Social Media Scheduler

Media, Resources, Self-Improvement, Tutorials

Disclaimer: I am not naturally good at social media as I am a very private person, so this is something that I had to work on and to study and get better at…….

But, because of that, I’ve made many mistakes and learned quite some things that I wanted to share with whoever that will find this info useful!

Why do we need a scheduler?

Honestly, when I started intentionally using for “branding” and outreaching, I was so overwhelmed. I looked up info on the internet, listened to podcasts, read marketing books, but still didn’t know where to start.

One thing that people talk about a lot, and that I didn’t fully understand until almost a year later, is to have a consistent social media plan with boundaries – and I achieve it through batching.

Every month I take around 3 days, and spend 1-2 hours each to think what professional events I have in the next month, what personal aspects I am comfortable sharing, and whether there are any important social media days that I care about (like National Piano Day), and plan out my social media calendar for the next month.

What Social Media Are We Talking About?

I only use Facebook and Instagram. I’ve tried LinkedIn but it overwhelmed me too much. I don’t twit nor tiktak as I try to spend less time on Social Media nowadays.

FREE Apps that I use, and their pros and cons:

I only use free apps and do not wish to pay for this service. The down side is that I ended up using multiple ones as each has their advantages and disadvantages – but you definitely don’t have to!

And this is NOT a sponsored post, just me sharing my experiences. And the features for free accounts are as updated / accurate as April 2023. Any free app might change their terms anytime (like LATER used to allow 30 free posts a month – only 10 now)

Planoly

PROS

  • Allows 30 posts a month (note how they count post – each image uploading counts as 1. Therefore, if you decide to swap an image later, it counts as 2 as there are 2 uploads)
  • Social Medial Holiday Calendar is very intuitive
  • The Instagram Preview is user-friendly and intuitive

CONS

  • The free version does not allow editing the image once you upload it – you have to do the editing and cropping outside of Planoly before uploading if you use the free version
  • Carousel or Reel scheduling not allowed with the free version

Later

PROS

  • You can edit and crop images after uploading them!
  • There is a “saved caption” function that can be used as hashtag banks – so you can save hashtags under different topics and one click will do it.
  • The Instagram Preview is user-friendly and intuitive on the app (but the web version is not so much)

CONS

  • Only allows 10 post schedules (including drafts) per platform a month with the free version – and this will be reduced to 5 per month starting on June 1, 2023. As of April 2023, they have expended to include Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and more. Note that they count each post scheduling as one – therefore, you can upload dozens of pictures to see how things fit and as long as you schedule only 10 for a month, you are fine. For those scheduling 2 posts a week that’s really enough. Also, photo swapping counts as 1 instead of 2 unlike planoly because you only have one scheduled post.
  • No Social Media Holidays Calendar
  • Carousel or Reel scheduling not allowed with the free version

Buffer

PROS

  • The free version allows 3 channels – they can be different organizations’ different platform accounts, such as Org A’s intagram and Facebook plus Org B’s instagram
  • You can schedule as many posts and for as long as you like (though you can only have 10 auto posts a time per channel – all the others will be saved as drafts)
  • Reel and Carousel scheduling are allowed for free accounts!!

CONS

  • Only 10 auto posts allowed per channel at a time – so if you post a lot regularly, rememver to go into the app and schedule the drafts into auto-postingNo Social Media Holidays Calendar
  • The app and the website are NOT very user-friendly or intuitive
  • There is no Instagram preview so you can’t see how the grid will look like visually
  • The Facebook Page tagging is often broken or down (the Facebook Business Suite App – not the web version – is much better when tagging other pages on FB)

Facebook Business Suite

PROS

  • For both FB Page and IG scheduling – but I only use it for FB page scheduling
  • Probably the best for scheduling FB posts for FB pages; usually quite easy to use
  • The web version is easy to use for tweaking post layout, link preview, etc.

CONS

  • Only allow up to 75 days of scheduling – with BUFFER you can schedule months ahead of time
  • The website-version of other Facebook Page tagging is often broken or down – but the Facebook Business Suite App – usually works well
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