Social Media scheduling tools come with a variety of features that cover the need of an individual or business. These are free social media management tools which offer basic to advanced features to share and schedule your page posts on the desired time you want.
So, let’s dive into the best tools out there.
TweetDeck
If Twitter is your go-to when it comes to social media, then TweetDeck may just be the social media scheduling tool for you.
This free tool is offered to all Twitter users and can be used to schedule your tweets ahead of time, and manage your Twitter interactions. If you do a lot of tweeting, you may find it difficult to stay on track when it comes to managing your feed and responding to comments and messages.
With TweetDeck, you can organize your feed into different timelines and manage your messages and trending hashtags to make it easier to navigate the platform.
Overall, it’s the perfect free tool for scheduling Twitter posts, but the only drawback is that you can’t use it to schedule posts for other platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Pricing: TweetDeck is free for all Twitter account holdersTry TweetDeck Free
Buffer Publish
Buffer Publish is a simple but effective social media scheduling solution that’s perfect for businesses looking to keep their social media costs to a minimum.
With Buffer, you can manage your accounts for all the major social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. For Instagram, you can schedule content using the content calendar, and even schedule your first comments on each post. You can also use it to plan Stories content ahead of time.
In addition to this, Buffer Publish has some useful collaboration features such as draft posts and approvals that can help you to work seamlessly with your clients and team when it comes to social content.
In a nutshell, Buffer Publish provides just about everything you need to effectively plan and schedule your social media posts, and all of the publishing tools are included in the free plan.
If you also want access to analytics and engagement metrics, then you should consider choosing one of Buffer’s paid plans.
Pricing: Buffer offers basic publishing tools for free. Plans for the full toolkit start from $5/social channel (billed annually)Try Buffer Publish Free
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is one of the more affordable social media management tools on that market. It includes a feature-rich social media scheduler & content calendar allowing you to publish to major social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Not only that but it also comes complete with a tailoring feature that will help you optimize your posts for the platform you’re publishing them to. You can also use the automatic best time to post feature to ensure that your content is shared at optimal times, or you can customize it based on your own analytics.
In addition to scheduling, Crowdfire can also help you to create content, analyze your post performance and monitor brand mentions across social platforms. For smaller businesses, all of the tools that Crowdfire offers can be accessed for free.
You can link up to 3 social accounts and post 10 times a month without paying a single penny. If you’re in need of more posts or accounts, you can sign up for a paid plan for less than $10. Crowdfire is a great overall tool for social media management, and offers the perfect balance of features and affordability.
Pricing: Crowdfire offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start from $7.48/month (billed annually)Try Crowdfire Free
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.
Later
We couldn’t kick off this list without mentioning Later, because managing social scheduling is kinda what we do best! ????
We know that social media managers and business owners are busy people, and managing your social platforms shouldn’t take up all of your working hours.
So to help you streamline your workflow and get your social strategy in order, Later can plan, schedule and post your content across all your social media platforms.
From crafting your post and nailing your Instagram aesthetic with our Visual Planner, to publishing across multiple platforms, and driving traffic to your business — Later does it all.
Plus, Later’s inbuilt analytics tools help you track all your posts and ensure your content is doing what you want it to do.
Conclusion
Scheduling can help you stay on top of social media for your business, without feeling like you’re trying to juggle too much all at once. And when you combine an app like AgoraPulse with a scheduling tool like Hootsuite, it can be the most effective way to manage your content across the most popular social media platforms.