What is social media automation? Social media automation uses bots to automate rules that you define. With the rules and tools, one can run a business on autopilot and save hours of precious time. Automation makes it possible to grow a business on auto-pilot by freeing the entrepreneur from mundane tasks like posting & sharing updates. Use this list as your go-to resource whenever you need suggestions on the best free social media automation tools 2022 free.
Social media automation tools 2021 can be classified into two main categories: social media scheduling tools and automation software. Within these two categories, you’ll find a plethora of tools that help automate your posting tasks, as well as tools that make all of your social media management easier.
Best Free Social Media Automation Tools 2022 – Social media automation tools can help save you time, energy and money. Instead of juggling multiple tabs and manually checking social media sites all day, an industrial social management tool can do it for you —
All tools on this list were carefully reviewed and tested in our marketing team. We ran multiple experiments to measure their ease-of-use and effectiveness. We believe that these are the best social media automation tools out there in 2022.
What is a social media automation tool?
In order to use social media automation, you will need software or a tool to help you. Instead of manually signing into your social accounts and publishing content at a specific time, you would schedule the content ahead of time and it would be published automatically.
However, you can automate more than the publishing of social media content. For example, automation can be used for brand monitoring, content curation, comment moderation, reporting, analytics, and more.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the most popular tool for managing social media platforms. 18+ million social media marketers use it, and it has everything you need to manage your team, schedule posts, measure results, plan upcoming campaigns, etc. From freelancers to large businesses, it’s the perfect tool for anyone who wants to grow their social media presence the right way.
Hootsuite comes with five different plans, including a free plan. The free version plan allows you to manage two social media accounts, schedule up to 5 posts at a time, and allow one user.
You can easily create, schedule, and customize posts for all your connected networks from their beginner-friendly dashboard. Plus, you can connect to more than 20+ different social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and more.
One of the key features of Hootsuite I like is the Engage. Using this option, you can quickly access all the incoming messages across your social networks.
Pricing: Hootsuite offers five different plans. Additionally, they also offer 30 days free trial on professional and team plans.
- Free Plan: One user, two social accounts, five scheduled posts
- Professional Plan ($49/ mo): One user, ten social accounts, unlimited scheduled posts
- Team plan ($129/ mo): 3 users, 20 social accounts, custom branded URL
- Business plan ($599/ mo): 5 users, 35 social accounts, content library, campaign planning
- Enterprise plan (custom): 5+ users, 50+ social accounts, team productivity reporting, social selling add-ons
Buffer
If you want an app like Hootsuite, Buffer would be a great alternative. In fact, it’s much cheaper than Hootsuite.
Buffer offers two different plans – free and essentials. The free plan is limited to one user, allowing you to add three social media accounts, schedule 10 posts per social channel.
With Buffer’s powerful publishing tools, you can schedule posts across all major platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. You can also schedule posts in advance, so they get published when it’s convenient for you – and automate them based on your RSS feeds.
This comes very handy when you run a large website. For example, let’s say you published a post about best SiteGround alternatives, and then the RSS feed will automatically add the post to Buffer.
Another feature of Buffer I like is its Chrome extension that lets you easily share any page, link, or video from any website directly into Buffer without opening up another tab in the browser.
Pricing: Buffer offers two different plans – free and essentials. Plus, you can also try their essentials plan free for 14 days.
- Free plan: 1 user, up to 3 social accounts, schedule 10 posts, basic publishing tools.
- Essentials plans ($5-$10/ month): unlimited channels, unlimited schedule posts, advanced publishing tools.
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.
Pricing: Later offers four different plans, including 14 days free trial.
- Free plan: 1 social set, 30 posts per social profile, one user
- Starter plan ($12.50/ mo): 1 social set, 60 posts per social profile, one user, Linkedin bio
- Growth plan ($20.83/ mo): 1 social set, 150 posts per social profile, three users
- Advanced plan ($33.33/ mo): 1 social set, unlimited posts per social profile, six users
Social Champ
Social Champ is a social media management tool with some next-level automation features supporting the six major social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business.
With features, such as Auto RSS feed, Bulk Upload, Social Media Calendar, Analytics, Team Collaboration, Recycle, Repeat, and others, you can fully automate the processes.
Social Champ also has integrations for Canva, bit.ly, UTM tracking, and a royalty-free image library. All-in-all, Social Champ allows you to perform all social media tasks, ranging from creating and scheduling to analyzing and tracking.
Use the content dashboard to create, edit, design, and schedule posts. View all the scheduled/published posts in a calendar view and reschedule them using drag/drop features. Analytics and reports allow you to track the progress of different socials with platform-centric metrics.
SocialOomph
Source: SocialOomph
Tools like Hootesuite and Buffer are helpful for scheduling posts. But if you don’t want to pay for social media scheduling, you’ve still got options. SocialOoomph is a freemium tool that lets you schedule posts to your favorite social channel.
The free version gives you one profile, unlimited scheduled posts, and up to three posts per hour. Yes, if you want to post across multiple social feeds, you’ll need to purchase a premium membership. But if you just want to double down on one channel, this is an easy option.
Many B2B businesses like to double down on LinkedIn. With SocialOomph, you can schedule posts to publish multiple times per day, every day of the week, so that you can sit back while your content works behind the scenes for your business.
Agorapulse
Source: Agorapulse
If you’re looking for one tool to easily schedule, engage, and report on social media for all your profiles, Agorapulse is the tool for you. Agorapulse boasts powerful features to make social media management that much easier.
Plus, Agorapulse’s 14-day free trial allows you to try all aspects of the tool, including flexible scheduling options, ad comments management, automatic report scheduling, and world-class customer support.
Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is the best place to stay on top of what’s happening in your industry, bring people together with common interests and find new opportunities. Manage your Twitter account with ease, through Tweetdeck. Learn more about Tweetdeck and decide if it’s the right fit for you!
Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a social media management tool that helps businesses and agencies grow their presence on the internet. You can sign up for free, and see if it is the right fit for you!
Friendsplus
Friendsplus, you can create content that is relevant to your audience at the perfect time and publish it across multiple platforms. The more people who see what’s inside these posts – be they followers or subscribers! Check it out and see if it’s the right fit for your needs!
Crowdfire
The Crowdfire platform helps you engage with your fans, followers and customers on social media more effectively. You can schedule posts in advance, so they’re always sure to catch whatever’s going viral at that moment! Learn more about Crowdfire and see if it’s the right fit for your needs.
SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a social media automation and analytics tool for businesses – from small to medium and even large companies. With this social media automation tool, you can expect to enjoy a ton of features such as social media scheduling, calendar management, client management, and more.
Additionally, it doesn’t matter what social media channel you are using because SocialPilot has your needs covered. That said, you can integrate SocialPilot with social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram (Direct Publishing), and TikTok simultaneously.
The best of all is that SocialPilot offers users a social media calendar feature, which will help you monitor your social media campaigns. You can incorporate filters into your calendars and monitor your social media campaigns by groups and accounts.
The calendar functionality also allows users to drag and drop their social media posts and reschedule them, depending on what has changed.
Finally, SocialPilot users can analyze their social media post-performance basis how engaged their audience, influencers, demographics, and competitors are.
Core Features of SocialPilot
Now that you know what SocialPilot can do for you, let’s discuss the core features of SocialPilot below:
- SocialPilot gives you the freedom to schedule your posts as you want with advanced social media publishing capabilities and audience targeting.
- You will get helpful analytics of your automated social posts and know where to adjust with downloadable PDF social media reports.
- Set access levels to your team to maintain the content flow in your company. With its team collaboration feature, you can add your team members and assign accounts and access levels.
- You can use your Social Inbox to moderate conversations on Facebook pages.
- You have control of your Facebook ad campaigns by using Lead Ads or Boost Post.
- Excellent customer service available 24×5 to help you whenever you need assistance via chat / email / call.
Pros
- Enhanced team & client collaboration for hassle-free social media management.
- You can bulk upload up to 500 posts in one go.
- Facebook and LinkedIn audience targeting available.
- Top-notch browser extension.
- Publish native videos, add GIFS, create carousel or album posts for interactive social media posts.
- Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box integration for easy access to your media.
- Create marvelous social media images on the spot with the Canva integration.
- They offer 5 ways to automate your social media posts – immediately, schedule according to the said time-slots, schedule at a specific time, repeat posts in time intervals, and share it after the first post in your queue.
SocialPilot Pricing
SocialPilot offers a 14-day free trial and a walkthrough as you sign up (no credit card required). Here are all SocialPilot plans.
- Professional: $30/ month
- Small Team: 50/ month
- Studio: $100/ month
- Agency: $150/ month
- Enterprise: Custom
Tailwindapp
Tailwind is a complete marketing toolkit for Pinterest and Instagram that allows you to manage social media accounts from one platform. However, unlike other tools, it only supports two platforms.
Using this tool, you can schedule posts at the best times, create beautiful pins faster, discover content, monitor conversations, amplify your reach, and measure results.
With Tailwind’s smart scheduling tools, you can schedule hundreds of pins at once in just minutes. As a result, you don’t have to spend hours pinning every day or waste valuable time trying to find new content ideas – they got you covered.
The analytics tool of Tailwind is quite impressive. It shows which of your pins are performing well, as well as followers, top pins, referral traffic, organic activity, comments, and much more.
Pricing: There are four types of plans, including a free version.
- Free plan: one Pinterest and one Instagram profile, 20 posts per month, five tailwind communities, basic analytics, one user
- Pro plan ($9.99/ mo): one Pinterest and one Instagram profile, 100 posts per month, advanced analytics, 200 post designs per month
- Advanced plan ($19.99/ mo): Two Pinterest and two Instagram profiles, 1000 posts per month, unlimited post designs, two users.
- Max plan ($39.99/ mo): Three Pinterest and Three Instagram profiles, 1000 posts per month, unlimited post designs, unlimited tailwind communities, five users.
How do I set up automatic social media posts?
To automate the publishing of your social media content, you will need access to a social media scheduler such as SocialBee. You simply create a schedule, then add the content you wish to be shared.
This content will then be shared automatically at intervals of your choosing. Alternatively, you can choose to add an RSS feed to automatically promote content to your social media accounts.
Conclusion
For most business, social media marketing is a key component of their marketing mix. With the many different tools available to manage your social media it can be difficult to choose. Automation tools streamline your content and save time which means more time for you to concentrate on optimizing your campaigns.
Social media automation tools are the secret sauce that top brands put in their marketing mix. If you want to boost your social media presence, by automating the right steps to connect with your audience through content curation and delivering consistent messages, then follow this guide on the best social media automation tools.