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9 Social Media Schedulers Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know

Evelyn Foreman

9 Social Media Schedulers Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know as You and Your Business Grow

Here they are:  1. Everypost, 2. Hootsuite, 3. Buffer, 4. Postcron, 5. Smarter Queue, 6. Recur Post, 7. Meet Edgar, 8. CoSchedule and 9. Sprout Social

If you have decided to build community through social media, social media schedulers are a MUST HAVE tool.  Social media schedulers help you sort, organize and plan your campaigns so that you can engage with your audience.

With soooo many options out there, where do you start?  In this article, I’ve created 3 sections of distinction, based on price, which is also a function of capacity. Regardless of price or function, the following are important to me:

1.     Visual – it is visually meaningful to me.  I can make heads and tails of what I am looking at, and I know what goes out on which day.

2.     Reposting / recycling content is easy to manage

3.     It is not cost prohibitive.  At this time, I do not need an enterprise, big business solution.  As a small business entrepreneur, I simply need a system that will work and save me lots of time.   

Having explained this, what is also important is that the social scheduling tool be able to post on Facebook pages and groups as I use these channels frequently.

It is also important to note that all these channels are amazing, in that they can do what no person can do in a fraction of the time.  Can you imagine manually posting on every single social media channel, and how much time it would take? 

To chose the right service for you, read through the following and try them out.  The best way to decipher what works for you is to know what doesn’t so give it a go.  Be gentle on yourself during this learning curve, and share with us in the group www.Facebook.com/pathofpresence)    what’s going on.  Many of us have undergone the frustrations of getting up and going, and can offer suggestions as well as compassion).

*Special Note:  This report is also my synthesis of a wonderful blog article I read (33 Social Media Scheduling Tools Compared) by Dylan Robertson who created a spreadsheet on Google docs as the Source Data for my article below.  The source data and spreadsheet can be found here:  http://bit.ly/2sJ7njp

Small (Inexpensive social media scheduling plans, much functionality and very popular). 

They all start at about $10 a month, with a free trial period for 7, days, 14 days and 30 days on Buffer, Everypost and Hootsuite, respectively.

Hootsuite and Everypost have the most functionality with the following features built in:  Analytics, video posting, bulk image upload, recycling or repeating posts, post schedule categories, calculating the optimal time to schedule.  They even have a forever free plan that you can use. 

I am a visual person and the visual set up and ease of functioning of the system is important to me.  I have discontinued the use of Hootsuite and Everypost because I was not visually impressed.  Other than that, I think they are fine services, but each personal must find the right system for them.

Buffer is in the same price range, does not have some of the functioning the Hootsuite and Everypost offers (such as image bulk upload, recycling/repeat posts and schedule categories).  The user interface, however makes up for this as it is both excellent on both web and mobile apps.  One of the great things I love about Buffer is that they have an image creator that allows you to design your own social media posts, with the bonus of adding your own logo and web address for each post you create.  This feature is available at:  https://pablo.buffer.com.  As of this posting, this service is free to charge, whether you are using buffer as your scheduler, or not. We have a free training video on how to use this function here. https://buffer.com/pricing

A 4th contender that is relatively new to market, and inexpensive is Postcron.  Postcron does not have a forever free plan, but does support up to 15 social accounts with unlimited pending posts, content recommendations and a bulk uploader.  It also has a feature that will allow you to upload a watermark, which will brand your social media graphic to personal your brand. 

One set back with Postcron are the reviews of its mobile app.  Do a search on your mobile device for the Postcron app and you can read the feedback for yourself.  At the time of this post, the complaints are that the mobile site is not working to par, reflected by 1 out of 5 stars.  The pricing for Postcron is $12.49/month paid annually or $14.99/month, paid monthly. http://bit.ly/2tWnf1p

I have tried Hootsuite, Everypost and Buffer over the years and have not had any problems with their services.  Having said that, I am also not so impressed that I am married to them.  Therefore, I am experimenting with some of the mid-range services which are more user friendly for a visual learner, like myself.

Medium (Middle of the road social media schedulers)

Pricing on these schedulers begin at $20, $25, and $49 for SmarterQueue, Recur Post and Meet Edgar, respectively. 

SmarterQueue

I love the explainer video on the home page of SmarterQueue – it makes posting easy and simple with a visually engaging content calendar, post recycling and content curation ability. It also has detailed analytics about which hashtags are most effective to your audience, when the best posting is and the categories and reposting saves time!  So far, I have heard nothing but stellar reviews on this product.  http://bit.ly/2s3uP96 In my research, I found Recur Post…

Recur Post

I have tried Recur post (simply because they have a free option that allows me to test up to 3 accounts). Recur Post has a generous forever free plan that will enable you to post to  3 platforms.  Beyond 3, the price per month is $25. So, far, I am really digging this service and the reason why is that is has all the functioning of SmarterQueue, and the frankly, the layout is easy to maneuver.  http://bit.ly/2rYYDsa

MeetEdgar

Meet Edgar was one of the pioneers to create a recycle post.  You can set an automatic posting of your most engaged content.  Even with a trial, however, the cost of usage begins at $49/month, which is a barrier of entry for me, and so I released it.  http://bit.ly/2t2yN6m

Large (Robust and Collaborative Social Schedulers)

More robust schedulers include CoSchedule and Sprout Social, which begins at $30/ month and $99/month, respectively.  Both these systems are powerful tools for social business and have integrations for the most popular social media channels.  Not only do they have detailed analytics tools, you can also monitor trends and engagement, workflows, consolidate and collaborate across teams, enabling everything to be organized in one place.

For details, visit the links below:

So what sounds good to you?  Where are you going to start?  Share your comments and experience below or come by our Facebook Community and join our discussion.  

 

August 5th Update: I have alas settled on a scheduler:  5 Powerful Reasons I Switched to CoSchedule for Social Media Postings