Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your
audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves
publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your
followers, analyzing your results, and running social media advertisements. Although the
terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media
marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.
Quick Review Of Social Media Marketing:
Social media marketing first started with publishing.
Businesses were sharing their content on social media
to generate traffic to their websites and, sales. But
social media has matured far beyond being just a
place to broadcast content.
Nowadays businesses use social media in different ways. For example, a business that is
concerned about what people are saying about its brand would monitor social media
conversations and respond to relevant mentions (social media listening and
engagement). A business that is concerned about its performance on social media would
monitor its reach, engagement, and sales on social media with an analytics tool (social
media analytics). A business that wants to reach a specific set of audiences would run
highly-targeted social media ads (social media advertising).
Major Social Media Platforms:
The major social media platforms are:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
YouTube
Snap chat
We all know how vital it is to have a presence on social media, both for businesses and
for people wishing to be recognized as influencers. But it is very challenging to have an
active presence. The customers expect the firms they deal with to be active online.
Social media marketers are always in search of more ROI and less wasted time. That’s
where today’s suit of social media scheduling tools can save the day. Social media
scheduling tools are more than just a convenient shortcut to queue up posts. The right
tools help in our social media management process, improving your efficiency so you
have more time to push out great content and develop connections with your followers
in real time. Different businesses have different priorities in terms of their schedulers.
Leading Social Media Scheduling Tools:
There are thousands of social media tools which all do things slightly differently. These
tools can boost your marketing flow. Some of the leading social media scheduling tools
are listed below:
MeetEdgar
SocialOomph
SmarterQueue
Buffer
CoSchedule
1) MeetEdgar:
MeetEdgar is a purpose-built social media scheduling and automation tool that makes it
easy to publish your content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin.
Technically the tool is called Edgar and the webpage/app is where you meet Edgar.
MeetEdgar lets you schedule, share, and recycle the posts you want, when you want. It
uses category-based scheduling like ‘Motivation on Mondays’, ‘Blog Posts on Tuesdays’,
and ‘Inspiration on Fridays’. Each category has its own color-coded queue, so it’s easy to
see at-a-glance what type of content is on the schedule. MeetEdgar continues to publish
and re-share content, even when you reach the end of your queue. It simply goes back to
the beginning and starts again.
But Twitter’s rules prevent you from reposting the same content, so MeetEdgar created
its ‘Variations’ tool to help you re-share the same content with a unique twist. You can
add as many variations as you like to keep your posts fresh. And if you want some
inspiration, Meet Edgar’s ‘Auto Variations’ tool automatically generates a selection of
quote-worthy text from articles or blogs that you can use.
MeetEdgar’s Scheduling Features:
Upload your content manually using bulk import.
Import blogs or articles automatically via an RSS feed.
Organize your content with color-coded categories.
Schedule different categories for set times.
Use auto-generated content to keep scheduled content fresh.
MeetEdgar Pricing:
MeetEdgar has one monthly subscription plan that includes everything.
$49/ month
SocialOomph:
SocialOomph is a social media scheduling application designed to increase social media
productivity, scheduling your tweets, tracking keywords etc.
With SocialOomph you can manage your twitter accounts for free. You can add and
manage up to five twitter accounts. If you sign up for a professional account, you can
gain similar features for Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, and Plurk. You also gain the
ability to tweet via email and schedule and post blog posts and pages.
With the paid plan you can manage all of your tweets for all of the twitter accounts from
oneTweetCOCKPIT. This allows you to integrate your timelines and pull in additional
tweets that contain specific keywords regardless of whether you follow the tweeter or
not.
One unusual feature available to users of SocialOomph Professional is self-destructing
updates for Facebook and Twitter. These allow you to post updates to twitter and
Facebook that will automatically be deleted from your Twitter account / Facebook feed
after a period of time that you select. You can also set up recurring updates which
publish at regular intervals. You can provide alternative text options so that each post is
not identical.
3) SmarterQueue:
SmarterQueue is a purpose-built tool for scheduling your social media updates on
Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and Pinterest.
SmarterQueue uses categories to manage different types of content; e.g. blog posts,
questions, quotes, self-promotion, etc. Each category has its own queue with its own
posting plan. Putting this all together means your scheduled posts provide the right mix
of content to your audience.
Recycling times for evergreen content is separate for each category. So, for example,
your quotes might get recycled every 45 days while your ‘blog posts’ repost every 30
days. And when you add evergreen content to your schedule, you can set it to expire
after being posted a specific number of times or after a particular date.
Smarter Queue categories are also color-coded, so you see at a glance what your
schedule looks like in the calendar. If anything’s needs adjusting, you can drag-and-drop
a post to a revised date and time. The built-in Analytics and Reports provide actionable
insights such as your optimal posting schedule based on how your content performs in
each social network. Plus, you can also see which hashtags get the most engagement.
SmarterQueue Scheduling Features:
Use content categories to schedule the best mix of content.
Save time reposting with evergreen recycling.
Visualize scheduled content in the drag-and-drop calendar.
Analyze your performance to fine-tune your schedule.
Discover the best-curated content to share with smart search.
SmarterQueue Pricing:
SmarterQueue offers a choice of flexible subscription plans based, so you only pay for
what you need, where you’re a solopreneur or an agency.
Prices start from $19.99/month or $16.99/month when paid annually, and include
all the smart scheduling features.
4) Buffer:
Buffer is a software application for web and mobile that lets you schedule content to
Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn from one dashboard.
It has limited scheduling functionality compared to purpose-built tools like
SmarterQueue and MeetEdgar, or even all-in-one tools like Sendible and AgoraPulse, but
it’s simple to use.
For starters, you can create a preset publishing schedule for each social account, so
content always gets posted at the optimal time. And you can tailor your content for each
network, so you can customize the tone, emojis, and hashtags to fit each one. Scheduled
content is added to your calendar so you can see at-a-glance what’s lined up for each
social network.
Buffer is great for scheduling Instagram content. You can either schedule directly to the
network or plan posts in advance or get reminders to post natively.
Buffer’s Scheduling Features:
Create a preset publishing schedule for each social account.
Tailor your posts for each social network.
View all the content you have lined up in the calendar.
Choose your Instagram scheduling – direct or native.
Collaborate on content with your team.
Buffer Pricing:
Buffer has a range of subscription plans based on the number of social accounts,
scheduled posts, and users you require. For instance:
The free plan includes 3 social accounts, 10 scheduled posts, 1 user.
The premium plans start at $15/month or $144/year and include 8 social
accounts, 100 scheduled posts, 1 user.
Co-Schedule:
Co-Schedule is an all-in-one platform for planning, organizing, and executing all things
content marketing. It’s easy to use drag-and-drop calendar interface makes it easy to
collaborate and schedule all your projects in one place.
The common thread between pretty much any social scheduling tools is the same. That is
saving time.
Co-Schedule emphasizes efficiency for marketing teams and individuals alike. Integrating
with company blogs via Word-Press, the platform allows brands to publish and push
content to social media simultaneously.Aditinally, Co-Schedule provides a
comprehensive ‘”Top Content Report” which documents social shares and engagement.
This is fantastic feature for content creators looking to figure out which pieces are
resonating most with readers.
Unlike other social media scheduling tools, Co-Schedule primarily focuses on content
versus solely social performance. Features such as the Re-Queue Bucket allow teams to
recycle and schedule their best messages automatically without having to lift a finger.
This results in more fresh content in your brand’s feed faster.
