If you want to stay consistent on social media, but don’t want to be manually posting each day a social media scheduling app is a great way to automate your social media marketing.
Know that social should never be 100% automated… it’s called SOCIAL media for a reason. You’ll always want to engage in real time with your audience, but when it comes to sharing posts that’s something you can automate.
There is no PERFECT platform, they all have their pros and cons and it’s going to depend on your preferences, the platforms you use, etc.
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Meta (Facebook) Business Suite Content Scheduler
Meta does have their own scheduling app which is available in Meta Business Suite.
This tool is free to use and allows you to customize your post for Facebook and Instagram separately. You can also create and post stories and reels from the platform too.
It’s not my favorite option, but that’s mostly because I prefer a visual layout of my posts; even though I just alternate colors.
Planoly
If you prefer a visual grid of your Instagram posts, Planoly is a great option social media planning tool. I used them for the first few years of my business and many more before that at my previous day job.
My favorite feature about them is that you can save images with captions as drafts. With a tool like Later, which lots of creators love, your media library and post planning are completely separate and you have to bring a photo to your posting calendar before you can add a caption, but now it’s on your schedule so you have to do your planning outside of the tool.
Planoly also lets you create separate collections of your draft photos which are great for planning specific campaigns without muddying up your main grid posting area.
I used this feature a lot in my previous day job, especially during our big marketing campaigns such as Valentine’s Day. So I could upload all our favorite photos for the campaign, organize them, write the captions, and then save them all as drafts, moving them to the main grid for posting when I was ready.
In addition to their standard Instagram planning features they also have a calendar with holidays you can turn on and you can make notes inside the calendar as reminders for yourself for campaigns or promos you might be running in your business.
They also have a video planning tool that lets you save TikTok sounds, upload your videos and then repurpose those videos for Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Pinterest Idea Pins.
These aren’t auto-posted, but you’ll get a notification to post on your phone at its scheduled time. In most cases, when it comes to video I prefer that because I’d rather have access to all of the platform's native video functionality such as adding text, stickers, etc. which you can’t access through these planning tools.
Plann That
I loved and used Planoly for the longest time, but eventually, I switched to Plann That, because they also connect to LinkedIn. You know, when I thought I was going to post to all the places.
They work similarly to Planoly in that you can save images with captions as drafts, they have a calendar you can use to plan your social media marketing, and you can create collections of images.
Plann also allows you to take the same post and customize it for Instagram and Facebook. It’s not quite as seamless as some enterprise tools that let you edit each platform on the same window, it basically just copies your post from one platform schedule to the other after you schedule it that you then have to go and edit, but it works pretty seamlessly if your main focus is adding clickable links and not having 30 hashtags in your Facebook posts.
And if you’re stuck for social media ideas they also have themed content prompts you can use to get your creative juices flowing.
If you want to try Plann you can get $10 off your subscription with my referral link.
Other Social Media Tools
There are a TON of social media scheduling tools out there and ultimately it comes down to which one suits you and your posting behavior best. There isn’t really one that’s better than the other in my experience.
Over the years I’ve used Hootsuite, Buffer, Tailwind, CoSchedule, Apphi, Meet Edgar, and a whole lot more. My favorites overall are still Planoly and Plann, especially for product-based more visual businesses. They’re cost-effective, the UI is simple and intuitive, and are regularly updating the platform to keep up with the latest social media updates.
Ultimately, test a few out and see which ones feel easy for you. Social media is already a bit exhausting so focus on simplifying it as much as you possibly can!
And if you want to simplify the rest of your business, make sure you tune into 12+ things you can automate in your eCommerce business.
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