What is Content Scheduler? Content scheduling is the ability to share your most interesting and engaging posts at a time when they will receive the most attention, i.e., when you have the most followers or fans available. When done right, content scheduling can help you build a solid and engaged audience. If you’re just starting out on social media, then content scheduling is a great way to get your message in front of a large audience and improve your readership. If you’ve been on social media for years, content scheduling is still a great way to increase your fan base.
Content-scheduling is the process of determining when you publish or post an update or content on your social media accounts. By setting up social media posts in advance, you will save time so you can focus better and also be able to get more done in a shorter span of time.
Using a content scheduler is the perfect way to ensure that your social media or website content is published whenever it needs to be. Content schedulers make it easy for you to reuse content over and over so that you can save yourself time and energy.
Later
Later is the best tool for scheduling and publishing on Instagram. It was founded in 2014 and now powering more than 4 million users globally.
Initially, it was started as a simple Instagram scheduling tool, but later, they added more platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Later offers a free plan that includes one social set (including one Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Tiktok account), schedule 30 posts per social profile, and basic analytics.
They also have tons of pre-made templates, so there’s no need to start from scratch ever again.
Using their hashtag research tool, you can find the right hashtags for your posts; it even provides advanced analytics so you can see how well your posts are doing in terms of engagement.
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a similar app to Hootsuite in many ways. More than 19 million users worldwide use the Crowdfire app to automate their social media activities. It’s packed with features that make everyday life easier and more productive.
The free version of Crowdfire allows you to link three social media accounts, schedule 10 posts per account, and provide you with one day of social analytics data.
With Crowdfire, you can connect up to 25 accounts and schedule posts across all platforms from one place.
Using their hashtag suggestion feature, you can get the most used and relevant hashtags for your posts quickly and easily. They also have auto-customize content for each platform, so you don’t have to spend time creating multiple posts across different platforms.
Additionally, you can schedule up to 50 posts at once using their bulk upload feature, saving your time and effort. You also get access to up to 30 days of your account’s performance data analytics in just seconds.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a long-standing favorite in the world of social media management. With Hootsuite, you create and schedule social media posts, make content calendars, interact with followers, and even launch Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads from the platform.
All of this functionality makes Hootsuite versatile; massive publications and independent bloggers alike use Hootsuite to handle their social media accounts.
Plus, Hootsuite has a free social media management plan that includes:
- One user
- Two social accounts
- Up to five scheduled posts
Five posts aren’t much, but if you just want to automate one post a week to a specific channel, Hootsuite’s free plan suffices.
The Professional plan unlocks unlimited social media scheduling, 10 social accounts, and follower messaging for $49 per month. You can use the 30-day free trial to test if Hootsuite is the social media scheduler you’re looking for.
Buffer
Buffer is another leading social media management tool that lets you schedule posts for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Like Hootsuite and Later, you can also reply to comments and engage your followers right from Buffer rather than logging into individual platforms.
Buffer uses a calendar-style post scheduler like other popular social media management tools. You can create content right in Buffer, add it to your post schedule, and manage all of your social accounts from one central dashboard.
Buffer’s free plan includes
- 3 social channels
- 10 scheduled posts per channel
- One user
Buffer’s free version doesn’t include hashtag research, Instagram stories, or Pinterest. A lack of Instagram stories and hashtags is a downside. As for Pinterest, you’re better off using Tailwind, the go-to Pinterest scheduling tool, over any free social media scheduler if Pinterest is your focus.
If you want 100 scheduled posts and Pinterest support, Buffer costs $15 per month. For the full software suite, it’s $65 per month, putting Buffer on the pricier side.
Overall, Buffer is a middle ground between Hootsuite, which doesn’t offer much scheduling capacity for free users, and Later, which basically has the same capacity as Buffer but is more flexible in terms of channels.
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 offer 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.
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.
Airtable
Since Buffer and Hootsuite let you schedule lots of content at once, you should consider using another tool in tandem that will let you plan your content and collaborate with others to create posts.
It’s like a magic, interactive spreadsheet that can act as a hub for all your social media needs. Before you schedule your posts, you can use their Social Media Planning and Design template to organize your content. You can even have collaborators upload their images so one person can do the scheduling for your nonprofit:
Once you’ve created your content in Airtable, you’re able to download as a .csv and upload your posts to your preferred scheduling platform.
Conclusion
Free social media scheduler tools are pretty much the best content scheduler tools if you want to share your blog posts and other content across your social media accounts. If you know how to use these tools, then you save a lot of time which is probably more precious than budget. Obviously, different content scheduler tools are suitable for different social media platforms.