With more people flocking to social media, many social media sites have become marketing goldmines for businesses. By being on social media and having a social presence, businesses are able to engage with users immediately, and create deeper connections than other traditional marketing tactics.
There are many perks that come to being on social media, however a lot of these perks come from a businesses ability to make great content. Content marketing. And while that sounds easy, it’s harder than you think.
The biggest culprit that makes social media so difficult is time. It takes time to create posts and time to post them too. And for business owners you honestly can do better things with your time than constantly logging onto Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and making one post. All you need is an app that allows you to schedule your social media posts.
The only problem with that is that there are dozens of these apps.
Here are a handful of these apps to consider so you can pick one you like the most!
Buffer
The biggest social media scheduler of them all and deservedly so. Buffer is strongly established in the market, and some incredible features. These features include a queue, post analytics, team features, and engagement features. Best of all, it can post to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Linkedin.
All in all Buffer has a simple design and is easy to get into. Furthermore it’s relatively cheap as well. You can pay as little as $15 per month to upwards of $399 per month depending on how many social profiles you want and how large your team is.
Sprout Social
Close behind Buffer is Sprout Social. It’s similar to HootSuite – another social media scheduler – in that it combines similar tools together. Sprout Social has the full suite of features that Buffer has in monitoring, scheduling, and analytics, but where it differs is in the posting. You have a few extra features in creating content tagging and if you have a team working on social media posts there is an approval workflow feature too.
Prices for Sprout Social are higher than Buffer’s however Sprout Social goes into more detail on the data side of things. They also provide a 30 day free trial for you to try it out with no risk.
HootSuite
HootSuite has been around from the beginning. In fact, it might’ve been the first scheduler of its kind. It started in 2008 and offers a wide variety of content features. It has scheduling, content curation, organization, and an RSS integration. Hootsuite also takes pride in bulk scheduling so if you want to upload several posts at a time, you can do that. Furthermore, there is a feature that allows you to create social contests or sweepstakes on social media with ease.
Social Pilot
This scheduler is unique in that its filled with features and integrated into one dashboard. Social Pilot isn’t as robust as the previous three schedulers, but if you’re looking to just schedule your posts then this is a no hassle and cheap option to consider.
They offer a 14 day trial with plans starting as low as $25 a month.
CoSchedule
CoSchedule has some pretty neat features, the biggest being the social calendar feature. In short, this platform is geared to helping you schedule and organize every single post. Not only that but it’s also one of the top blogs on content marketing so there is a lot of information you can get access to on the subject.
But that information and unique features don’t come cheap. Their cheapest plan comes up to $80 a month which is the highest base plan out of them all. Still, these are some great features to consider.
Crowdfire
Crowdfire used to be a simple follow and unfollow feature before it evolved into what it is now. It’s the most automated scheduler out of all of these to the point that most users feel Crowdfire is basically an automated robot. Crowdfire makes recommendations for posts you can make through a series of messages. The bot will also set up a wide variety of posts for you without you having to worry at all.
The only catch to this is that unlike the previous schedulers, you can’t make a post from scratch nor can you schedule them. This app is focused solely on social engagement. So it might not exactly fix the issues you have exactly.
Still, it’s the cheapest out of the other schedulers starting off at $7.48 a month.
The Right Scheduler For You
Each scheduler has its own subtle differences and overall feel for it and the best way to know the right one for you is to try them out. While I was focusing on the pricing points of each one of these schedulers, they do have options for free versions or at least give you a free trial. So try them out and see which one makes the most sense for your business.