It’s a very cumbersome task posting to several social media platforms on updates about your business every single minute of the day.
See, marketing automation statistics have it that – social media post scheduling is the most common automation process
Most times you just have to put on hold a more necessary activity on your business just to pass a very crucial message to your social media fans/followers.
Most bloggers find this a very challenging undertaking too.
Scheduling, monitoring, and automating of your social media marketing activities take a whole lot of effort.
One of the important things you need to take into consideration in running a successful business or providing a smooth service is time management.
Effective management of your time has to do with delegating the right duties at the appropriate time and working effortlessly to meet up your projected goals.
I understand that you need to handle most of the delicate jobs yourself, but the digital world has made this simpler by the use of Automation tools without the need of a specialist.
For you to keep a consistent and sustainable social media account for your business, it is required of you to Automate your social media activities, especially when it comes to posts, updates and promotions.
There are various social media management tools out there.
But some are amazingly better than others. While some offers you varying services that makes them spectacular in the management of social media business profiles.
I have analyzed these tools and provided you with their specifications which will enlighten you broadly on which you can start with.
P.S. You can use this link and navigate to the end to see my top recommendations if you don’t feel like going through this exhaustive post of about 4k words.
1. Buffer
Scheduling is one of the processes of Automation in social media management, which allows you to share posts and updates with your audience at the time it fits best.
Buffer social media automation tool does a great job when it comes to that. This is a tool that allows you to add posts to a queue and it delivers at a specified time of your choice.
This is one of the best tools that I have ever used(for SMB clients) in carrying out my social media marketing activities when it comes to the scheduling of posts.
Buffer enables you to analyze the performance of your posts by tracking engagement and interactions on the posts that you’ve shared across various platforms on social and also provide an analytical metrics on how much engagement you’re getting from such post.
There are features of buffer that can help you conquer more in your business socially, they include:
- Buffer lets you publish content from your favorite blog with an ease using RSS feeds.
- It has its own analytics section (social analytics), that gives you analysis of data for monitoring and optimization of your marketing strategy.
- It has a social media calendar that will help you organize how and when to share your posts.
- Buffer has a “video and GIF uploader” which helps you add richer content to your posts.
- You can get your job done from any device. You can manage your posts from Android, iOS and the usual desktop.
Buffer plans and pricing:
Buffer has three(3) different plans you can choose from depending on your capability, preferences and business goals.
They include:
Buffer Free plan
This plan offers limited features for only one (1) user. Here, only 3 social profiles are allowed to be integrated. The number of posts that can be scheduled per profile is 10posts.
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Instagram are the only social media platforms available for this plan.
The Schedule and discover option which includes browser extension and mobile app usage, is also available for this plan.
For the create and schedule content option – only the image creator, video, and GIF uploader are available for this plan.
The Optimize and analyze option which comprises of the Link shortening and tracking, Social Analytics, and Advanced analytics is not available for this plan.
Buffer Pro Plan
This plan costs $15 a month. When you select this plan you will be given a free 7-day trial.
On the pro plan, given that the feature on the free plan remains, you unlock the following features:
- You have the ability to connect 10 social profiles
- Ability to schedule 100 updates/posts in a queue
- You can distribute up to 15 RSS feeds of content per profile
- You can make use of the social analytics to sort your updates according to post type and performance
- Ability to utilize the social calendar for easy management of your social account at-a-glance.
Buffer Business Plan
This plan is exclusively for business owners and organizations that work in teams and sections; Buffer offers a 14-day trial.
The business plan is sub-divided into three with its individual pricing:
Small Business ($99 a month)
Medium Business ($199 a month)
Large Business ($399 a month)
It has powerful features that are built specifically for businesses, including in-depth analytics and team collaboration tools.
Here are the awesome features of the Buffer Social Media automation Business plan
- Scheduling of up to 2,000 posts in advance per social accounts
- You can connect many social media accounts on the business plan
- 25 social media business accounts for the small business plan
- 50 social media business accounts on the Medium plan
- 150 social media accounts for the Large business plan
- Enables you to invite people to contribute to, or help manage the social accounts you connect.
- Enables you set permission on the individual team members accounts
- You get in-depth knowledge into how you’re performing on the various social media platforms
- Enables you to measure your goals by checking your engagement levels and track your performance.
2. AgoraPulse
This is a tool that many marketers can attest to when it comes to comprehensiveness. AgoraPulse is made up of almost everything you possibly might need for a good social media marketing management.
AgoraPulse can be used by medium businesses, Large enterprises, Small and medium agencies.
This tool enables businesses, agencies, and marketers to manage and monitor all of their social media marketing campaigns.
It also helps in scheduling, publishing and analyzing social media reports. AgoraPulse is currently limited to only Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Google+.
But they offer the best features you can ever think of.
I will walk you through AgoraPulse review with its related features.
- AgoraPulse lets you select the number of times you want a particular content to be posted, AgoraPulse re-publish this content depending on the interval specified.
- Enables you to engage with your prospects and followers all from one place; AgoraPulse
- Ability to work with teams and assign tasks like marking comments and posts reviews.
- There is a calendar view of your existing and planned activity for various social media platforms.
- You can respond quickly to comments and easy analysis of who speaks of you
- Provides a comprehensive analytics module
- Gives you access to detailed reports and downloadable in PowerPoint format.
AgoraPulse plans and pricing
AgoraPulse comprises four (4) monthly plan packages which include, Small, Medium, Large, and Enterprise.
AgoraPulse Small plan
This plan is billed at $49 per month on a monthly subscription and $39 per month on an annual subscription.
Supported platforms include all the six (6) AgoraPulse social media platforms. The number of social media profiles allowed is three (3). The number of users allowed is just 1.
Adding of extra profile costs $15 and additional user costs $39. This plan enables 2 months data retention of reports.
- Unlimited reporting allowed
- The AgoraPulse small business is mainly designed for Solopreneurs
- Unlimited publishing allowed
- Unlimited monitoring allowed
AgoraPulse Medium plan
This plan also enables the integration of the six usable social platforms on AgoraPulse, the number of social media profiles allowed is ten (10) and numbers of users allowed are three (3).
Monthly subscription of this plan costs $99 for a month and $79 per month for an annual subscription.
Cost for an additional user still remains at $39, and additional of a business profile costs $12 per profile.
Unlike the small plan that allows 2months data report retention, the medium plan has the capacity to retain data reports up to 6months
- This plan is specially designed for small businesses and includes all the small plan features.
- Allows advanced Sync of inbox and monitoring
- Allows Facebook and Instagram Ad comment monitoring
- Up to 10 Ad campaigns per Ad account
AgoraPulse Large plan
This plan is billed at $199 per month on a monthly subscription and $159 per month on an annual subscription.
Adding of an extra profile will now be for as low as $9 and additional user costs $39. This plan enables 24months data retention of reports unlike the 6months data report retention for the small plan.
The number of social media profile allowed is twenty-five (25) and six (6) users are allowed for in this plan.
- This plan is best for small agencies and includes all of the medium plan features
- Up to 40 Ad campaigns per Ad account
- Team workflow is allowed in the AgoraPulse Large plan
AgoraPulse Enterprise Plan
This is the biggest plan available in Agorapluse with the highest pricing of $299 per month on a monthly basis and $239 per month on an annual basis.
This plan allows the inclusion of 40 social profiles with $6 per additional profile AND inclusion of 12 users with $19 per additional user.
It also enables 24months data report retention.
- Best for Large organizations and includes all of the large plan features.
- Up to 100 Ad campaigns per Ad account
All the above plans include one allocation for competitor analysis and extra $5 for the addition of any competitor. They also include unlimited posts per social profile.
Every single user that signs up gets a 15-day free trial period with no credit card information needed.
Each of the above plans includes additional features such as:
- Chrome extension
- Mobile app
- Content queuing
- Drag & drop content scheduling
- Automated moderation and Facebook ROI calculator
3. Hootsuite
This is one of the social media automation tools that is widely used in the digital marketing industry with so many distinguishable features.
Hootsuite also gives you the ability to auto-schedule posts and monitor data via inbuilt analytics.
Hootsuite helps your businesses measure the success of your social campaign, manages your social networks on one dashboard, respond to messages and comments across all your social media business profile.
Most users who reviewed Hootsuite said that they find it very helpful when it comes to managing of social accounts from one location.
You can create keyword search streams to track your business mentions and find new online leads via social media
Hootsuite Plans and pricing
Hootsuite has 4 paid subscription plans (professional, Team, Business, and Enterprise) with a 30-day free trial period in each of the packages.
The main differences between these plans are the numbers of users, numbers of social media accounts, analytics reporting, team assignments and App integrations.
Hootsuite Free Plan
Basic features of Hootsuite free plan are:
- No monthly subscription
- Single user allowed
- 3 social profiles allowed
- Content scheduling allowed
- Very Limited post allowed
Hootsuite Professional Plan
Basic features include:
- Designed for entrepreneurs
- $19 monthly subscription
- A single user allowed
- 10 social media profiles
- Bulk scheduling
- Real-time analytics
- Unlimited RSS integrations
Hootsuite Team Plan
All professional features inclusive, plus:
- Designed for small teams
- $99 monthly subscription
- 3 users allowed
- 20 social media profiles allowed
- Custom analytics reports
- Team assignments
- 6 contest templates and 1 custom branded URL
- Access to 1 social media certificate examination
Hootsuite Business Plan
All team features inclusive, plus:
- Designed for small businesses
- 5-10 users
- 50 social media profiles allowed
- Advanced analytic data reports and publishing approvals
- Premium App Integrations
- 1 Hootsuite platform certification access
- 24/7 support and an extended training
Hootsuite Enterprise Plan
All business features inclusive, plus:
- Exclusively for large teams and organizations
- Has a very wide customizable features and ability to accelerate the results of your social media strategy by giving teams a personalized training, advice and advanced analytics.
4. Sprout Social
This is one of the easy-to-use social media automation tools that most of my clients had used.
Apart from its amazing features, it has the ability to monitor and track social listening and competitor’s trends just like AgoraPulse.
This automation software enables you and your team to manage social communication that matters to your entrepreneurial objectives.
Sprout Social makes communication across the various networks and devices smooth.
It has a seamless and well designed dashboard for reporting, engagement monitoring and trends insights.
Sprout Social pricing
Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial for all, thereafter giving customers an option to choose from any of its paid plans. The plans are; Premium, Corporate and Enterprise.
Sprout Social Premium Plan
Costs $99 per user a month with the below features:
- Monitoring of Competitors profile, keywords and locations
- Includes 10 social profiles
- Publish, Schedule, Draft and Dueue posts
- Available for iOS and Android
- Posting calendar available
- Tasking and Social Customer Relation Management toolset available
- Reporting Available for easy analysis
Sprout Social Corporate Plan
Costs $149 per user a month, the features comprises all of the premium’s, plus the following:
- Team and productivity reporting
- Includes 15 social media profiles
- Campaign tagging and reporting
- Audience targeting capability
- Engagement and trends reporting for comprehensive analysis
- Competitors reporting
- Advanced social listening suite
Sprout Social Enterprise Plan
Costs $249 a month, includes all the features of the cooperate plan, plus:
- Includes customer care tools and reporting
- Includes 20 social media profiles
- Enables you to build custom chatbots with automation functionality
- Advanced keyword listening
- Custom URL tracking available
- Scheduled report delivery and report builder
- Ability to store media in a shared asset library
5. Post Planner
This is another simpler and easy-to-use social media management automation tool designed to enhance social media marketing campaigns and activities of your business.
Post Planner is a social media automation tool that lets you achieve a very measurable result which is one of the major Life support of any business.
Apart from that, you will find it very easy to manage and share content consistently, thereby achieving a very remarkable result.
This tool offers a built-in post scheduling for you to choose a specific time and date that best suits you and your audience.
Post planner also has a Re-Cycle feature that allows you to reuse your already shared content and share it again when needed.
This tool only supports 2 social media platforms which are Facebook and Twitter at the moment.
They are currently adding 3 more major platforms; Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.
One upside characteristics about Post planner is that they provide a swift customer care service, notwithstanding your selected plan.
Post Planner pricing and plans
Post Planner is one of the cheapest social media automation tools out there and available for all forms of businesses, both small scale and large scale.
Post Planner Starter plan (Small business)
Billed at $3/month, Includes the below features:
- Maximum of 3 profiles
- 30 posts per day(Facebook and Twitter)
- Up to 300 planned posts
- No team members
Post Planner Love plan (Small business)
Billed at $11/month or $9 on a yearly, includes the below features:
- 10 profiles
- 100 posts per day
- 1000 planned posts
- No team members
Post Planner Guru plan (Small business)
Costs $24/month or $19 on a yearly, with the following features:
- 4 team members
- 25 profiles
- 250 posts per day
- Unlimited planned posts
Post Planner Master plan (Enterprise)
Costs $59 per month or $49 on a yearly, with the below features:
- 7 team members
- 50 profiles
- 500 posts per day
- Unlimited planned posts
Post Planner Agency plan (Enterprise)
Billed at $99/month on an annual basis or $125 on a month-to-month, with the following features:
- 11 team features
- 100 profiles
- 1000 posts per day
- Unlimited posts planned
Post Planner Venture plan (Enterprise)
Costs $299 per month
- 25 team members
- 200 profiles
- Unlimited posts planned
- Unlimited posts per day
6. Social Oomph
This is one of the reliable social media automation tools that marketers find very useful, especially when it comes to continuous promotion of fresh contents to numerous audiences on social media.
Apart from that, your latest posts are automatically published to your social media profiles.
Social Oomph enhances your follower lists on Twitter through an analytical process; you can as well as automate direct messages that can be sent to new followers on Twitter.
It also has additional features which include:
- Tweet scheduling and status update
- Keyword tracking
- URL shortener
- Automated update removal
- Blog post creation and scheduling
- New followers monitoring and profile filtering
Social Oomph isn’t allowed on Android and iOS but supports Windows, Mac and Web-based applications.
Social media platform supported are; Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, RSS feeds and Blogs. This automation widely supports Twitter more than any other social media.
Social Oomph plans and pricing
Their offer includes a free plan, a professional plan, a Twitter Unlimited plan.
Social Oomph free plan
All the below features on are absolutely free of without monthly or annual subscription
- Tweet scheduling
- Keyword tracking
- URL shortener
- Mentions and Re-tweets monitoring
- DM inbox and Twitter purging
- Maximum of 5 Twitter accounts
- Pre-defined Twitter channels
- Private Tweet interests channels
Social Oomph Professional price and plan
This plan starts at $17.79 for half a month, consisting of the free plan features, plus:
- Unlimited Twitter accounts
- Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn functionality
- Self-destruct updates and Recurring/pause updates
- Drip-feed social accounts
- Bulk Tweet uploads Followers check-ups
- Latest enhancements
Twitter unlimited plan
This plan is strictly for Twitter platform.
This plan costs $6.97 half a month with:
- Additional Twitter update scheduling for professional users
- Unlimited Twitter accounts
7. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar helps in carrying out some content managing duties, optimizing and re-sharing of social media posts, analyzing of feed-backs and set expiry date for a seasonal post.
MeetEdgar helps you shares your freshest content, thereby increasing your social media audience engagement with your business.
This automation tool has a functionality that enables you to create an ideal mix of content types for posting at different intervals.
Just like few of other social media automation tools, MeetEdgar also features URL shortener with click tracking which enables you to follow and analyze click reports.
MeetEdgar supported devices are, Windows, Linux, Mac and Web-based, and mainly used by small businesses and Medium businesses.
MeetEdgar pricing
MeetEdgar offers a One-month free plan for all before the normal subscription starts.
The pricing option for MeetEdgar is not based on multiple plan option like its alternatives. MeetEdgar pricing is only available in one plan:
And that is;
Monthly plan of $49 with the following features:
- 25 social media accounts
- 1000 timeslots
- Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
- Unlimited content library
8. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a social media management tool that does not serve only as an automation tool but helps to increase brand awareness and traffic through your online campaign.
This is a tool that lets you collaborate with teams, manage various social media profiles, enables bulk uploads and gives you an analytical report in PDF format.
SocialPilot also provide you with an unlimited content suggestion for you to share with your audience.
It also enables you to visualize your social media strategy on Media calendar and scheduling up to 500 posts with bulk scheduling.
This tool can be employed into maximum usage by social media professionals, digital marketing agencies, affiliate marketers and bloggers.
This is also a search marketing software and the same time a monitoring software used in digital marketing.
This automation software supports many devices unlike some of its alternatives. Devices include:
- Windows
- Android
- iPhone/iPad
- Mac
- Web-based
SocialPilot Pricing and plans
There is a free plan available for this automation software for social media marketing called the “SocialPilot Lite Plan”, meanwhile, it also has 4 different paid plans with a 14-day free trial for each of the packages.
SocialPilot Free/Lite plan
- Maximum of 30 posts in a Queue
- 10 post per day allowed
- Only a maximum of 3 profiles allowed
SocialPilot Individual plan – costs $10/monthly or $100/yearly
- 50 posts per day
- Maximum of 10 social media accounts
- 1000 posts in a queue
- 5 automated RSS feed
SocialPilot Professional plan – costs $30/monthly or $300/yearly
- 200 posts daily
- 50 social media accounts
- 2500 posts in a queue
- 5 team members allowed
- 10 automated RSS feed
SocialPilot Small team plan – costs $50 a month or $500 a year
- Maximum of 10 team members
- 500 total posts daily
- 100 social media accounts
- 5000 posts in a queue
- 20 automated RSS feed
SocialPilot Agency plan – costs $100 a month or $1000 a year
- Maximum of 20 team members
- Maximum of 1000 total posts daily
- Maximum of 200 social media accounts
- 10,000 posts in a queue
- 20 automated RSS feed
9. Dlvr.it
This is another social automation tool that I find very handy; this is one of the few tools I began with when I first embarked on my digital marketing journey.
This toolkit gives you an option to automate and share a content based on keywords, tags and contents’ author.
Dlvr.it is trusted by top marketers and publishers such as Reuters, Buzzfeed, ESPN, CBS, theguardian and many more.
Dlvr.it lets you auto post to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and the rest of others. It also has an automatic recycling option for social media posts and updates.
This tool can be integrated with RSS feed, Chrome extension, WordPress, Google Analytics and the famous URL shortener Bit.ly.
Dlvr.it plans and pricing
BASIC Free plan features: mainly for individuals and marketing beginners
- 3 platforms (social profiles and pages)
- 10 daily posts per social media
- 5 sites/ feeds maximum
PRO $8.29/monthly annual billing: for professionals and small businesses.
- 10 social media profiles and pages
- Unlimited limited posts
- 50 sites/feeds
- Faster feed updates and power scheduler
- Posts to multiple profiles
PLUS $24.88/monthly annual billing: for social media power users
Includes all the features of Dlvr.it PRO plan plus:
- 15 social profiles
- 75 sites/feeds
- Posts recycling
- WordPress importer and Scheduler
- Large queue storage
AGENCY $124.58/monthly annual billing: mainly for professionals, small businesses and marketers.
- 10 team members
- 250 social media profiles and pages
- Unlimited daily posts
- 1500 sites feeds
- Ability to post to multiple profiles on social networks
- All basic “PLUS plan” inclusive
10. Social Flow
SocialFlow is one of the most excellent social media management tools that make your marketing tasks of sharing easy and efficient.
This tool enables you to publish content at your desired timing with preferred frequency. You create your customized queues of posting just like other automation tools.
SocialFlow lets you optimize content through audience interest and also monitors conversions in real-time.
It also has a powerful analytical tool, where you see a completely transparent track record of your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram activities which enables you to measure social growth.
This social media automation tool is also useful for bloggers by connecting to their CMS using XML and RSS. It also provides URL shortener for better trailing of clicks.
SocialFlow Pricing
SocialFlow’s pricing details are only available upon request. Unlike other automation software that has various pricing options for you to chose from.
Whenever you’re ready to use this automation software navigate to their “get a demo” link from their homepage and complete the form so you can get started with the product.
Or you can simply email or call them from the contact details provided on the top page of their website for quote or inquiry.
Which automation tool should you use?
Using automation tools for your business especially when it comes to social media marketing which happens to be one of the important aspects in digital marketing, lessens a lot of stress and reduces frictions encountered in running your social media campaign.
Use Hootsuite or Postplanner:
If you’re small business owner on budget.
Use Agorapulse or Buffer:
For a more sophisticated social media management, mostly with large teams.
Best social media automation tool for bloggers:
Which of these social media automation tools are you currently using for your business?
Which of them would you like to test out?
Are there any other automation tool you are currently using that isn’t among the above listed?
Please tell me so I can check it out too ☺
Great post here… Thank you for the tools