In the past few years, social media has become a huge part of everyone’s lives. It seems like you can’t scroll through your Facebook or Twitter feed without running into a friend, family member, or coworker posting a status about their day. Of course, the rise of social media has created a whole new set of issues for people trying to manage their online presence. There are now hundreds of different social networks that need posting to and it takes up a lot of time that could be spent doing something else.
These are the best free social media posting tools on the market right now based on their ease
Buffer
Buffer is also one of the best apps for managing your social media presence and scheduling your posts. The app also comes with analytics tools that enable you to track your audience’s activity and figure out when it is the best time to post in the future. We especially love its Chrome extension, which integrates itself seamlessly and never gets in the way, yet it is always there when you need it. It is a more straightforward and more effective way of managing your social media, and you are never more than a few clicks away from setting up anything you want. Buffer supports over 7 different platforms – you can add up to 4 on the free plan.
ContentCal
ContentCal is the ultimate tool for bringing your team together. You can share ideas with, create approval workflows, build your content plan and then publish that content to multiple platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google My Business, YouTube, and Medium). ContentCal’s analytics will help you understand your content performance and the latest ‘Respond’ features act as a shared inbox for monitoring and responding to mentions, messages, and comments across social media.
One of the star features is the fact that ContentCal integrates with over 2000 other applications so that you can create the perfect social media workflow by connecting ContentCal to tools you currently use (think of things like Slack or Trello) and also distribute content to channels beyond social media, like emails and blog posts. The best content is created together. Involve your team (and clients) into the content creation process, share ideas, gain feedback and watch your content performance soar!
Later
Instagram is one of the most popular social networks, with over 1 billion users active on the platform each month. Later started as an app dedicated to Instagram as a scheduling tool, but since its inception, they’ve added support for other social networks and are continuously adding new features. The app has a strong focus on visual content. Whether you want to schedule in-feed image or video posts, stories, or carousel posts — Later supports all of these options. Later has a free plan available that you can use forever, but you get features such as analytics, saved captions, scheduled stories, and more for paid plans. Their paid plans start at $9/month.
TweetDeck
Those who rely on Twitter to get their message across will find much to like about TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a free application that enables you to manage multiple (unlimited) Twitter accounts from a unified interface. You can create your own customizable social media dashboard that allows you to send and receive tweets and manage and monitor your Twitter profiles. You can use TweetDeck as a web app, Chrome app, or desktop app. TweetDeck can be set to post scheduled tweets, build Tweet lists, and more. And the extra special part is that it’s always free.
Canva
Social media is increasingly becoming more and more visual. Canva is an excellent tool for anyone managing social media accounts to use. You can create designer-level marketing assets using any of the thousands of ready-made designs they have available to you. Now, you can even connect your social channels and publish or schedule directly from Canva. They have a free version available, which gives you decent access to great pre-made templates. The pro plan gives you access to all of the templates for only $12.95/month.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most established and popular apps for social media scheduling and marketing. You can use it to schedule posts, receive in-depth reports, and collaborate with your team members, thanks to built-in teamwork features. It enables you to view multiple streams at once and monitor what your customers are saying. There is a free limited plan available for 3 social profiles and up to 30 scheduled messages.
TweetDeck
If you rely on Twitter for driving blog traffic and networking with other bloggers, TweetDeck is a must-use tool.
This free social media scheduler only works for Twitter, as the name suggests. In a nutshell, TweetDeck transforms your Twitter homepage into a powerful dashboard with real-time timeline updates, easy inbox access, notifications, and a trending tab.
You can also customize your homepage with:
- Lists and collections
- Likes
- Mentions
- New followers
- Messages and mentions for all your Twitter accounts
Finally, you can publish right from TweetDeck and schedule Tweets.
I like TweetDeck because it centralizes everything. So, when you’re crafting posts, you can pepper in trending hashtags, engage with recent followers, or chime in on the latest industry news.
TweetDeck is 100% free, so if you’re a frequent Twitter user, it’s the perfect social media scheduling tool to try.
Related: 15 Fast and Free Ways to Drive More Blog Traffic
Socialoomph
Most free social media scheduling tools inevitably get you to pay because they limit scheduling capacity.
In contrast, Socialoomph is one of the only scheduling tools that offers unlimited posting with a free account. As a free user, you get:
- One social profile
- Unlimited post scheduling
- Basic posting features and account management (so no fancy RSS imports, just basic social posting)
Additionally, you can only publish up to three posts per hour. But if you’re only active on one platform, Socialoomph lets you create a massive content queue, set it, and forget it.
Plus, Socialoomph works with a variety of social media platforms, including:
- Discord
- Mastodon
- StockTwits
A lack of Instagram support is a notable downside. However, integrations with community-based websites like Reddit, Discord, and Mastodon are useful if you’re an admin of a group and want to regularly publish content for members.
If you want 10 social profiles, 60 posts per hour, and more in-depth posting options like using RSS feeds, Socialoomph costs $25 per month.
I’d probably go with SocialBee or a premium plan with Hootsuite or Later before paying for Socialoomph. But if you only care about one social platform, Socialoomph is one of the best free social media schedulers out there.
Creator Studio
Sometimes, the easiest way to schedule social media posts for free is to stay on-platform.
A prime example of this is Facebook’s Creator Studio. This free content management tool lets you create and schedule content for Facebook and Instagram. You draft posts with Creator Studio just like publishing a post on your Facebook page or Instagram account, except you can schedule them. Like other social media marketing tools, you can view recent comments and engage with your followers right from Creator Studio.
And, in true Facebook fashion, analytics is the name of the game. Creator Studio lets you track stats like:
- Total minutes viewed for videos
- Follower growth
- Total engagement
- Audience demographics
Video content is a focal point of Creator Studio. Firstly, you can actually make money with your video content if videos are at least three minutes long and show ads. Plus, you can create and schedule videos for IGTV. Support for Instagram stories is also coming.
Tools like Later and Buffer are faster for creating mass amounts of scheduled content. But if you want to avoid third-party software and rely heavily on video, I’d stick with Creator Studio.
Learn more about Creator Studio.
Post Planner (Best Budget Choice)
Free social media scheduling platforms either limit your scheduling capacity or how many social networks you can use. And, for most bloggers, this probably means switching to a paid scheduling tool at some point.
But if you still want to keep costs down, Post Planner is your most budget-friendly option.
The Starter Plan is only $4 per month and includes:
- Three social profiles (includes Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter)
- 300 scheduled posts
- 12 posts per social profile per day
- One user
Post Planner also lets you republish evergreen content, so you don’t even have to rework your schedule queue too often. More expensive plans let you curate and reshare other social media content within your niche automatically to keep your feeds more active.
If you’re a blogger who wants to post to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest a few times per day, this $48 per year plan has you covered. You have to pay upfront for the entire year which is the only downside.
Learn more about Post Planner.
Bonus: SocialBee
SocialBee isn’t technically a free social media scheduling tool since the only free plan is a 14-day free trial. But it’s what I use here at Hit Publish and it’s an inexpensive yet comprehensive way to schedule social posts and repost your evergreen content.
With SocialBee, you create content categories to automate social media posting. You create a schedule and feed in the different categories and SocialBee pulls from the designated feed at the set time.
For example, if you’re a food blogger, you can make content categories for different types of recipes, cocktails, and desserts. You could set it to pull from the “quick and easy recipes” on Monday, “tacos” on Tuesday, “product reviews” on Wednesday, “chicken dinners” on Thursday, “cocktails” on Friday, and “desserts” on Saturday.
You can set posts to publish over and over on rotation through the feed, or only publish a set number of times. SocialBee also lets you add post variations like new images or text to refresh your content.
SocialBee works with Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and even Google my Business.
What makes SocialBee a useful social media scheduling tool is how much time you save on content creation. You can upload posts with a CSV file and from a RSS feed of your recent blog posts. The CSV upload takes a bit of getting used too since it’s entirely text-based, but it’s the fastest way to beef up your content calendar.
For pricing, SocialBee’s cheapest plan starts at $19 per month and includes:
- One user
- Five social profiles
- 10 content categories
- 1,000 posts per category and evergreen reposting
According to SocialBee, this saves eight hours per week on average. If various free social media scheduling platforms fall short, SocialBee is the best paid solution to try.
Conclusion
Social media is a huge part of the social web. Companies, organizations and individuals use various social media sites to post their content online. The number of people using social media is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. In fact, it’s already over 2 billion people using social media as of 2012, according to a statistic from statista.com. At the same time, there are lots of tools available for making managing your accounts on multiple social media networks very easy.