Social media planning tools are some of the most useful items in a social media manager’s toolbox, whether you work for a small startup or a multinational enterprise. They are also an incredible resource for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who manages social media while running a small business.
This is because the best social media scheduling tools can save you time, make your job easier, and help you grow your social media presence.
Of course, we are partial to Hootsuite. But in this post, we will share 10 social media planning tools that we think can help companies with different needs.
The best social media scheduling tools make your job easier in many ways. They:
- Free up time by allowing you to create and schedule content at specific time intervals, rather than once during the day.
- Reduce the risk of errors by taking the time to proofread and proofread content before publishing it.
- Help you save even more time by allowing you to customize and tailor posts for multiple social media accounts on one screen.
- Make sure you post at the best time to engage your audience.
- Allows you to easily schedule, view and edit an integrated social content schedule across platforms.
1.Hootsuite
We don’t hesitate to say that we think Hootsuite is the best social media management tool and social media scheduling tool. It suits teams of all sizes, offering options from affordable basic social media scheduling tools to enterprise-grade solutions for complex organizations and very large teams.
Hootsuite supports all the scheduling features you might need, from simple automatic posting to bulk scheduling and customized recommendations for the best time to post based on your own analytics and social media results.
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You can also set up and schedule a single post for multiple social platforms, all from the same screen. This approach is much more efficient than just cross-posting the same content across multiple accounts.
Hootsuite supports scheduling for the following social networks. (Click on each link for more details on how to schedule content for each platform.)
- Instagram (posts, stories and videos)
- YouTube
- tik tak
Note that TikTok scheduling via Hootsuite allows you to avoid the 10-day scheduling limit and even schedule TikTok from your mobile device using the Hootsuite mobile app.
Hootsuite has the added bonus of offering detailed analytics to help keep you informed about your social media scheduling, as well as powerful content creation tools and a simple calendar view that lets you view and edit all your social content across multiple accounts on a single screen.
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2. Meta Business Suite
Meta Business Suite is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to schedule Facebook and Instagram content (posts, stories and ads). It is available both on a computer and as a mobile app.
Although it’s a native tool, you won’t be able to access all of Facebook and Instagram’s content creation features when scheduling stories through the Meta Business Suite. However, you can access text, image cropping, and some stickers.
3.Twitter
Tweetdeck is a built-in scheduling tool that allows you to schedule content for multiple Twitter accounts. (But only Twitter accounts – no other social platforms are supported.) You can log in to Tweetdeck using your primary Twitter username and password, and then add any other existing accounts you use.
You can schedule individual tweets or Twitter threads and view all scheduled Twitter content for each account in a convenient column.
4 Tailwind
Tailwind is a social media scheduling tool that supports Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook scheduling.
Tailwind originated as a Pinterest planner. It remains one of the best solutions specifically for Pinterest scheduling, offering personalized post scheduling, interval scheduling, and the ability to schedule multiple boards.
Note that even if you just want to use Tailwind for Facebook, you will need an Instagram account to sign up.
5. RSS Autopublisher
RSS Autopublisher is a scheduling tool that automatically publishes content from RSS feeds to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
If you create content using regularly updated media such as a blog or podcast, RSS Autopublisher will automatically schedule links to your social media accounts at the same time you schedule your content to be published.
6. Air table
Airtable is a bit different than the other social media scheduling tools on this list. Instead of scheduling content to be automatically posted to social media, Airtable is mainly used to create workflows for creating that content and triggers for automatic posting.
You can plan and track goals, tasks, tasks and deadlines. Airtable Automations then uses triggers to automatically perform certain actions, including posting to Twitter or Facebook.
To turn Airtable into a complete social media scheduling tool that will automatically schedule content directly on Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest as well as Facebook and Twitter, install the Airtable Automatons app for Hootsuite.
7. KAWO
KAWO is a social media planner specially designed for Chinese social media platforms WeChat, Weibo, Kuaishou and Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok). It offers a social media calendar view, scheduling tools, and suggested best times to post.
You can also use the KAWO app in Hootsuite to follow WeChat and Weibo content along with other social channels in the Hootsuite dashboard.
8. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a social media scheduling tool designed for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Its unique feature is that it will reschedule evergreen content to fill scheduled timeslots unless you add new content to the queue.
MeetEdgar can schedule and repurpose content for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. However, it lacks some of the more advanced features required by large organizations.
9. Shopify Auto Post to Facebook and Instagram
If you manage a Shopify store, the Shopify Facebook & Instagram Auto Post app allows you to create a social media schedule that posts a new or random product to your social media at the same time every day or on selected days of the week.
This is a good way to make sure you post content consistently, even if you don’t have new content ideas.
Despite its name, this social media scheduling app works with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. It’s great at what it does, even though it’s really only meant for this very specific type of social media scheduling.
Note. If you’d like to integrate your eCommerce store with Hootsuite to access more robust scheduling features, check out the Shopview Hootsuite apps for Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or Magento.
10.Mailchimp
What, what? Isn’t Mailchimp an email marketing tool?
Necessarily well. But if you’re already using Mailchimp for your email campaigns, it’s also a great tool for scheduling social media posts. It integrates with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so you can create and schedule content for those platforms within the Mailchimp interface.
Another handy scheduling option is the ability to create posts for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that are attached to a specific email in Mailchimp’s interface, so they’re automatically posted at the same time the email is sent. This is a good way to keep your social schedule and content aligned with your email promotions.
You can also connect Mailchimp to Hootsuite to share campaigns with your social channels right from your dashboard.
Social media scheduling tools work by connecting all of your various social media accounts to a central platform that you can use to schedule content for posting according to your social media content calendar.
Once you schedule content, it will automatically be published at the time you choose. This means you can set up social media posts for a day, a week, or even a month or more at a time, and be sure content gets posted whether you’re on your desktop (or on your phone).
But how does it actually work behind the scenes?
Social network planning tools connect to each social network through that network’s API or application programming interface. It may sound complicated, but it’s basically just a way for the social network and scheduling tool to communicate with each other.
Fortunately, this communication takes place in the background. Thus, you do not need to know any code or special programming languages to make these tools work. It usually only takes a few steps to publish social content using the scheduling tool.
How to post with the social media scheduling tool
Here’s a quick overview of how social media scheduling tools typically work for major social platforms.
- Link your accounts to the social media scheduling tool.
- Compose your social content and select the accounts you want to post to. A good social media scheduling tool will give you the ability to set up one post for multiple social media accounts on different networks, all from one screen.
- Select the schedule for a later option and choose your preferred time. The best social media scheduling tools will provide personalized recommendations on the best time to schedule your post for the greatest engagement.
- It’s all for messages or tweets. For Instagram Stories, there is one more step. At the appointed time, you will receive a push notification about the completion of the process.
For YouTube video scheduling, the process is slightly different. Remember those APIs we mentioned? The YouTube API behaves differently, requiring a slightly different process.
When you import your video into the social media scheduling tool, simply mark the video as private and use the scheduling option to set when the video becomes public.
For those who are learning the visual, here is more information about content planning for Instagram:
And some details for Pinterest:
And finally, some TikTok post scheduling details:
How to schedule multiple posts at once with the social media scheduling tool
One of the huge benefits of using a social media scheduling tool is the ability to schedule multiple posts at the same time. This is also known as mass scheduling.
Here’s how it works.
- Add post dates and social content for multiple posts to a CSV file that meets the requirements of your social media planning tool. Hootsuite allows you to bulk schedule up to 350 posts.
- Upload the file to the social media planning tool.
- Review your messages, make any necessary additions or changes, and click Schedule.