When you’re running a small business, in most cases, you’re already wearing a lot of hats in your business. There’s the accountant hat, the doing-the-work hat, the project manager hat and, the one that takes the most time, the social media manager hat.

While you’re keeping track of all the moving parts of your business, it’s hard to see when you would have time to post consistently on your social media feeds. 

As I mentioned in my post about using a content calendar (link), consistency is one of the most important parts of a social media strategy. So finding the right tools to schedule your social media can save you hours and keep you top of mind when a potential client is looking for your services.  

What is Social Media Scheduling? 

Social media scheduling is pre-planning and pre-writing your social media content to be posted at a particular time or date on the specific social media channel you wish whether that be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter ect.

Helpful tips for scheduling social media: 

• Engagement is key. Make sure to schedule your posts during your peak engagement times.

• Spend as little as 30 minutes a day to schedule. Don’t overthink it. Scheduling is meant to make your life easier so truly embrace it and set a timer for your scheduling.

• REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW what you’re scheduling. It’s best to double check what you’ve written and make sure there are no spelling mistakes but also ensure that your audience will understand and engage with the content you’re posting.

• Remember to check in on your post. Just because you can schedule your posts doesn’t mean you can now forget about them. Once your post is up check on it, monitor the engagement with the post and reply to any questions or concerns.

Now that you know what it is, why you need now let’s look at your options for Social Media Scheduling tools.

When Social Scheduling, it’s best to double check what you’ve written and make sure there are no spelling mistakes but also ensure that your audience will understand and engage with the content you’re posting.

While there are many tools out there, it is often a personal preference on which ones you prefer to work with. Personally, I love Buffer and have used the program for over 5 years now. Since I schedule for clients, I use the paid version. 

1. Buffer

Buffer is my preferred platform. The user interface is quick and easy to get used to, and it makes batch content scheduling easy. You just have to define your posting schedule, and then use their platform to share content across all of your profiles. 

I love their drag and drop and calendar views. It’s nice to see an overhead of all my posts and be able to rearrange them so that I don’t have the same content posting on multiple platforms at the same time. 

Buffer works as a queue, rather than as a static post system. That means that you can rapidly schedule your content and it will put it next in the queue. 

2. Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a platform best used for engagement and monitoring your pre-scheduled posts. While it’s not the easiest platform to use for pre-scheduling your posts due to a bit of a clunky interface, it’s the easiest to use when monitoring engagement. It’s also a great account for finding and engaging with new people as you can create lists of people to make retweeting and engaging with relevant content easy. 

3. Meet Edgar

This is a favourite for more than a couple of my local business friends. With this tool, you can batch create content for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram (iOS only)

This one is a little different, as you can define categories of your posts and create a schedule of those categories. So you want to hit that 80% regular content 20% sales content golden ratio? This is the platform to do it. 

The set up is intensive, but once it’s ready, the platform does most of the work for you. (For a price, of course. This one isn’t free.)

4. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is the dream platform for bloggers. It is not cheap, starting at around $60 USD per month, so people using this platform should be absolutely sure they have the content needed to make a platform like this worth it. 

This platform is targeted toward bloggers. It will connect with your website so you can compose a blog post and use an automated formula to post that blog on your social media feeds in a way that is optimized for each separate platform. It’ll also keep posting every month or couple months after so your content is always being used and shared regularly. 

While I blog frequently, I have two websites, and this platform only schedules for 1 website at a time, so it’s not worth the price for me. But if you’re a blogger with a single blog, this is a perfect platform for automatically posting your content regularly. 

5. Later

Later is an amazing app for people who have a LOT of visual content. My marketing assistant does hand lettering, and needs to put out new content regularly to engage on instagram, so using an application like later helps her keep her feed looking beautiful. 

With the preview feed tool, she can look ahead to what her feed will look like with specific posts next to each other. This means she can keep a healthy mix of promotional images and stuff that’s just fun to look at. As well, she could also schedule stories images if she wanted to. 

If you’re relying on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, this is not the application for you. As well, if you have a personal account and not a business one, you’ll need to manually post your photos to instagram using your phone when Later prompts you. 

Finally, a special mention of a platform that I do not really recommend, but you can’t have a list about scheduling apps without including it: 

Hootsuite

Another popular scheduling site that makes finding, scheduling, managing and reporting on social media content easier. Hootsuite automatically schedules posts based on your chosen schedule, ensuring that your social presence is active 24/7. 

Remember to mix it up

While some people are against it, there is nothing wrong with pre-scheduling a lot of your content. There is currently no conclusive evidence that pre scheduled post perform worse than manually posted content. 

With anything, just make sure you mix it up a little. While I pre-schedule 90% of my content, I make sure that I’m online every day engaging with people on each of the social platforms that make my business thrive.

And most important of all: Do not schedule and forget. Keep monitoring your content and make sure it’s socially aware of what's happening in the world. Make sure you’re answering questions and being, you know, social on your social media platforms. 

Have a scheduling tool you love way more than any of these? Comment below and let me know what I should check out next!