Social media platforms for nonprofits help you to learn how to run social media for nonprofits. Why there’s such a buzz about free social media management tools? And because nonprofits want to minimize the cost of running their organizations, they look for free social media timeline apps.
Social media is an invaluable piece of your marketing puzzle. I’ve been working with nonprofits for a decade, and have had the opportunity to test many different platforms—everything from the ones that offer the best free social media tools, to those that claim to be simple social media scheduling tools 2021. My goal with this article is to provide you with a quick survey of the options, so you can decide which one(s) will work best for your nonprofit.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most popular and widely-used social media management tools, due to its ease of use, accessible pricing, and variety of features.
Key Features: Hootsuite allows you to manage your presence from all major social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube from one dashboard. They also offer integrations with several other platforms. Hootsuite allows you to schedule up to 350 social media posts at once. You can also schedule Instagram posts, including regrams.
My favorite feature is the ability to add the Hootsuite button into your browser, so you can schedule a tweet, Facebook post, or LinkedIn post with one click.
Pricing: Free for one individual user and 3 social profiles. Other paid plans available if you need to add more team members or profiles. Hootsuite offers 50% off on all of their plans for nonprofits.
Buffer
Buffer is my favorite social media scheduling tool, mostly because I love their fun and friendly brand voice, and their blog is the best in the business.
Key Features: Similar to Hootsuite, you can schedule posts on all the major social media networks, access analytics and reports, and use the browser extension to quickly and easily add content to your posting queue.
My favorite feature is the ability to schedule retweets that look great and pull in the original photo. If you are like me, you go on Twitter during certain parts of the day, and you don’t want to flood the feed with tons of retweets. Buffer integrates with Twitter when you want to retweet someone, so you can schedule it to be spread throughout the day or week.
Pricing: Free for one individual user per network on the Individual plan. Note that Pinterest is not included in the free plan. Like Hootsuite, paid plans are available if you need to add more team members or profiles. Buffer offers 50% off on all of their plans for nonprofits.
Later
If you are a heavy Instagram user and you want to build your community and engagement on that platform, then Later is for you.
Key Features: The most unique features are the ability to plan and schedule posts in a visual calendar view, which is useful to a visual person like me. You can also preview posts as they will actually appear on the platform. I especially love the Visual instagram Planner, where you can see your entire feed on desktop and mobile, which helps to create a consistent look and feel, as well as plan longer campaigns.
Pricing: Free for one individual user per network on the Individual plan, with a limit of 30 Instagram posts per month. Through the Later for Nonprofits Program, they offer a 50% discount on an annual subscription for our Premium plan to qualified nonprofit organizations.
Read More: How Nonprofits Can Use Instagram Stories to Raise Awareness For Their Cause
ViralTag
ViralTag advertises itself as “the #1 social media marketing tool for sharing visuals.” if your nonprofit has active accounts on Instagram and Pinterest, and you are looking to create and share more visuals, you should check out ViralTag.
Key Features: Like many social media scheduling tools, you can manage multiple social networks, schedule unlimited posts, recycle evergreen content, collaborate with a team, and analyze performance. What’s special about ViralTag is their “visual marketing calendar”, where you can create and schedule multiple Pinterest pins and Instagram posts.
Pricing: 14 day free trial. Individual accounts start at $24/month. I could not find specific information about nonprofit discounts on their website, but since their competitors all offer this perk, I suggest contacting them directly to see if you can get a discount.
SocialOomph
SocialOomph was originally brought to my attention by social media marketing expert John Haydon, based on it’s affordability and ease of use for the non-techie, a huge plus for many nonprofit social media managers.
Key Features: If you primarily use Twitter for your nonprofit, SocialOomph has many features that can maximise your productivity and engagement, including: Ability to schedule unlimited tweets, track keywords, save and reuse drafts of posts, and check DMs on multiple accounts.
Pricing: All Twitter features can be used on their free plan. To sync more social media accounts, you need to sign up for their Professional plan, which is $17.97 every two weeks. Like ViralTag, I could not find specific information about nonprofit discounts on their website. However, since the majority of their competitors offer special nonprofit pricing, I recommend contacting them directly to see if you can get a discount.
Read More: 5 Examples Of Nonprofit Social Media Strategies (And What You Can Learn From Them)
PostPlanner
PostPlanner is a great way to not only schedule and monitor the content that you create yourself but also discover, curate, and share other content that your audience will love.
Key Features: The best feature in PostPlanner is the ability to discover content based on their recommendations, and customize your publishing calendar incorporating your unique posts as well as curated content. Other unique features include Canva integration for sharing infographics and visuals, GIF creation and sharing, and recycling evergreen posts.
Pricing: Starts at $3/month for 3 profiles and 30 posts per day. Check with them directly about nonprofit pricing.
Crowdfire
I’ve been using Crowdfire for a few years now, mostly to occasionally cull through my Twitter followers to make sure I am not following old or outdated accounts. With over 19 million users, it is one of the most popular social media management platform.
Key Features: Search other Twitter accounts to see who they follow, unfollow inactive accounts, search for relevant articles, automatically share your blog posts, and the best one – “automagically” customize each post for individual social networks.
Pricing: The free plan lets you connect 1 account per social network, with up to 10 schedule posts per account per month. Their paid plans start at $4.99/month. Check with them directly about nonprofit pricing.
Loomly
Created by frustrated social media managers who couldn’t find a tool that they liked, Loomly is one of the newer platforms out there. I love their tongue-in-cheek style, as their website claims they are the “social media manager’s best friend – after cats.”
Key Features: Create and manage social media calendars from one dashboard; get real-time analytics on each post with their Live Post Analysis; submit posts for approval to a team member. You can also schedule posts in Loomly, or integrate with Hootsuite or Buffer.
Pricing: Plans start at $15/month, and include 10 social profiles, unlimited calendars, posts, and file uploads. You also receive post ideas, live analysis, approval workflow, and basic analytics. Loomly offers a 50% lifetime discount upon presentation of a copy of an IRS determination letter or any equivalent document. Send an email to contact@loomly.com to apply.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is one of the most trusted social media management tools out there, having been around since 2010. Team Sprout maintains official partnerships with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and more.
Key Features: One unique feature is the “Social Inbox” – one place to manage all the direct messages that your brand receives on social media. You can also schedule and publish posts across networks and across devices, and collaborate with team members on content planning. The higher-level plans even offer presentation-ready reports, so you can wow your Executive Director during the next performance review!
Pricing: Sprout Social is the most expensive option on this list, with the most features. All plans include a free 30-day trial, but after that they start at $99/month. They do offer nonprofit pricing with qualifying 501(c)3 documentation. To learn more about their pricing structure for nonprofits, email sales@sproutsocial.com.
SmarterQueue
Last but certainly not least, we have SmarterQueue. I first heard of SmarterQueue in a social media marketing Facebook group where I am a member. Several of the members were raving about it, and said that it was so much easier to use than other platforms, as well as having much more customization and integration with more apps and social networks.
Key Features: Like 99% of the platforms detailed in this article, you can schedule your posts, analyze competitors, and find great content to share. You can recycle your evergreen content, and, according to their website, “get all of your social media posts scheduled in 1 hour per month.” What’s not to love about that?
Pricing: Their Solo plan is $16.99/month, and you get all of the features listed above, plus 4 social profiles and 10 posts per profile per day. Registered charities, non-profits, schools, universities, and students in full-time education all get 50% off any plan.
Canva
Canva is a graphic design program that makes creating professional graphics and presentations easy — no graphic designer experience required. With Canva, you can create a social media graphic (at any size or dimension) using your own images or any of the millions of themes, graphics, icons, and fonts in Canva’s arsenal. You can also save your creations if you want to make a recurring series using the same branding.
Pricing: While basic Canva is free to use, pricing for access to more features begins at $12.95 per user per month. Canva also offers nonprofit organizations free account subscriptions.
AgoraPulse
If you’re looking for a simple and easy-to-use scheduling tool, AgoraPulse may be for you. AgoraPulse is a social media management tool geared towards creating, editing, and scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and tracking the success of your posts. It supports many of the major social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube).
Pricing: Monthly and annual pricing starts at $39, but AgoraPulse offers a free trial and discounts for nonprofits.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content and influencer identification tool for social media. It offers content performance insights, influencer identification, content alerts, and competitor analysis insights. This tool is great for A/B testing content to see what type of content performs best, who’s sharing and engaging with the content, and what’s working for other organizations.
Pricing: BuzzSumo starts at $79/month, but they also offer heavily discounted nonprofit subscriptions to BuzzSumo Pro.
Social media is an important aspect of growing a digital audience for your nonprofit. Take advantage of the free trials and test out these platforms to see what would work best for your nonprofit needs. These are tools we use and love at Whole Whale and we hope your nonprofit finds success with these as well!
Conclusion
Social media for nonprofits has evolved to be much more than just posting on Facebook or Instagram. As the field that is social media continues to evolve, it is important that professionals who are using social media for their non-profit organizations continue to evolve with social media management tools.