Social Media Automation: How to Schedule and Manage Your Posts for Free

This is a guest post by Robert Morris. He is a business writer and marketing expert. In this post Robert covers how you can improve your social media experience by implementing some popular automation tools. 

If you want to win in today’s competitive business game, you need to make sure that you’re staying up to date with everything that’s relevant today. This post will show you how to use social media automation to make sure people can stay up to date with you!

The marketplace is changing very quickly. Yesterday one thing was popular, today it is not. However, there are some things that stick.

I’m talking about social media networks – the most groundbreaking shift in today’s society. Nowadays, social media is essentially a part of people’s lives, as it definitely changes the social dynamics.

Businesses, entrepreneurs, marketers, and many other people are using social media with a purpose. Most of the time, social media is the channel that allows the communication between brands and consumers. That is because consumers spend a lot of time using social networks and because smart webmasters understand how to properly intervene and capture the attention.

However, social media marketing is often time-consuming and requires effort. Fortunately, things are changing as new automation tools are becoming more and more popular as the time goes on.

Well, in today’s post, we’re going to share 6 of the most relevant social media automation tools that will allow you to schedule and manage your posts for free. Let’s dive in.

 

1. Buffer

Buffer is one of the best free social media automation tools. It allows you to schedule up to 10 social updates, all through their easy-to-use dashboard. Add different social network accounts and use Buffer’s features for more than just posting.

Buffer is that “one central place” that you log in once in order to manage all of your social media activity. You can schedule, share, and analyze your posts. Moreover, they have a “bookmarklet” feature that allows you to bookmark interesting news stories from the web and transform it into a social media post adding a bit of touch of your own.

 

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another extremely popular tool which is currently used by millions of people around the globe. The purpose of this software is to help you manage and optimize your social media performance. Hootsuite is free for use, yet the most important features come with a pricing plan.

Here are some of its features:

• Allows you to put all of your social media profiles in one place.
• Gives you personalized instructions for each social network. E.g. character limits in posts.
• Shorten links
• Schedule automatic posts
• Attach pictures and other files
• Analytics
• Team management features

And it all happens in one simple dashboard which is meant to offer you everything you need.

 

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a different social media management tool that focuses on a great concept. This tool is mostly focusing on the importance of communication and engagement between brands and customers. Their goal is to help users improve their interaction with their social media audience. They try to accomplish it by offering a great tool that incorporates more useful features.

It comes with the entire package: scheduling, sharing, team management, engagement and interaction analytics. Included is a smart search feature that finds you keywords your prospects are actively using.

 

4. TweetDeck

If you’re more into Twitter, you can use the Twitter-owned software called “TweetDeck”. This tool gives you a stream of your account that features your news feed, direct messages, interactions, and your overall activity.

So how’s this tool useful? Well, instead of posting your content through the main Twitter platform, you can do it through TweetDeck. The difference is that you can schedule posts in the future, and they will show up at the date and time you set them up to show. Easy to use and incredibly time-saving.

 

Extra Tip

Nowadays, content has become extremely relevant. Every big company is using content in order to capture attention, earn trust, and establish authority. Social media channels are just a “vehicle” that transports what’s truly important!

Don’t forget that scheduling and automating posts is not as important as making certain that the content you distribute is relevant and valuable to your target audience.

Content is king. If you want your business to thrive, you need more than just great automation of your social media activity.

In case you’re not a good writer, you should check out some writing services reviews and see if you can find a great content provider. It’s best to outsource something you can’t properly manage and spend time on what you do best.

As your business grows, you might feel tempted to think that your time will be indirectly proportional to the success your business generates. That’s not really true. Just remember that we’re experiencing the “digital era”, a time in which everything is (or will become) possible.

Smart tools and software can be found through a simple Google search. Optimizing often means to automate something so it no longer requires your active involvement. Take the previously presented tools into consideration and notice the amazing results!