. Moreover, you get to devote time to other aspects of business-like getting Cox customer support number to send over a technician for a dedicated business number. Social media definitely levels the playing field, but you still need to be creative with what you post. With some trial-and-error, you will ultimately find a scheduling platform that works best for you.
