Many people think that social scheduling tools are for saving time. That’s right. But, it is not the whole story. With the use of best free social scheduling tools you can save tons of time and you can improve your overall social media marketing strategy.
A strong social media presence is highly recommended to grow your business, get more sales leads and get more website traffic. Almost all the businesses are now into this social media game. We all know for a fact, social media is a game-changer. It all started with the rise of all kinds of social media platforms. All these social media platforms have their own similarities and differences. These differences made everything complex.
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The need for the best free Social scheduling tools
Since there were plenty of different social platforms, people started to use every platform they see the best for their needs. When you are running a business and needed bigger brand awareness you ultimately had to move on with the biggest and the best social media platforms.
This made things much complex. If you had just one social profile, you could easily manage it. But, when your business decided to go with at least 3-4 top game players, then you had to focus more on these different platforms.
This is where you needed a single dashboard to control all your social profiles. Because it is super hard to log into your Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn every day and post updates. Even if it is possible, keeping the consistency of postings might not be easy. You will have to dedicate a huge chunk of your time on just managing your social accounts.
Instead of wasting time for posting stuff on social media, you can focus more on your business and its growth if you have alternatives to manage your social accounts. You may hire a freelancer to do so.
That’s one thing and if you are a cooperate business, then it is the best thing to do. But, if you run a small business and on a budget spending money on just for posting content seems a waste of money and extra burden on your budget.
Helping you to determine the best scheduling tool for you
The focus of this article is to find the best free social scheduling tools for your business. If you are an individual or a small business or a cooperate business these tools will surely suit your needs.
Again, I remind you these tools aren’t just for saving you time. But also they can optimize all your social media activities and help you increase the return on investment [ROI] as well.
These best free social scheduling tools will help you save time and get the best out of your efforts. Keep in mind these aren’t the only social scheduling tools available. These are the tools with forever free plans. Of course, these free plans have their own limitations. For starters, the free plan from any of these profiles will surely work.
- HootSuite
- Buffer App
- Later App
Hootsuite
One of the oldest social scheduling tools and Hootsuite is known as ‘All in one free social scheduling tool’. And it is not just for scheduling content. With Hootsuite, you can schedule content, monitor your social network and analyze them. All in one place. Amazing, isn’t it?
And there’s more.
Hootsuite supports 35 different social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and WordPress. And the Hootsuite’s ecosystem has been upgraded to integrate with over 250 applications to make things even better and smooth.
Things you can do with Hootsuite
- Scheduling content
- Content curation
- Boosting content from Hootsuite dashboard itself
- Monitoring your social profiles at ease
- Managing your social media team [Comes with paid subscriptions]
How to schedule content with Hootsuite
One of the best and almost forgotten features that come with Hootsuite is the ability to monitor web with custom social streams. This feature is a must-have if you need to find people who are talking about certain hashtags, people who are mentioning your brand, etc
This will help you to engage with passionate people who are really interested in what you share or what you sell. And this awesome feature will take away the pain of login into your social account back and forth.
Is Hootsuite free?
Of course, it is. They offer both free and paid subscriptions.
And with a free plan, you can schedule up to 30 posts per month. That is more than enough if you are posting around 2-3 times a week.
If you have several businesses and several social accounts, you better go for a paid subscription.
If you are new to Hootsuite and looking for how to sign up Hootsuite free plan, follow the link below. It is not an affiliate link.
The reason I’m adding it here is, you might not find the option to sign up for their free plan on their landing page unless you go to the footer.
That’s a usual marketing strategy. Even though you have the free plan, you still offer the paid plans with 30 days free trial.
But if you scroll a bit down, you can find forever free Hootsuite plan.
Here’s the link to find your Hootsuite free subscription
Hootsuite pricing
Free plan:
One user, three social profiles, 30 scheduled updates per month
Paid Plans:
Professional plan:
$29/month (billed annually)
One user, 10 social profiles, unlimited scheduling
Team plans start at $129/month (billed annually).
You can find more about all the pricing from the link below
Hootsuite Plans
Hootsuite’s Hootlet
It is a Chrome extension from Hootsuite.
Hootlet helps you to schedule content on the go.
Here’s how to use Hootlet effectively
Platforms that Hootsuite supports
Web-Based, iOS, Android
Buffer App
Buffer App is known to be one of the best free scheduling tools because of its easiness to schedule posts. Yes, Buffer’s primary focus is scheduling posts at ease.
None like Hootsuite, Buffer App is behind with all the other useful stuff that Hootsuite provides. Of course, Buffer has a separate service called ‘Buffer Analyze’ and it is not for free users.
It will cost you 50 dollars monthly and it is not recommended for someone who is on budget.
Buffer App supports Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. If you are on a paid plan you can schedule Pinterest updates too. The free plan has the ability to connect up to 3 social accounts, which include Facebook Pages and Groups.
Once you sign up for a Buffer free account, it will create posting slots based on your time zone. To do so, buffer uses their data to determine the best time to post on given time slots. But you can customize these slots based on your preferences too.
And it is easy to reconfigure the posting schedule. All you have to do is go to settings and click on the posting schedule. There you can change it.
Like Hootsuite, Buffer offers an extension for both Chrome and Firefox. It comes with all the scheduling powers that the native Buffer App has.
Here’s how it’s done
Is Buffer App Free?
Yes, it is and you might find it’s little harder to find the signup link for a Free Buffer account. Like everyone else, they advertise their paid plans with free trials. If you didn’t look closely you might miss the free sign up.
Later App
Later App focuses more on Instagram posting and once you landed on their home page, you might get the feel ‘oh, Later app is only for Instagram Scheduling’.
For me, it is that much misleading. But, the truth to be told, Later App supports 4 social platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Is Later App Free?
Yes, Later App is free and they haven’t literally hide their free sign up link 😀
The one thing I love the most about Later app is their transparency and amount of control they have provided even for free users.
As a free user, you can schedule 30 Instagram posts per month, 50 Twitter Posts per month, 30 Facebook updates a month, and 30 Pinterest updates. With this much control and freedom, the Later app might be the best free social schedule toll your small business needs.
Does Later App have a Chrome/Firefox extension?
Yes, the Later app offers an extension. But only for Chrome. Still, they haven’t provided any extension for Firefox
And this extension supports for scheduling posts for Instagram only. Simply the extension will help you add photos to your media library and later on you can post these photos to Instagram.
That’s it. Which I see as the biggest drawback in Later App. They could’ve worked that out for scheduling for any social platform. But, here we are giving more focus on Instagram.
Conclusion
All those tools were created keeping all the busy social media users in mind. The truth is, they might not be the ideal solution for everyone. If that happens, you probably will have to pay for a service you see the best.
If you are just starting your social media marketing game, then my personal opinion to you is don’t buy any paid services. Not the ones listed above.
I mean not any tool. Generally, all these services at least have some days of a free trial. Test them before even buy them. And look for the alternative tools, if the free or paid tools aren’t good enough for you.
That is the best possible way to keep your social media marketing strategy as economical as possible.
Over to you
Feel free to share the best social scheduling tools you use and why you selected them in the first place.
