The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Social Media Scheduling Tool as a Social Media Manager

When you work in social media, one of the top tools is a scheduling tool. By doing a quick browse, you can easily come across 50+ platforms. And they are all promising the Holy Grail of marketing: saving time and growing your impact.

With the countless options available, it can be hard to pick the right scheduling tool that suits your specific needs.

You’ve got the basic schedulers, like Hootsuite or Buffer, and industry-specific tools like Planoly that target specific features. It can leave you scratching your head, wondering which one to pick to coordinate your social media calendar. 

But don’t worry, we’re here to help. Get a clear understanding of your options and what tools are best for different types of users.

Take a deep breath, bookmark this page and let’s get started on finding the best social media tool that fits your social needs.

What to consider before choosing a social media scheduling tool 

Before you commit to a tool, make sure you’ve identified a list of options that could work for your specific industry. Don’t just blindly choose the first tool you come across.

1. Sign up for a free trial so you can test each tool and see how it meets your needs.
2. When you’re auditing your options, consider important factors like the number of social media accounts you need to manage. Also look at your budget, and ease of use and customisation options. Make sure the scheduling tool is compatible with the social media networks you use and that it offers strong analytics and reporting capabilities.
3. Finally, don’t forget to check out the level of customer support offered by each tool- you don’t want to be left in the dark if things go wrong. 

Ideally, you should audit the tools based on these 6 criteria. We’ll use the case study of a freelance marketing coach looking to see whether Planoly is the best social media scheduling tool for their needs. 

Your marketing goals

One important factor to consider before making a decision is your marketing goals (and marketing funnel). 

Are you looking to increase brand awareness, engagement, or drive traffic to your website?

Whatever it is, your social media strategy should align with your goals. That’s why it’s crucial to choose a scheduling tool that caters to your specific needs. 

A simple exercise includes you writing down your specific goals tied to consistently showing up on social media.

• Can you identify the 3 priorities for your social media scheduling? 
• Can you rank these priorities for yourself?

Your industry and budget

Based on your industry, choose a tool that clearly caters for how you want to manage your social media.

When you have identified tools that work within your industry, compare prices and features of different options available.

Ease of use and customisation options

When you schedule content, you want to make sure you can draft captions and customise media across channels easily. Check if the tool supports multiple social media accounts that are relevant to you. 

If you got multiple social media accounts, you know how important it is to tweak your content so it’s tailored to each audience. That’s why you wanna look for a scheduling tool that lets you easily customise your posts for each platform.

Depending on your personal presences, you may find that visual planning works better for you than lists and calendars. As you are evaluating your options, you may start planning a few posts directly in the platform, especially if your free trial allows posting.

We’d recommend you try and schedule at least 3 posts in different formats. 

Collaboration for your social posts

When choosing a social media scheduling tool, consider collaboration and team support as important factors. It’s a crucial element for small businesses with a team handling multiple social media accounts. You want to ensure that everyone has access and can contribute to the scheduling process.

Plus, you don’t want to be stuck with a tool that only one person can use – that’s just a hassle!

Team support is also an essential factor as it allows you to give access to specific accounts, ensuring someone has oversight of each account, preventing any potential mistakes. You can also give specific team members access to only certain accounts, allowing for a clear division of responsibilities. Plus, it also ensures timely responses to incoming messages and notifications, preventing any loss of business.

Analytics and reporting capabilities

You need to be able to see how your social media accounts are performing, what content is working and what’s tanking, and overall how engaged your audience is with your brand. So, when you’re checking out different scheduling tools, take a good look at their analytics and reporting features.

1. Can you easily see how many clicks, likes, comments, and shares your posts are getting?
2. How accurate and reliable is the analytics data?
3. Can you track your follower growth over time?
4. Does the analytics function provide actionable insights?
5. Can you identify best performing content?

These insights will help you fine-tune your social media strategy and get the most out of your efforts. Plus, when it’s time to present to your boss or client how your social media is doing, you’ll be well-equipped with the data to prove your worth. 

 Customer support

 Last but not least, the Holy Grail of auditing. You want to make sure that if something goes wrong or if you have any questions, that there’s a team ready to help ya out. Look into the scheduling tool’s support options – is there a phone number you can call, a live chat feature, or an email support system?

And check out online reviews to see what other users are sayin’ about their experiences with customer support. You don’t wanna be stuck waiting for days to get help with a technical issue that’s keeping you from posting on all your social media accounts. So, make sure you choose a scheduling tool with reliable customer support to save ya time and some stress. 

Audit to choose the best social media scheduling tool

You heard Planoly is a top social media scheduling choice for marketers. You sign up for a free trial and start reviewing the social media management platform based on the criteria below. It’s time audit – get back to our criteria.

Once you have all of your notes ready, you want to rank out of 5 each criteria, and see how it would stack against any other option you have been investigating. Did we ever mention that the best marketers are also great detectives?

Breaking down the criteria

• Your goals: Freelance marketing coaches may use social media to build trust and authority. However, it also boosts discoverability to create a consistent presence on social and amplify your reach across channels.
• Your industry: Planoly mentions being “created by marketers for marketers”, and its budget is cared for small businesses and social media managers alike. As you mainly focus on Instagram and Pinterest, Planoly also seems to be the most natural fit for you.
• Ease of use: As a freelance marketing coach you would value the option to collect ideas, save notes or get inspired by trending content recommendations. As a social media scheduler Planoly ticks those boxes perfectly, being a great option.
• Collaboration: Despite not being optimised for agencies like other tools (for example Sprout Social), Planoly allows you to invite teammates to co-create content with you. You can even add clients to your team to review upcoming social content prior to posting. As such, you want to identify how important collaboration is for your business, and identify how it will affect your growth. 
• Analytics: The platform shows real attention to its analytics features and dashboard.  As a freelance marketing coach keeping track of engagement rates, saves and growth over time is invaluable, so getting familiar with the ins and outs of the dashboard before making any decisions is going to be important.
• Customer support: As well as offering form submission, Planoly has a collection of tutorials and a help desk to help troubleshooting any issues. As an official Instagram and Pinterest partner, you know you can trust it.

Choose from the best media scheduling tools for 2023

But let me tell you, the struggle is real with the number of options out there. It’s like diving into a sea of scheduling tools, hoping to catch the perfect wave.

Planoly, for example, stands out as a top choice for freelance marketing coaches, offering features that align with their goals, industry focus, ease of use, collaboration capabilities, robust analytics, and reliable customer support.

Rank and compare your options based on these criteria, and become the detective marketer that chooses the best tool for success!

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