Social media can be stressful, let’s face it. Creating, scheduling, posting not only photos but multiple types of content is exhausting. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the juggling it might be time to adopt some social media management tools.
But with so many to choose from—and some with hefty price tags—you may struggle to figure out which tools are both good and affordable. This list will end that struggle, breaking down both the zero-cost features of the best free social media management tools and their paid options.
It would be near impossible for a business to make all of their posts “live”. As a result, social media scheduling and posting programs help make the workload more manageable. You can design and bulk schedule multiple posts at once using social media scheduling software platforms. They also give you time to create and push more content. In this post, we review the top social media scheduling and posting tools.
Monday.com
Best for: Any project and business
Monday.com is different from most of the products we have included in this post in that it doesn’t specifically target social media posting and scheduling. Indeed, many businesses use Monday.com for things other than social media. Its primary focus is on improving the efficiency and workflow of your teams. However, this makes it ideal for those wanting to create a logical workflow to manage their social media accounts.
The Power of Boards
Boards are the heart of Monday.com. It uses boards as fully customizable tables to manage your projects, workflows, and everyday work. You build boards to represent your workflow. You can create boards to organize any projects and activities your team does.
Social Media Management Template and Workflow
Monday.com includes numerous templates to give you a starting point and has one specifically designed for social media management. This template builds two boards:
- Campaign Ideas and Requests
- Campaign Progress and Status
Collaborative Campaign Planning
Members of your team can make suggestions for upcoming social media posts in the Campaign Ideas and Requests board. You then use it to create an efficient and standardized workflow for your social media campaigns.
The Campaign Progress and Status board focuses more on specific campaigns. It shows Upcoming Campaigns, Live Campaigns, Completed and Stuck. The two boards join, so when you approve a campaign on the Campaign Ideas and Requests board, it automatically populates the Upcoming Campaigns section on the Campaign Progress and Status board.
Automation and Integration Features
You can include Automations and Integrations on your boards. Automations are rules based on some action that occurs within the site. Integrations are where your Monday.com boards interact with some other software platform.
Pricing: Monday.com offers multiple paid plans, starting at $10/user/month for Basic (5GB storage) up to Pro at $20/user/month, and an Enterprise plan with custom pricing, each plan with increasing features and an 18% annual plan discount.
Key Features:
- Customizable boards for project management
- Specialized templates for social media management
- Automated workflows
- Integrations with other software platforms
HeyOrca
HeyOrca makes designing, scheduling, and publishing your social media posts easy. Getting started is just as straightforward and it offers various videos and guides to help with the onboarding process.
User-Friendly Interface and Calendars
Its user-friendly interface focuses a lot on calendars which help you to visualize all your scheduled posts and quickly identify on which days you might have insufficient content planned.
Ideal for Social Media Marketing Agencies
It’s an attractive option, especially for social media marketing agencies and is trusted and loved by more than 10,000 social media managers across the globe. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why it was launched in the first place was to fill the gap in the market for a solid tool that creative agencies could use for content creation and collaboration.
Features for Effective Agency Management
It, for example, includes multiple social calendars allowing you to separate different clients. Another useful feature for agencies is its content and media libraries where you can manage your posts and media assets. Then, after you and the rest of your team have exchanged feedback (which can be done directly on the posts) and you’re ready to present your ideas to your clients, the final approval phase is just as seamless. Instead of having to send emails back and forth, clients can approve or reject a post directly in the platform.
All in all, HeyOrca is a solid solution for scheduling and much more. While it’s mostly aimed at agencies, brands looking for a social media platform to use in-house will also find its features helpful and intuitive.
Pricing: HeyOrca offers three plans with direct publishing to major platforms and unlimited users, making it an excellent collaboration tool.
Key Features:
- Visual content calendars
- Multiple social calendars for client separation
- Integrated content and media libraries
- Direct post feedback and client approval
- Direct publishing to multiple platforms
Planoly
Best for: Businesses of all sizes who post to Instagram and Pinterest
If you’re searching for a social media posting and scheduling tool that has a good app, be sure to check out Planoly. Founded in 2016 by a jewelry brand, Planoly started out as a visual planner for Instagram. Since then, it has expanded its set of features to include tools for social marketing on Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook.
The idea behind Planoly is simple – social media marketing shouldn’t have to be so challenging. So, to help social media managers and business owners, it integrates social strategy and content scheduling.
Powerful Analytics for Instagram and Pinterest
One of the features that deserve special mention is its analytics. You can access basic analytics for Instagram and Pinterest for any specific time frame. It also offers advanced analytics for Instagram and suggestions regarding which will be the best time to post on Instagram based on your target audience’s activity.
Create Shoppable Posts and Engaging Content
Before you can get to studying analytics, though, you’ll first need to get posting. It’s especially useful if you need to create shoppable posts. With the help of it, you can transform your social media content on any social platform into a social storefront. Alternatively, if you simply want to create engaging social media posts, its StoriesEdit feature offers designer templates and stickers to help you create and customize content.
Pricing: It offers three paid plans and a basic free plan. So, it can grow with you as your needs change.
Key Features:
- Visual content planner
- Platform-specific analytics
- Shoppable post creation
- Custom story templates
- Social storefront integration
Buffer
As its name indicates, Buffer allows you to build up a selection of relevant posts you want to share, which can then schedule to go out at more suitable, appropriate times for your audience.
It allows you to customize your messages for each social network. The Buffer mobile app and the web browser extension make it easy to add webpage links, titles and images quickly to your Buffer schedule.
It suggests the most suitable times for you to post to each of your networks. Buffer also provides analytics showing how successful your posts were.
Pricing: Buffer operates a freemium model, where you can schedule 10 social updates for free, or with a paid plan you can undertake unlimited scheduling. This gives ample opportunity for a beginner to learn whether social media automation is likely to be of value to them.
Key Features:
- Custom post scheduling
- Platform-specific content customization
- Web and mobile content addition tools
- Optimal posting time suggestions
- Post success analytics
