If you grow faint at the thought of repeatedly sharing your content on social media, take heart! Several tools make social media automation easy, freeing up time for you to spend on other things. They may cost a bit, but the time savings they provide can make these tools worthwhile. And if you like to watch branding geniuses at work, you’ll appreciate the droll and quirky names of these tools.
We’ve spoken before about promoting your content. This post extends that discussion by adding social media automation to the mix.
Hootsuite provides scheduling, analytics, social sweepstakes, and RSS integrations as part of its basic package. As of this writing, the basic package allows one user to manage up to 10 social profiles. Team and enterprise solutions add users, social profiles, and features. Hootsuite is also a very capable social media reader. See the Hootsuite list of plans for details.
Buffer provides free, professional, and small- or medium-sized business plans. Products include Buffer Publish (for scheduling), Buffer Reply (for engagement), and Buffer Analyze (for analytics). Depending on the plan you choose, Buffer can handle up to 50 social media profiles. The basic feature set includes a browser extension, mobile apps, image creation tools, video uploader, link shortening, and analytics. You can also upgrade for more features. See the Buffer pricing page for details.
SocialOomph supports all the usual platforms, plus a few unusual ones, like Mastodon. It allows for scheduling, bulk uploading, and features a never-run-dry queue. You can set time-sensitive posts to self-destruct, and if your zeal gets the better of you, SocialOomph will rein you in with its post flood control feature. A variety of plans are available, including one freebie. See the pricing page for details.
CoSchedule goes farther than most in social media automation. It offers a blog calendar and a marketing calendar. The blog calendar provides a blog and social calendar and management functionality for tasks and teams. It also provides publishing to all the major social media platforms, bulk scheduling, social media templates, and automated requeueing, and reporting. It integrates with WordPress, Zapier, Google Drive, Evernote, and other apps. The marketing calendar includes all of the above, plus a marketing calendar, social conversations inbox, and a wider circle of integrations.
OnlyWire comes in Pro for small businesses and an Enterprise version for agencies. It supports a truly vast array of social media platforms and content management systems. Both versions provide scheduling, automated posting, posting from browser extensions, analytics, and live support. The Pro version supports a single user and has a generous allotment of 1,000 posts per month, while the Enterprise version supports unlimited users and has an astronomical allotment of 5,000 posts per month.
dlvr.it offers Basic, Pro, Plus, and Agency plans. The Basic plan is free, but you’ll need one of the paid plans to take advantage of this platform’s extensive automation features, which include echoing (resharing), and power scheduling (resharing across profiles). The Plus plan adds hashtag cycling, automatic post recycling, bulk scheduling, and more. See the dlvr.it pricing page for details.
MeetEdgar offers just one plan, which includes automatic scheduling, bulk uploads, native video support for the networks it supports, automatic post variation, link shortening and tracking, and more. See the MeetEdgar pricing page for details.
Zoho Social supports scheduling and bulk scheduling, a calendar, content queue, listening dashboard, and team management, extensive analytics. A SmartQ feature lets you schedule posts for when your audience is most active. Plans are available for individuals, businesses, and agencies. See the pricing page for more details.
If you plan to share your posts repeatedly, it makes lots of sense to automate this process. Hard work might be a virtue, but don’t overdo it.
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