Social media is a great way to grow your audience and reach new customers while staying top-of-mind with current clients, but having a strong social media presence can be a lot of work. While outsourcing your social media management to an expert is a great way to improve results and free up your time, sometimes you may enjoy or want to handle it yourself.
Whether you’re building your brand or have an established reputation and client base you’d like to keep in front of, social media can be an inexpensive solution. Busy professionals often find themselves with great intentions to maintain an active social media presence, but between the content creation, curation, and actual posting, there’s a lot of work. Thankfully, there are a variety of social scheduling platforms that can help you to work smarter.
Social media scheduling tools are available at all price points. Many, like Later, offer a free plan to help start-ups and small businesses manage their social media on a thin budget. Tools like Hootsuite are designed to accompany the more robust marketing and analytics tools used by established businesses. When looking for a social post scheduling tool, the most important thing to look for is channel compatibility.
While most scheduling tools will work for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, Instagram can be more challenging. If you are wanting to schedule your Instagram posts, make sure to check that the tool you are using is compatible with Instagram or you may end up using multiple platforms. If Instagram is a strong channel for you, choosing an Instagram-focused scheduling tool (like Later) is a smart way to go. Ideally, the social scheduling tool you select should be able to post to all the social networks you are currently using.
Other features to look for in a social post scheduling tool include a calendar overview, post preview, and hashtag assistance. A calendar will give you an overview-at-a-glance and allows you to make sure the content you are sharing is unique, diverse, and relevant to the specific channel. Having a post preview feature will allow you to verify how your content will appear before it’s published to the masses while a hashtag tool will help you identify and select relevant and trending hashtags.
Social media scheduling tools are a great way to lighten your workload while creating high-quality and engaging content. Looking to revamp your social media? Check out the great tools mentioned here or contact us to learn more about our social media management service.
