Top 9 Social Media Scheduling Tools for 2018 and Beyond

Social media is evolving at a rapid pace and it can be daunting for marketers and entrepreneurs alike to keep pace.

This is where social media scheduling tools can help you publish content on a consistent basis and save precious time that you can then devote to more important tasks.

By using the right scheduling tools, you can have an active presence on all your social channels and perfectly time your posts on each channel by scheduling content in advance.

In this article, we’ll reveal 9 of the best social media scheduling tools you can use to manage your social media channels and optimize your social presence.

Top 9 Social Media Scheduling Tools

1. Buffer

Buffer is my favorite social media scheduling tool and I’ve been using their services for over seven years. I love the simplicity of the interface and the ease with which you can post, schedule, and analyze content on all your social media accounts. It’s the ideal social media scheduler for solopreneurs, bloggers, and small business owners.

The customer support team is also very friendly and respond promptly to customer queries via chat or Twitter. On a side note, if you like listening to marketing podcasts, then be sure to tune into their weekly podcast The Science of Social Media.

Buffer Pricing Plans

Buffer’s free plan allows you to schedule up to 10 posts per day to 3 social accounts. If you upgrade to the pro version, you can add a total of 8 social accounts, and schedule up to 100 posts a day. With the pro plan, you can also connect your Pinterest profile and start scheduling content there using Buffer.

Here are Buffer’s pricing plans:

Starter Plans

• Free – $0/mo (1 user, 3 social accounts, 10 scheduled posts per social account)
• Pro – $15/mo (1 user, 8 social accounts, 100 scheduled posts per social account)

Business Plans

• Small – $99/mo (6 users, 25 social accounts, 2000 scheduled posts per social account)
• Medium – $199/mo (11 users, 50 social accounts, 2000 scheduled posts per social account)
• Large – $399/mo (26 users, 150 social accounts, 2000 scheduled posts per social account)

For a detailed feature comparison of all plans, check out their pricing page.

Click here to sign up for the free plan or try the Pro plan for free for 7 days.

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is quite possibly the most popular social media scheduling tool in the world, used by over 16 million users worldwide. Even if you haven’t used Hootsuite before, you’re probably familiar with Hootsuite’s mascot, Owly.

Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media platform that allows you to curate and schedule content, measure your social ROI, run social media ads, and more.

With Hootsuite, you can manage all of your social networks in one convenient dashboard, and get a bird’s eye view of what’s happening in your social universe.

Hootsuite even has a free plan which allows you to manage up to 3 social profiles. Click here to create your free Hootsuite account.

Hootsuite Pricing Plans

• Free – $0/mo (3 social profiles, 30 scheduled messages, 1 user)
• Professional – $19/mo (10 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, 1 user)
• Team – $99/mo (20 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, 3 users)
• Business – $499/mo (35 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, 5 users)
• Enterprise – Custom

You can sign up for a 30-day free trial of professional or team plan. Check out Hootsuite’s pricing page for more details.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout is a collaborative social media management platform that brings together advanced social media publishing tools and intuitive workflows so you can efficiently plan, schedule, and post content across different social networks from a single platform.

Sprout’s easy-to-use interface and powerful features can help you visualize and manage all your posts across multiple profiles and networks from one beautiful calendar.

In addition to scheduling your content on various social platforms, you can use Sprout as a collaboration tool among your marketing teams. Furthermore, you get access to Sprout’s social media analytics and trend reports which can help you optimize your social media following.

Sprout Social Pricing Plans

Sprout Social’s pricing starts at $99/month, making it slightly more expensive than the other tools featured in this list. As a result, Sprout is positioned as a business solution for large agencies and businesses.

• Premium – $99 per user/mo (10 social profiles)
• Corporate – $149 per user/mo (15 social profiles)
• Enterprise – $249 per user/mo (20 social profiles)

Currently, all plans include a free 30‑day trial. Click here for more details.

4. Grum

One of the biggest drawbacks of Instagram is that you can’t upload photos and videos from your desktop. Grum solves this problem by allowing you to upload and schedule photos and videos right from your desktop.

I was lucky to snag a lifetime access deal to Grum a few months ago through AppSumo. I’ve been using it to schedule content from my Mac and I’m really happy with the results so far.

Grum Pricing Plans

• Start – $9.95/mo (2 Instagram accounts)
• Grow – $3.95/mo. per Instagram account (3-5 Instagram accounts)
• Agency – $2.95/mo. per Instagram account (5+ Instagram accounts)

Click here to sign up for Grum

5. Planable

If you own a digital marketing agency, then Planable is the best social media scheduling platform you can opt for. Aside from using Planable as a social media scheduler for  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you can keep everyone in the loop with one shared space for your team and clients to collaborate. You can treat it as your agency’s centralized hub for ideas, content and feedback.

Planable has a visually appealing user interface, making it easier for you to plan your social media calendar. It also keeps your content in one, perfectly organized place to help you work more efficiently.

Planable Pricing Plans

• Starter – $14/mo (1 workspace, 3 users, unlimited posts)
• Premium – $49/mo (5 workspaces, 5 users per workspace, unlimited posts)
• Pro – $99/mo (10 workspaces, 10 users per workspace, unlimited posts)

Click here to register for a 14-day trial of Planable’s Starter Plan

6. Social Media Poster (by SEMrush)

Social Media Poster is a new addition to SEMrush, one of the leading SEO and competition analysis software in the world. With Social Media Poster, you can schedule posts and analyze your social media performance on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Social Media Poster Pricing

Social Media Poster is a part of the SEMrush software suite and as such, you’ll need an active subscription of SEMrush to access it. The pricing for SEMrush starts from $99.95/month. Click here for more details.

If you haven’t used SEMrush before, I highly recommend you sign up for the 14-day trial of SEMrush Pro by clicking the link below. The trial will give you full access to all the tools within SEMrush, including Social Media Poster.

Click here to try SEMrush PRO for free for 14 days

 To learn more about SEMrush and its key features, check out my in-depth review

7. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is yet another social media scheduling tool which helps you manage all your social media marketing efforts in one place. CoSchedule allows you to create a predefined social sharing plan to reuse again and again, so you can focus on creating content rather than waste time sharing content on social channels manually.

One of CoSchedule’s best features is Best Time Scheduling which lets you intelligently share your messages at the highest traffic times for each network with minimal effort.

CoSchedule Pricing Plans

The pricing for CoSchedule starts from $40/month (paid annually) or $49/month (paid monthly). Below are all the pricing plans:

• Essential – $40/mo (1 user, 8 social profiles, ideal for bloggers & solopreneurs)
• Growth – $60/mo (3 users, 10 social profiles, ideal for startups)
• Professional – $300/mo (5 users, 15 social profiles, ideal for in-house marketing team and agencies)
• Enterprise – $1200/mo (10 users, 25 social profiles, ideal for established marketing teams)

Click here to start your 14-day free trial of CoSchedule

8. Agorapulse

Similar to Hootsuite, Agorapulse is also an all-in-one social media platform with scheduling and reporting features. Agorapulse’s solution is tailored mostly towards marketing teams and agencies.

Agorapulse is a popular social media solution among agencies, including Ogilvy and TBWA. This is because with Agorapulse, you can invite your clients to approve draft posts and tweets with its unique client review and publishing workflow system. Furthermore, you can download engaging social media reports with key metrics and analysis on engagement and growth to present to your clients.

That said, Agorapulse also has plans designed specifically for small and large businesses alike.

Agorapulse Pricing

• Small – $39/mo (1 user, 3 social profiles, best for solopreneurs)
• Medium – $79/mo (3 users, 10 profiles, best for small businesses)
• Large – $159/mo (6 users, 25 profiles, best for marketing agencies)
• Enterprise – $239/mo (12 users, 40 profiles, best for large organizations)

Currently, Agora Pulse is offering free trial on all the above plans. Click here to learn more.

9. PromoRepublic

PromoRepublic is a social commerce platform primarily aimed at small businesses to help them grow their presence on social media. It’s not just a social media scheduling tool, but a social media content creation and automation tool. PromoRepublic features a post ideas library with 100,000+ hand-crafted visuals, integrated photo stocks, and easy-to-use graphics editor.

Furthermore, PromoRepublic is integrated with every major social media platform you’d need to start posting.

PromoRepublic Pricing

PromoRepublic essentially offers two pricing plans – self-service and full service.

With the self-service plan, you can pick and choose the services you’d like. These services include:

• Smart Calendar – $9/mo (includes access to Post Ideas Library, Automated Publishing, and Graphic Editor)
• Social Monitoring – $49/mo (includes monitoring of negative mentions of your brand and customer support)
• Intelligent Ads (includes access to Retargeting Automation, Paid Ads Proven Mechanics, and ROI Tracking. No pricing info yet, but it’ll be added soon.)

PromoRepublic’s full service plan allows you to outsource the above services to the PromoRepublic team. The pricing for the full-service plan starts at $199/mo.

Click here to learn more about PromoRepublic’s pricing plans 

Conclusion

So these are the 9 social media scheduling tools we’d recommend to manage and streamline your social media content.

Whether you’re a solopreneur, agency owner, or the head of a large marketing team in a Fortune 500 company, social media scheduling tools can save you time, build your social community, and help you optimize your content distribution.

Do you think we missed out on any of your favorite social media scheduling tools? Which tool do you use to schedule your content on social media? Let us know in the comments section.

This article was originally published on Sandeep Mallya’s SEO and marketing blog, 99signals.