Social media are one of the best ways to reach out to your audience. In this post I’m going to show you exactly how to save time while posting consistently on different social media channels. You will learn how to schedule social media posts in advance by using the best social media automation tools.
What Is Social Media Automation?
Social media are an important part of our every day life. They help us be connected to our friends and family, are a means of delivering the news, and are often used as search engines to find information.
It is vital for your business to be present on social media, but with so many platforms out there how do you balance and find the time for all the activities related to your business?
The answer is social media automation – the process that allows you to schedule social media posts and optimize social media interactions using some automated tools available online.
The social media automation includes:
- scheduling social media posts;
- automated publishing of new blog posts;
- social media engagement management (follow new people, reply to new followers and customers, follow back etc.);
- reporting key metrics, like new followers, impressions, engagement levels etc.
The main benefits of social media automation are:
A better time management.
It is impossible to be active on all the most popular social networks and, at the same time, to consistently publish quality content on your website. Social media can become very time consuming and you risk neglecting your main priority, which is working on your website. Social media automation can help you save time and concentrate on generating content.
The possibility to publish during peak audience times.
Depending on your target audience, there are different times when you can reach a maximum number of people on different social media. Social media automation helps you schedule your posts in such a manner to go live during peak audience hours.
The possibility to publish on a regular basis.
Publishing consistently on social media is very important. It helps you maintain the interest of your audience and get more followers, as active accounts are more likely to grow rapidly. Scheduling your posts throughout the day/week can help you maintain your presence on social media, while you concentrate on other activities related to your online business.
How to Schedule Social Media Posts?
Some social networks, such as Facebook or Pinterest, allow you to schedule your posts or pins, but if you have multiple social media accounts on multiple platforms having to schedule each post for each network and for each social media account can become time consuming and stressful.
This is where the social media automation tools come in handy. Most of these tools allow you to schedule your social media posts for all your social media accounts at once. You can schedule and manage all your accounts from one place.
Just imagine having the possibility to schedule one post for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media networks at the same time, without having to sign in and post manually on each of these platforms? It saves you a huge amount of time.
There are many social media automation tools online. You need to know that most of them have paid plans and sooner or later you will have to invest a small amount into a social media automation tool that best suits your needs. Of course, all of the tools I am going to list below have free trials and some of them have even a limited free plan, which can be useful if you are just getting started.
10 Best Social Media Automation Tools:
#1 Hootsuite
This is one of the most popular social media automation tools. It already has more than 18 million users coming from over 175 countries worldwide.
This tool supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest, and has one free plan and 3 paid plans.
The free plan includes 3 social media profiles, 1 user and 30 scheduled posts. Here is how the 3 paid plans are structured:
The core features of the Hootsuite platform are:
- Scheduling
- Content curation
- Promoting
- Analytics
- Monitoring
- Team Management
- Security
- Apps and Integrations
#2 Buffer
This is another great online tool, with a user-friendly interface and offering similar features like the ones of Hootsuite.
Besides scheduling your automated posts, this tool will also suggest you the best time for posting, depending on the social network and the type of your business.
They do have a free plan, which includes 3 social media accounts, 10 scheduled posts and 1 user. However, if you really expect your business to grow, I would suggest you choose one of the paid plans below. All of them have a 14-day trial and the prices are pretty affordable.
#3 SocialPilot
I just love this tool! It is so easy to use and has a very user-friendly interface.
SocialPilot is a simple social media scheduling and publishing tool that supports a greater number of social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google My Business and VK.
When signing up for an account you will get:
- The possibility to work with other users in your team;
- A mass-planner feature to schedule content in bulk;
- A Facebook branding feature;
- A browser extension;
- Mobile apps and other features.
They have a 14-day free trial and 3 paid plans, starting from just $25/month. I think that this is really one of the most cost-effective social media automation tools online.
#4 PostPickr
This tool was created by an Italian team of experts and is one of the most intuitive toolkits to manage and run your social media marketing campaigns.
It supports a wide range of social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkeIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Telegram, Pocket etc.
With this tool you can easily maintain a constant and effective presence on social media, saving 70% of your time!
PostPickr allows you to:
- Create beautiful posts for each social network and distribute them across all your managed accounts, in just one click.
- Efficiently schedule and publish your social content across social networks.
- Access powerful content management features.
- Track your performance and get to know your audience better.
They have a free plan, including 3 social media accounts and 4 paid plans, starting from just € 19/month for 12 social media accounts.
#5 Kicksta
This is an automation tool that supports Instagram only.
If most of your social media marketing is targeting Instagram, then Kicksta is the right tool for you! It has been around since 2015 and is designed specifically for this social network. Kicksta can help you grow your following and skyrocket your engagement on autopilot.
They don’t have any free pans or free trials, but they do have a 14-day money-back guarantee. So, if you are not satisfied with this tool or if it doesn’t fit your business, you have 2 weeks time to ask for a refund.
The two paid plans look like this:
#6 AgoraPulse
This tool is more expensive, but probably has the most comprehensive set of features if compared to other social automation tools.
AgoraPulse supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest and offers awesome features, such as:
- Scheduling posts;
- Setting up and evergreen sharing schedule for reposting content;
- Publishing across different networks;
- Smart analytics and performance tracking;
- Chrome extension;
- Link shortener;
- Team management;
- Training;
- 24/7 support;
- Mobile app;
- Dedicated account manager and other!
They don’t have a free plan, but you can take advantage of the 28-day free trial to get to know all the features this tool has to offer.
Here is how the paid plans are structured:
#7 CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a more complex tool, because it not only allows you to schedule your social media posts, but also manage all of your content marketing online.
It is a cloud-based management tool that allows you to coordinate, schedule, and manage online content, promotion & campaigns.
They also have a WordPress Plug-in that allows your content to automatically integrate with your Calendar/Work Flow. All this makes creating Social Campaigns extremely easy and fast.
They have a 14-day free trial and there are different paid options, depending on the features you are interested in.
#8 Crowdfire
This is another great feature-rich automation tool, that supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram networks.
The features include:
- Content curation
- Scheduling and publishing to social media accounts
- Analytics and reporting
- Mentions tracking
- Following/unfollowing users ecc.
You can sign up for their free plan to try thing out. You will get one social media account linked per social network and 10 scheduled posts. They also have 3 paid plans:
#9 Sprout Social
It is a comprehensive social media toolkit, that can help you:
- Automate your social media posting
- Engage with your audience
- Work on customer support and much more…
This tool supports the following networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest, and has a 30-day free trial. There are 3 paid options, which I find quite expensive, especially for beginner marketers, but considering the features it is offering the price is pretty reasonable.
#10 dlvr.it
It’s a simple tool to help you schedule your social media posts across most of the social networks (they support more than 12!).
They have a free plan, including 2 social media accounts and 3 daily posts.
Both dlvr.it paid plans are really cost-effective and include every one of these features:
Conclusion
These are some of the best social media automation tools you can find online. Depending on what your goals are, some of these tools will help you grow your presence on social media and save time by scheduling and publishing posts on autopilot; while other tools will also offer you a wider number of features, helping you manage your social media marketing campaigns all in one place.
It is true that you will have to bear some costs, but consider it a necessary investment. Besides, some of the tools, like PostPickr, SocialPilot or delvr.it, have really economic pricing plans. With most of the automation tools listed above you can also take advantage of the annual billing discount.
Now that you found out how to schedule social media posts and automate your social media campaigns, you can better manage your time, organize your workload and boost your productivity.
I really hope this post was helpful for you and drop me a comment if you use any of these tools. I would love to know what you think.
Thank you for reading and good luck on your journey to financial freedom,
I think that if there was one area in which I could definitely use some improvement, it would be my social media presence. Like many, I do a good job of posting for a while, but life with a young family gets in the way a lot and I often forget to do it. These tools could be really helpful to keeping me on track with my posting without being too much of a hassle. It is nice to know that there are plans for every budget too! Thanks!
Thank you for your feedback, Steve! The automation tools have literally changed my life! I used to spend entire days posting and managing my social media accounts and I couldn’t concentrate on blogging as much as I wanted to. Now I can’t imagine my life without these tools.
I can see how these automation tools would save you an awful lot of time with social media sites especially if you were a member of 2 or more. It takes up many hours posting individually. I didn’t know such a tool existed so I learned a lot from this comprehensive Article. I have only ever scheduled posts on Facebook.
Hi Lisa, there are a few social media networks that allow you to schedule posts, but with the automation tools you can schedule and publish on several social profiles at once, saving a lot of time and effort. Some tools also take care of the following/unfollowing of other people and accounts, making social media marketing even easier.
For a host of reasons I’ve steered away from more recent social media platforms! LOL Yeah, I was involved in the early days of it all, way back to even when AOL was huge and AIM was the way to communicate with people. Then came MySpace. Dang, that seems like 100 years ago. I used to do a lot of marketing and networking withing MySpace, but it was a lot different than it is now. I was into it when people thought it was just trendy and they thought this not-real, virtual living would not stand through the test of time. How wrong were they!? In fact, now it is odd for someone to not be on social media. Even my elderly mother has a Facebook page! My point here is that social media have become the epicenter of ecommerce these days. Even though it has to be done discreetly as these platforms don’t want to become Amazon or Ebay, the methods you mentioned with the automation tools makes a lot of sense. I do a bit of online business and will definitely want to take it all to another level this year. One of the reasons I’ve steered away is because not having enough time (and the social distractions). With the automation you are referring to, it’s a small fraction of the maintenance. I may try it out soon. Thanks for the info!
Darrin
Hi, Darrin, I really appreciate your feedback. Yes, being present on social media is vital for any business, but it can be soooo time-consuming…and if you are just starting out and don’t have the resources to hire a social media manager, the automation tools are just what you need!
Heloo I over there, I am an affiliate marketter so i really find the article very useful to me. Before now I never had this concise knowledge on social media automation. I must say That I am privileged to see this article. Social media is one of the best platform for reaching out to millions of people. These automation tools are really nice.
Thank you for your feedback, Sheddy! I’m happy that you found this post useful!
Hey nice article you have there. This is the exact tool I have been searching for sometime now, to balance my social media usage and the demand from my website. Your thoughts on social media optimization is quite interesting and unique, it will definitely help me alot in having a proper time management in my website and the social media.
Time management can become an issue once your business starts growing. Furthermore if you have multiple businesses or websites. Sooner or later we all need to consider automating some of the marketing activities.