7 social media scheduling tools to help you market your business

7 Social Media Scheduling Tools You Could Use To Market Your Small Business

One of the key ways to be successful with small business marketing is through your social media channels and to maximise engagement, whilst also enhancing your brand is through consistency. 

Posting updates that are far and few between can lead to your audience on social media become disinterested and distanced from your brand.

Whereas continuously keeping your uploading flowing and engaging with your audience will constantly keep your brand and messages at the forefront of your audience's attention and increase the likelihood of your brand increasing.

Today we are going to be taking a thorough look at how social media scheduling can help you market your small business. 

Benefits of social media scheduling

Before we look at some of the top tools out there that can help you schedule your social media posts and activity. First, let's take a look at the main benefits of why you should be scheduling your social media and the benefits that it can bring to you and your business.

Time

Now one of the main benefits of using one of these tools is time. Having to manually write and post your own social media content can take precious time out of your calendar. Sometimes distracting you from other focuses within your business. Using these tools can help you free up this otherwise allocated time in your calendar to focus on other areas of your business.

Extend your reach

When you are posting manually on social media that requires one main asset and that is you. However, you're not always going to be available or free to post at the times you might like to. Using these scheduling platforms allows you to post at times you may not be in the office. Or at peak times in another region of the world when you might be asleep.

Manage multiple platforms

More businesses than ever before have their presence spread across multiple platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, you name it. And with the more networks that your business has a presence on the harder it can become to manage. With these tools, they make it easier to manage all of your social networks all in one central place.

Maintain consistency

By scheduling all of your posts across your social networks, you can ensure that you are consistently maintaining a presence across these social networks and providing plenty of content for your audience to engage with. It is also proven to be an effective social media strategy.

Things to be wary of when scheduling your social media posts

As much as scheduling your social media posts can be a benefit, there are also some pitfalls that you can find yourself falling into. And so before you start to schedule your social media posts through any of the tools that we're going to cover today you're going to want to take note of the below:-

The top social media scheduling tools

Thanks to advancements and innovations in software development you'll find there's plenty of tools and resources to help you with scheduling your activity and posting on social media. However, sometimes it can be hard to find which are the best tools to choose from to help with your social media scheduling. That's why we've gone through and cherry-picked the top tools to help you with your social media scheduling.

Later

The first tool on this list is an innovative scheduling platform that allows you to schedule posts to your Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts. However, it does particularly have a strong emphasis on Instagram. Mainly because, similar to Instagram, Later is image-centric. It allows you to start scheduling a post by adding an image and then later adding text to the image.

As well as being able to schedule posts on Instagram it also allows you to schedule posts to be uploaded to your store. This process is similar with the other social networks that are supported by the platform. Each image that is used is stored in a media library so you can see what assets have been used historically and which information accompanied them.

Take a look here if you would like to know more about growing your instagram following. 

When it comes to pricing for Later. There is a free version of the account that has the following monthly limitations:-

There are also three business packages ranging from $19/month to $49/month that allow you to support more than one social account. More suitable if your business has multiple social media accounts on each platform that you want to support.

If you would like to take a closer look at Later then take a look here.

Buffer

The second tool on this list, Buffer, has been around since 2010. And over the last decade, it has grown and developed a lot, now supporting multiple social networks including Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest and also Twitter. The scheduling tool of Buffer is just one of three main areas of the package. Meaning Buffer is essentially an all-in-one social media management tool split into three main areas:-

• Publish - the scheduling branch of the platform.
• Reply - allows you to monitor your social media and message.
• Analyze - an analytics tool to allow you to gain insights into the performance of your social media campaigns and posts

Like a lot of the tools on this list, Buffer allows users to have a free account that allows you to post to three social media accounts and allows you to schedule up to 10 posts. However, if you want to maintain a constant presence on your social media this will require manual intervention every couple of days at the very least. Therefore as a business, it's more likely that you're going to need one of the premium packages.

One of the main reasons that a lot of businesses choose Buffer is that it acts as an all-in-one social media management system. As well as allowing you to schedule your posts you can also monitor your social media accounts and also gain insights into the success and reach of your posts all under one roof.

If you would like to know more about how to use buffer to market your business, then check out this post.

If you would like to take a closer look at Buffer then take a look here.

Crowdfire

Similar to Buffer, Crowdfire is much more than a scheduler for your social media posts. It is also an innovative, smart, social media manager for all of your social media channels whose main purpose is to help you grow your brand on social media and free up your time to focus on other areas of your business. Social media channels you can manage and schedule posts for including YoutTube, Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress and LinkedIn. It also allows you to schedule posts for eCommerce platforms such as Etsy and Shopify which appeals hugely to eCommerce businesses.

It can also allow for your posts to automatically be posted at the best times chosen by the platform's innovative technology or at times that are pre-chosen by you. This means that you can let the platform detect the peak and the best time to post your content and posts saving you yet more time. It also allows you to categorise your post by social network to avoid any confusion and to help you with your planning.

With the free package, you get:-

If you would like to take a closer look at Crowdfire then take a look here.

Quuu

As well as allowing you to schedule your own content. Quuu also aims to help you with choosing what content is best to post. Sending you trending articles and blogs from your niche each and every day. It aims overall as a platform is to help you grow your social media following by increasing your engagement and providing content curation.  It's the ideal platform should you not have time yourself but you are looking for hand-written readily available curated content related to your niche.

Included with the free package:-

If you would like to take a closer look at Quuu then take a look here.

Post Planner

This is a platform which has evolved beyond all recognition.

As well as allowing you to do the usual things like schedule your own content to your social media platforms. You can also use post planner to find top content in your industry.
You can find the best content by platform like twitter, Reddit, YouTube and more. It also allows
you to jump onto the streams of other users.

With fill in the blank templates and a searchable database of topics to look through. You will never run out of ideas of what to post on social media again.

There is no free package, but the solo package starts from a low $4 per month

If you would like to take a closer look at Post Planner then take a look here.

Facebook built-in scheduler

Facebook has an in-house native scheduler that allows you to schedule posts as and when you are writing them. And if you're looking to save time it's probably the quickest and easiest way to schedule posts on Facebook. When you go to click the 'publish' button you will see a drop-down menu. On here you will see another option that says 'schedule'. You can then choose what time you wish to set your post to be published.

Of course, the time you choose is totally up to you, however, studies have shown that posting during peak times (12 pm to 3 pm) tend to get the most traction and recognition and during the evenings when people are browsing Facebook having finished their day at work. If you later change your mind on the time that you want to publish your post that's no problem. Simply go into your page and go into 'publishing tools' at the top and change the time. One of the big benefits of using the built-in scheduler for Facebook posts is not only that it's quick and easy but it's also free.

Coschedule

Coschedule is a comprehensive all-in-one complete marketing calendar platform. Allowing you like all the other platforms on this list to schedule posts but also so much more. It integrates with a range of other platforms including WordPress, multiple social media platforms, Google Analytics, Google Calendar and much more. In addition to allowing you to schedule your social media posts, it also has an innovative feature that can re-queue any evergreen content you have for a later time automatically.

Its integration with so many apps means that your social media and marketing campaigns can all be managed, monitored and analysed all in one place. Its innovative calendar-centric interface also allows you to have a visual oversight of your activity and planned content for the week in a way that distinguishes itself from the competition.

If you would like to take a closer look at Coschedule then take a look here.

Would You Like To Generate More Leads And Convert More Sales In Your Business?

In principle It is easy to grow your business, say the experts.

All you need to do is generate more leads and convert more sales.

But unfortunately, that is easier said than done for most small business owners.

You see most small business owners don’t understand online marketing, they constantly feel overwhelmed by the constant barrage of information that is delivered to them almost daily, and they are tired of throwing good money after bad, chasing the latest marketing trend that is going to make them millions.

Is it any wonder that most small business owners quit their business after 3 years.

Well if this is YOU, it does not have to be like this.