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Published July 28th 2023

10 Social Media Scheduling Tools to Boost Your Social Efforts

Social media calendar tools shouldn’t make you cry. If they do, you’re probably not using the right one. Take a look at the top 10 social media scheduling tools you could be using instead.

Social media scheduling tools might just be the only thing that’s keeping social media managers sane these days.

As a social media manager, there’s a lot on your plate. New platforms, new trends, and new expectations are constantly cropping up, and sometimes there’s just not enough time in the day. Now just imagine this scenario but you’re also juggling between multiple pages and accounts from one social platform to another, copy-pasting stuff from a spreadsheet, double-checking the content, and finally getting the content approved by your boss. While no tool will be able to help slow the world down, there are definitely ways to reduce some of the hassle social media managers face.

Let’s explore how you can solve your social media scheduling challenges.

What is a social media scheduling tool?

A social media scheduling tool is a time-saving ally for social media managers. It enables you to plan and schedule posts in advance for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more.

The right tool will help you manage multiple accounts effortlessly and collaborate with your team seamlessly. 

Why have a scheduling tool for social media?

A social media scheduling tool is part of every marketer’s arsenal in today's world. It’s used to:

  • Draft and review posts
  • Publish content across several channels
  • Schedule content in advance
  • Ping stakeholders for approval 
  • And much more

Here are 10 top social media scheduling tools to boost your social efforts.

The 10 best tools for scheduling social media posts

1. Brandwatch

Brandwatch’s social media scheduling tool allows you to easily schedule, edit, preview, and publish all your social media posts and campaigns from one calendar.

And with the new, AI-powered Iris Writing Assistant feature, you can craft catchy, engaging social posts faster.

With Brandwatch, you don’t have to worry about getting your team into a big conference call to make sure you’re on top of your scheduling activities. Using Brandwatch’s approval flows, you can align everyone on your team, collaborate on cross-channel campaigns, and ensure quality and on-brand content. 

If you work with external stakeholders who may not have access to Brandwatch (think agencies, clients, freelancers, etc), you can share direct views of your content calendar and scheduled content with them as well.

In Publish, you can assign permissions for each user role, such as Admin, Editor, Content Creator, Moderator, and View-only. This way, your organization can have control over who’s contributing to your calendar and keep all stakeholders in the loop. 

This solution goes beyond organic social, too. Brandwatch’s social advertising capabilities allow you to create, publish, and promote your social ads, including carousel ads, entirely within the platform. This way, you get to save time, optimize your ad spend, and boost your best-performing organic posts by turning them into ads.

It’s important to make sure your social posts show consistent branding. Here’s where Brandwatch’s Content Pool feature comes in.

The Content Pool stores published content and stock items that can be accessed by your entire organization across all markets and teams.

You can share your most engaging content through the Content Pool, be it text, images, or video, and publish it directly to other local markets or create and save content as stock for later use.

From smaller businesses to enterprises and agencies, Brandwatch customers rave about the ability to easily plan, publish, and keep track of social media activities.

“As we were looking for a social media tool, we were looking for a tool which has an all-in-one package. We took a closer look at Brandwatch and realized that Brandwatch is that all-in-one tool we were actually looking for and even more.” - Nadesha Dietz, Brand Communications Lead, Boxine GmbH

2. Coschedule

CoSchedule’s all-in-one actionable marketing calendar allows you to see, schedule, and share your marketing efforts, in a single calendar.

As a social media marketer, you know that things will never be boring. There’s always room for a new event, a last-minute tweet to send out, or even a major announcement to make on social media. During these times, you need to stay flexible when plans change.

That’s where CoSchedule comes in.

CoSchedule allows you to reschedule your content in an instant. Drag and drop your content across the calendar, and voila – you’re done!

CoSchedule allows you to see everything you’re working on and show your boss what you’ve accomplished in one read-only view to share your progress with higher-ups.

Oh, and for those who also want to stay organized with content more broadly, CoSchedule has an exclusive blog calendar to schedule and publish all your content on one platform.

3. Agorapulse

More often than not, social media strategies rely upon your content getting published at just the right time. Agorapulse’s host of publishing options makes it easy for you to publish content for maximum ROI at just the right times.

The tool has a ‘schedule again’ feature that can help schedule reminders into the future (eg events and contests as they near) or boost the sharing of evergreen content. You even get the option to designate a frequency and interval that you want your content to be published, and that scheduled item will be repeated as you wish.

If you get a kick out of categorizing your social media calendar, wait till you try out Agorapulse’s Queue Categories feature that allows you to categorize and store unlimited queued posts tied to particular themes. This means that you can have certain types of social posts go out on specific days of the week, think of the themes like “Monday Blues” and “TGIF”. You’ll also be able to run reports to understand which times and days are more effective, and easily change the post schedule based on that information. 

Another functionality from Agorapulse is a shared content calendar that allows you to collaborate on social content with your clients. Clients can now easily review, accept, reject, and give feedback on your scheduled content.

4. Buffer

Buffer offers all the basic requirements a brand needs to manage their social accounts and work together with their team to create high-quality and on-brand content.

The platform’s Publish feature makes scheduling social posts easy. You can schedule your posts and track their performance within the platform to fine-tune your social strategy. Buffer’s built-in channel analytics is a bonus for brands to keep track of their content performance.

For brands that go heavy on Instagram marketing, you’ll be interested to know that Buffer allows you to visually plan and set reminders for your Stories on the web or mobile. You will receive a mobile notification when it’s time to share.

5. Sendible

A common thread that ties all social media scheduling tools together is saving time and making publishing hassle-free with an organized social media calendar.

Sendible simplifies your social media publishing processes by tailoring content for every platform and saving time crafting clients' posts.

Sendible gives you a visual overview of your social media activity, past and present, with a calendar view. With this, you can easily rearrange posts by simply dragging and dropping in the monthly view.

Scrambling for fresh content ideas to share on social media can get time consuming. That’s where Sendible’s content suggestions feature comes in.

This feature allows you to share fresh and engaging content with your clients by simply filtering for topics they care about. Once you do that, Sendible will then make suggestions on what content is most likely to generate higher follower engagement.

Finding royalty-free stock images is a huge time sink. But with Sendible, you can source royalty-free images to share on your client’s social channels via Google Image and Flickr search.

6. Tweetdeck

If you’re looking for a tool that solely focuses on scheduling tweets, then Tweetdeck is your ideal tool. By integrating your Twitter account to Tweetdeck, you can manage multiple accounts and schedule tweets for each of them in advance.

This might sound like a simple tool with only a few scheduling features. Nevertheless, it’s a free upgrade to your Twitter account that comes with a comprehensive Twitter dashboard. In addition to notifications, mentions, and other activities, you also get a complete overview of your live feed all in one place.

7. Later

While Later supports scheduling features, many of their features are Instagram-focused as opposed to the other networks.

The tool comes with its Instagram Planner that allows you to create an aesthetic Instagram feed your followers will love! All you have to do is add your photos to the Visual Instagram Planner, drag and drop to see how they’ll look in your feed, and save them to schedule.

You can also preview your feed to see what it will look like with your scheduled posts and easily rearrange or swap out photos to find the perfect balance.

You can also schedule your Instagram Stories, visually plan and storyboard them, edit to match your style, and resize to perfectly fit the Stories format—all from your desktop.

8. Planoly

Planoly’s solution is focused on Instagram and Pinterest scheduling.

We all know how important it is to align everyone on your team to get things done. Planoly has a web dashboard that shares Instagram content drafts with team members using “Plan Reports.”

It also has features that allow you to schedule content and draft captions to post directly on Instagram, plan and arrange the look of your feed with drag and drop functionality, and manage and reply to your comments in one place.

Planoly also has an Instagram planner that allows you to draft, plan, schedule, and publish content, analyze your business profile data, auto post to Instagram, and share to Facebook.

Oh, and did I mention that they have a Stories planner too? The Stories Planner has a super beneficial function that allows you to upload multiple stories at the same time.

9. Planable

Next we have Planable, a tool that emphasizes teamwork and collaboration.

You know the kind of chaos that ensues when your team members aren’t working in sync, don’t you?

To save you the last-minute panic, Planable allows you to give different permission levels to your collaborators and preview posts exactly as they’ll look live, among other things.

A notable feature of Planable is its commenting and approval system for posts that are scheduled to go out. This function allows collaborators to comment on their work, share feedback, fine-tune the content, and get it approved before it goes live.

Planable’s got a sleek calendar view that helps you visualize your week or month at a glance. Plus, you also get the option to create on-brand templates to improve your social media aesthetics.

10. Loomly

With Loomly, you can schedule posts for a lot of social networks.

When you’re out of creative juice, Loomly gives you the inspiration you need to create content based on trending topics, events, and social media best practices.

Loomly also helps you store, organize, and use your photos, videos, notes, links, and post templates in a central, intuitive library.

Checklist: How to choose a social media scheduling tool?

1. Your requirements

List down the essential features and functionalities you need in a scheduling tool. Consider factors like the number of social media accounts you manage, platforms you want to post on, content types you regularly publish (images, videos, etc), analytics and reporting capabilities, team collaboration, and budget constraints.

2. User-friendly interface

Ensure the tool has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. You don't want to spend too much time learning how to navigate the platform.

3. Social media platform compatibility

Confirm that the tool supports all the social media platforms you intend to use, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, etc.

4. Content calendar view

Look for a tool that offers a content calendar view to get a clear overview of all your scheduled posts across different platforms.

5. Visual media handling

If visual content is essential for your social media strategy, verify that the tool supports image and video uploads, edits, and previews.

6. Analytics and reporting

The tool should provide detailed analytics and insights about your social media performance, engagement metrics, and audience growth to measure the effectiveness of your content strategy.

7. Team collaboration

If you work with a team, check if the tool offers collaborative features like user roles, permissions, and the ability to assign tasks.

8. Customer support

Good customer support is crucial, especially if you encounter technical issues or have questions about the tool's functionalities.

That’s a wrap

It’s no doubt that social media scheduling tools have more to offer than native tools, especially for brands that manage multiple social accounts.

The ten tools we’ve mentioned offer various features to help you perform better and achieve your social goals. Why not get stuck in and schedule a demo with Brandwatch? Our all-in-one social media management solution helps you maximize your time, reach, and impact across social.

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