11 Best Social Media Schedulers to Supercharge Your Posting
If you’ve paid attention to the social media landscape over the past couple of years, you know that the days of posting every once in a while are long gone.
Nowadays, companies are finding success by publishing more, with major brands publishing several times a day across all platforms.
Considering that the lifetime of a tweet is about 18 minutes, it makes sense to increase posting frequency to increase reach and engagement. But in practice, it can be difficult to keep up and to stay consistent for an extended period of time.
That’s where social media schedulers come into the rescue.
Social media scheduling tools make sense because they save you from spending time on the technicalities of publishing, and let you concentrate on creating good content instead.
Naturally, there are many schedulers to choose from. To help you make the right choice, we went through the most compelling products out there, and outlined the main characteristics each of them offers.
Let’s take a look at them!
1. AgoraPulse
AgoraPulse is a social media management suite that helps agencies and teams handle all their social media operations - from writing to scheduling and publishing - in one place.
Source: 50wheel
Main differentiator: Collaborative work environment.
AgoraPulse allows you to invite clients to an interface of their own, where they can review drafts and posts before they’re published.
This publishing workflow system can be a strong selling point for agencies that work on the content that needs client approval.
Pricing: Starts at $79/month, with a free plan available.
Best for: Mid-sized agencies managing several clients and multiple social media accounts.
Reviews: With 500+ reviews and an average rating of over 4.6 out of 5, it is a strong contender for the most valued social media suite.
Is there an AgoraPulse community? Yes. The Social Media Pulse community on Facebook gathers 5,000+ members that ask questions, share insights and get help.
2. Sprout Social
With more than a decade in the market, Sprout Social is a fixture in the social media management category.
Source: Sprout Social
Main differentiator: Advanced reporting features.
Sprout Social allows users to generate dashboards and reports showcasing content performance, hashtags, and competitor benchmarks.
Pricing: Starts at $89/month per user.
Best for: Large companies, enterprises. Due to the number of features and its reporting capabilities, Sprout Social is a perfect fit for data-driven companies.
Reviews: With a score of 4.3 and 1,500 reviews on G2, Sprout Social has been praised for its impressive features, although mentions of a steep learning curve are common.
Is there a Sprout Social community? No. Users can get help in the platform’s resource center and learning portal.
3. Loomly
Advertised as a “Brand Success Platform”, Loomly helps teams collaborate, publish and measure social media efforts under a single umbrella.
Source: Loomly
Main differentiator: Capacity to receive suggestions and post ideas generated by the platform.
These are based on trending topics, RSS feeds, events, or social media best practices, and come in handy when running low on inspiration.
Pricing: Starts at $25/month.
Best for: Marketers that don’t want to spend too much time creating posts. B2C companies and personal brands can benefit from the platform’s content suggestions, as these are often related to holidays and other mainstream cultural events.
Reviews: With a 4.7 out 5 stars average rating, Loomly is ranked as one of the top 100 high satisfaction products in 2021 by the review site G2. Most of the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, though some difficulties with managing Instagram have been mentioned.
Is there a Loomly community? No, as of now there is no dedicated community for Loomly users.
4. SmarterQueue
SmarterQueue is a social media scheduling that makes it easy to organize and publish content on a regular basis.
Source: SmarterQueue
Main differentiator: Scheduling simplicity.
SmarterQueue’s evergreen recycling feature, for example, facilitates content repurposing by reposting old posts with a new image or copy or image.
SmarterQueue also uses categories, which help organize posts based on their content and set recycling rules for each one.
Pricing: Starts at $67.99/month.
Best for: Non-tech-savvy marketers with little time to spare.
Reviews: The product has been rated as “excellent” on review sites, although the number of reviews is far smaller than some of its competitors.
Is there a SmarterQueue community? Yes. Users gather and exchange in a dedicated Facebook group with 350+ members.
5. CoSchedule
CoSchedule defines itself as a “work management software for marketers”. It can also be regarded as a family of agile marketing tools that helps marketing teams organize their social media work in one place.
Source: WPmarmite
Main differentiator: Interface.
CoSchedule and its kanban dashboard view will look familiar to many project managers out there.
Pricing: Starts at $29/month per user.
Best for: Teams looking for a visually appealing, easy-to-use social media management tool.
Reviews: An emerging favorite in Capterra’s “Social Media Management Software” category, CoSchedule receives praise for how practical its dashboard is.
Is there a CoSchedule community? There isn’t any public CoSchedule online community.
6. Meet Edgar
Meet Edgar is a social media management tool specifically created for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Source: Jen Ruhman
Main differentiator: Meet Edgar introduces automation elements into social media management.
Organizing updates into a searchable library, it automatically recycles evergreen content, pushing it up your publishing queue to generate content by itself.
Pricing: Starts at $19/month.
Best for: Meet Edgar self-describes as “for entrepreneurs only”, with a product catered to small teams and solopreneurs in particular.
Reviews: The automation features available in Meet Edgar are popular among users, but some reviewers are pointing out an initial learning curve as well as limited scheduling options.
Is there an Edgar community? No. There is no dedicated community, but Meet Edgar users can still access an open (and barely moderated) community on the company’s Facebook page.
7. MavSocial
MavSocial is a fully integrated social media, brand management, and advertising tool for franchises, SMBs, agencies, and enterprises.
Source: MavSocial
Main differentiator: The “Digital Asset Management “ feature.
It allows users to manage all their images and video files in a single system. It also features access to stock photos, an integration with Google Drive, and an embedded image editor.
Pricing: Starts at $19/month.
Best for: Marketers who work with highly visual content. If you’re interested in managing your image library within your social media tool, MavSocial could be a great option.
Reviews: MavSocial gathers around 50 reviews across review sites, averaging 4.5 out of 5 stars. Some users mention a small learning curve early on, but most compliment the company’s efficient customer service.
Is there a MavSocial community? Yes. Users can access the private user group on Facebook, quite confidential with around 150 members.
8. Buffer
One of the leading social media scheduling tools, Buffer is a market-proven product and the go-to choice for thousands of marketers around the world.
Source: AgencyVista
Main differentiator: Simplicity.
Buffer offers a straightforward, easy-to-use social media scheduling tool at an affordable price point.
Pricing: Free plan available, then $5 per social channel per month.
Best for: Small and mid-sized businesses, solopreneurs, and influencers that care about consistency.
Reviews: With nearly 2,000 user reviews across G2 and Capterra, Buffer is one of the most popular social media management platforms out there.
While most satisfied users praise its simplicity and ease of use, others highlight the lack of advanced capabilities available in other tools.
Is there a Buffer community? No. Surprisingly enough, Buffer encourages its users to use hashtags on social media when discussing anything related to the brand or product.
9. SEMrush
SEMrush is an online visibility management platform mostly known for its SEO features, although it also offers social media management capabilities as well.
Source: Semrush
Main differentiator: The Social Media Toolkit stands out by virtue of being part of arguably the best SEO platform on the market.
Pricing: Starts at $119.95/month.
Best for: Current SEMrush users.
If you’ve already mastered the SEO platform and use it regularly, incorporating its social media features rather than adding another tool to your stack makes tons of sense.
Reviews: Users reviewing SEMrush are typically choosing the tool for its SEO capabilities. Nevertheless, many users highlight the improved toolkit and how it includes useful features from keyword and competitor monitoring to reports and charts.
Is there a SEMrush community? Yes. In fact, more than one. There is a dedicated subreddit and a private Facebook group to ask questions, share insights, and learn about the tool.
10. HubSpot Marketing Hub
HubSpot is a software behemoth, founded 15 years ago and now publicly traded. The platform’s Marketing Hub features social media scheduling capabilities that are certainly useful for its large user base.
Source: Hubspot
Main differentiator: Range.
HubSpot is a true all-in-one solution, where businesses can manage anything from social media to email, CRM, and everything in between.
Pricing: Starts at $800/month for the social media package.
Best for: Marketing managers who want to tie in social media to the rest of their marketing operations by relying on a single powerful platform.
Reviews: With 10,000+ reviews combined across review sites, the HubSpot Marketing Hub manages to maintain an average rating of around 4.5 out of 5 stars.
When addressing the platform’s social media scheduling features, some issues have been raised (such as faulty previews and limited tagging on certain platforms).
Is there a HubSpot community? Yes. HubSpot has a dedicated community hub on its website with resources, discussions, and groups where users can interact and share best practices.
11. Hootsuite
Another heavy-hitter in the social media scheduling space, Hootsuite stands out as a user-friendly platform that is packed with features to manage all things social.
Main differentiator: Focus.
Hootsuite is a well-rounded platform for managing every aspect of social media, including organic posts, paid ads, trend research, and analytics.
Pricing: Starts at $19 a month.
Best for: Social media specialists and small businesses that heavily rely on the power of social media to operate.
Reviews: Hootsuite has been thoroughly reviewed across review sites. Users tend to praise their simplicity, but also mention some issues with customer support, and the occasional bug.
Is there a Hootsuite community? No. The company used to run a community site, but it’s no longer available.
Bonus: Schedule social media using Airtable and Make
Another option to schedule and publish content is to create your own social media scheduling machine using Make.
Beyond the obvious cost savings, this will allow you to control your social media channels and make use of features that might not be available in other tools. If you like to be in charge, this could be the way to go.
The template below is a great place to start. It uses Airtable as a content base, and Make to push your content to various channels.
Simple and reliable, plus you can implement it in minutes.
Make shines at all-things automation, allowing you to create multiple social media integrations to create your own social media distribution system, cross-post between channels, or automate each social media channel individually.
Conclusion
Wrapping up this comparison article, we can see that there are a lot of valuable options out there.
Whether you want to use a turnkey solution or build your own custom workflow with Make, the first step is to establish selection criteria based on what you care about the most (price, features, community, integrations, and so on).
A lot of tools feature a trial period or a free version, so don’t be afraid to test out a few options before purchasing a subscription.
Getting a feel for the product and how it fits your processes is a great way to identify what works and what doesn’t.
Best of luck...and happy scheduling!
