12 Nov What is the best social media schedule tool in 2022?
What is the best social media schedule tool in 2022?
Are you feeling stuck or confused trying to decide which social media scheduling software your business should use? With hundreds of scheduling tools available and social media becoming one of the most popular activities worldwide, it’s never been more critical to find reliable and practical tools that complement your digital marketing strategy.
One of the main reasons you should consider investing in scheduling software is to form a more efficient and organised system, where you can create batches of content in advance that your other team members can review.
Hot tip: Schedule content when your audience is most active on specific platforms for a higher reach and engagement.
If you’re serious about upgrading your business and finding a tool that works, then keep on reading.
Planable
One of the most popular scheduling tools is Planable
✅ It has an easy to use interface – not only can you upload posts, but team members can easily edit and interact with the content. Planable also allows you to manage teams and clients conveniently by separating them into Workspaces.
✅ A crucial part of any scheduling tool is to notice which social media platforms are supported. Planable can schedule content for Facebook (and Facebook Groups), Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and Google My Business.
✅ If you do run into a problem, their customer support service is easy to contact, helpful and resolves issues swiftly. It gets better. If you want an easy life, well, most of us do; Planable allows you to simply create one post, customise it to each social media platform and schedule for any future date and time. Once uploaded, you can then view the content in the daily feed, as a monthly calendar, in a list or in a grid view – which is helpful for the visual aspect.
❌ However, it does have some restrictions. It doesn’t show reports and analytics, which means you need more software to analyse the success of your posts. Another common issue for scheduling platforms, including Planable, is that you cannot post Stories to Facebook and Instagram or carousels (multiple images/videos) to Instagram via the desktop version – which unfortunately is a crucial part of most strategies. Still, they have a mobile app where this function is available.
Overall Rating: 9/10
Social Pilot
✅ As one of the most cost-effective all-rounders, Social Pilot can schedule content for Facebook (and Facebook Groups), Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google My Business. Like Planable, it also provides options for client approval. An excellent feature of Social Pilot is its ability to analyse your social media performance, exporting all data into a PDF report.
✅ If you are familiar with Canva, a content creation tool, Social Pilot fully integrates, meaning you can create content and schedule it directly, adding efficiency to your scheduling routine.
✅ When struggling to develop ideas, you can search for topics or themes within Social Pilot’s content curation platform, adding inspiration to your posts from current online trends and competitors.
✅ Social Pilot also has an RSS Feed Automation Tool, which will automatically share your blogs (and any other favourite blogs) to your social media accounts.
❌ But, just like Planable, it also requires an app to post Instagram and Facebook Stories and carousels on Instagram. Unfortunately, the user interface isn’t as intuitive as the other options available.
Overall Rating: 7/10
MeetEdgar
✅ The most logical scheduling software, MeetEdgar, categorises clients and content separately, making it easy to use from the get-go. It uses advanced features to repurpose content. Have you written a blog post or landing page? Then MeetEdgar can take snippets from a webpage transforming it into social-ready content. The scheduling tool can also create three or four variations from one single post. The intelligent software takes away the effort from bulk content creation.
✅ Just like Planable, you can simply create one post and effortlessly customise it to each platform. MeetEdgar can schedule posts for Facebook (and Facebook Groups), Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can effortlessly view your social media schedule in multiple ways, including daily, weekly and monthly.
✅ Similarly to Social Pilot, MeetEdgar can automate RSS feeds but in a more complex manner. The tool can sync RSS feeds and store them in a holding bay until approved. Then, in one place, MeetEdgar can assemble content automatically (from feeds and blogs) and add it to the feed for ‘pending approval’ or auto-post.
✅ Should you need to contact them, their customer support service is helpful and fast, using only human interaction – no chatbots. They can help with setup assistance to strategic inspiration.
❌ Unfortunately, much like Planable, it lacks a reporting functionality. Also, unlike the other schedulers, MeetEdgar doesn’t offer a client approval option. It does not yet post to TikTok, YouTube or Google My Business.
Overall rating: 8/10
Sprout Social
✅ There’s no doubt that Sprout Social is one of the most advanced scheduling tools. Not only can you run social media and paid ad reports, but you can also cross-reference your competitors so you can understand industry trends and averages. Then, go ahead and personalise your reports with your branding to create a professional appearance.
✅ Another major advantage of Sprout Social is the Smart Social Inbox – you can access and manage all messages across all channels in just one place; this enables you to engage and connect with your customers both quickly and efficiently. From the inbox, you can go ahead and retweet, comment, private message, repost, like – the list goes on.
✅ Sprout Social has a range of superb features, to list a few, intuitive publishing, an easy-to-use content calendar (meaning you can create a long-term strategy that works) and it allows you to have a dedicated account manager.
✅ It also uses social listening to optimise and improve your posts. Not only does it track industry and brand-related trends, but it automatically publishes content when it’s most likely to have the best reach and engagement with your audience. Sprout Social links to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business and Pinterest.
❌ It, unfortunately, comes with a hefty price tag, as it is one of the most expensive scheduling tools on the market. If you are a smaller agency, the cost per user and channel is incredibly high, which is significantly costly to scale. It currently does not link to TikTok or YouTube either.
Overall Rating: 8.5/10
Buffer
✅ Another great competitor in the scheduling tools, Buffer is easy to use for scheduling content to Facebook (and Facebook Groups), Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. It offers an option to manage approvals per channel. Buffer’s recent updates provided us with a content calendar view. Like Social Pilot, it now fully integrates with Canva.
✅ It’s highly cost-effective and one of the most affordable scheduling tools available. Buffer allows you to manage engagement, but this is restricted to Instagram only.
✅ It also offers a reporting option (at an additional cost) and clearly displays performance per post within each separate channel.
✅ Their customer service is helpful, and they offer 24/7 support.
✅ Like many of their competitors, Buffer also allows you to create one post and customise it to each social media platform. Then, you can view your content schedule in daily, weekly month views.
❌ Unfortunately, it still lacks approval options for clients, and you cannot post to TikTok, YouTube or Google My Business. Like other scheduling tools, you must download their mobile app to post Stories to Facebook and Instagram, as well as carousels on Instagram.
Overall Rating: 6/10
As a digital marketing agency, we use the latest software and tools to stay on top of the trends and changes throughout social media. We only use the best scheduling tools when working with our clients to ensure the best and optimal experience all-around.
No matter what stage you are at in your social media marketing journey – we can help.
We are a small digital agency dedicated to helping businesses of any size grow their presence on social media through strategic and cost-effective marketing.
Quite simply we fully manage your social media marketing including content creation and curation, posting and optimisation so you don’t have to and we guarantee you social growth.
Why not get in touch with us today and sky-rocket your social media presence.