The number of social media users continues to grow. There are 4.48 billion social media users worldwide, and the number is expected to keep growing.
In short, social media platforms should be a priority in your marketing strategy since they help you reach a larger audience, increase brand awareness, target the right customers, improve brand authority, and many more things.
While you may have a solid plan for managing all the social media content, doing so consistently can be a challenge.
The longer you are active on social media, the harder it gets, especially if you are trying to manage multiple platforms at the same time.
Ultimately, you lose your valuable time, energy, and nothing seems to work out according to plan.
With the help of Social Media Scheduling Tools, it is now possible to schedule social media content ahead of time in order to accomplish more in less time.
We will discuss in this article the 20 best free social media scheduling tools that will help you accomplish your tasks more efficiently.
What is Social Media Scheduling?
Social media scheduling is the act of scheduling your posts to be posted at a particular time or date on your specified social media account/s; whether that be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter.
What to Look for in Social Media Scheduling Tools
There’s no shortage of social media scheduling tools on the market. It’s easy to get distracted by the top-of-the-line tools with all the bells and whistles but your wallet will thank you for reeling it in and focusing on the three most important features you should look for when choosing scheduling tools for social media.
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1. Easy Management From a Single Dashboard
The purpose of using a social media scheduling tool is to make your job easier.
The tool you choose should make it easy to manage scheduling for all the most popular social media platforms from a single dashboard.
2. Automation
Another important thing to look for when choosing the right social media scheduling tool for your business is automation.
Any tool worth its salt will give you what you need to schedule and automatically publish content.
3. Performance Tracking
Social media marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” thing. After you’ve started publishing, you need to know how your content is performing.
Performance tracking is another feature that you need in your social media scheduling tool.
20 Best Free Social Media Scheduling Tools
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the most popular tool for managing social media platforms. 18+ million social media marketers use it, and it has everything you need to manage your team, schedule posts, measure results, plan upcoming campaigns, etc.
From freelancers to large businesses, it’s the perfect tool for anyone who wants to grow their social media presence the right way.
Hootsuite comes with five different plans, including a free plan. The free version plan allows you to manage two social media accounts, schedule up to 5 posts at a time, and allow one user.
You can easily create, schedule, and customize posts for all your connected networks from their beginner-friendly dashboard.
In addition, you can connect to more than 20+ different social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and more.
One of the key features of Hootsuite I like is the Engage. Using this option, you can quickly access all the incoming messages across your social networks.
2. Buffer
If you want an app like Hootsuite, Buffer would be a great alternative. In fact, it’s much cheaper than Hootsuite.
Buffer offers two different plans – free and essentials. The free plan is limited to one user, allowing you to add three social media accounts, schedule 10 posts per social channel.
With Buffer’s powerful publishing tools, you can schedule posts across all major platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc.
You can also schedule posts in advance, so they get published when it’s convenient for you – and automate them based on your RSS feeds.
This comes very handy when you run a large website. For example, let’s say you published a post about best SiteGround alternatives, and then the RSS feed will automatically add the post to Buffer.
Another feature of Buffer I like is its Chrome extension that lets you easily share any page, link, or video from any website directly into Buffer without opening up another tab in the browser.
3. Later
Later is the best tool for scheduling and publishing on Instagram. It was founded in 2014 and now powering more than 4 million users globally.
Initially, it was started as a simple Instagram scheduling tool, but later, they added more platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Later offers a free plan that includes one social set (including one Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Tiktok account), schedule 30 posts per social profile, and basic analytics.
They also have tons of pre-made templates, so there’s no need to start from scratch ever again.
Using their hashtag research tool, you can find the right hashtags for your posts; it even provides advanced analytics so you can see how well your posts are doing in terms of engagement.
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4. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a similar app to Hootsuite in many ways. More than 19 million users worldwide use the Crowdfire app to automate their social media activities.
It’s packed with features that make everyday life easier and more productive.
The free version of Crowdfire allows you to link three social media accounts, schedule 10 posts per account, and provide you with one day of social analytics data.
With Crowdfire, you can connect up to 25 accounts and schedule posts across all platforms from one place.
Using their hashtag suggestion feature, you can get the most used and relevant hashtags for your posts quickly and easily.
They also have auto-customize content for each platform, so you don’t have to spend time creating multiple posts across different platforms.
Additionally, you can schedule up to 50 posts at once using their bulk upload feature, saving your time and effort.
You also get access to up to 30 days of your account’s performance data analytics in just seconds.
5. SocialOomph
SocialOomph is a social media scheduling tool that monitors your activity on different networks and allows you to schedule posts in advance.
It allows you to schedule content for publishing at any given date/time in the time zone of your choice.
You can also bulk upload blog posts from your computer with one click.
SocialOompah has all sorts of features, including self-destructing messages so that they will be deleted automatically after a period of time.
They have a free plan which allows you to connect one social profile, access basic posting features, a maximum of three posts per hour, etc.
You can also connect SocialOomph with Shopify, Tumblr, and WordPress blogs, but it requires upgrading to a higher plan.
The dashboard is quite simple and clean, but adding social accounts is a bit complicated.
6. Tailwind
Tailwind is a complete marketing toolkit for Pinterest and Instagram that allows you to manage social media accounts from one platform. However, unlike other tools, it only supports two platforms.
Using this tool, you can schedule posts at the best times, create beautiful pins faster, discover content, monitor conversations, amplify your reach, and measure results.
With Tailwind’s smart scheduling tools, you can schedule hundreds of pins at once in just minutes.
As a result, you don’t have to spend hours pinning every day or waste valuable time trying to find new content ideas – they got you covered.
The analytics tool of Tailwind is quite impressive.
It shows which of your pins are performing well, as well as followers, top pins, referral traffic, organic activity, comments, and much more.
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7. Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a powerful social media management tool that helps businesses and agencies manage their social media accounts. It allows you to schedule posts, monitor mentions, create custom dashboards, and more.
Like other tools, Zoho Social offers a free plan that includes one team member, a zShare browser extension, and publishing on seven social channels.
And, of course, premium plans come with more advanced features.
Using this tool, you can schedule unlimited posts, track social media activities, create custom reports to analyze your performance, and get notified when someone shares something about your brand on the web.
It also comes with an easy-to-use interface and intuitive design that makes managing multiple accounts easier.
One of the features I like most about the collaboration. It allows you to collaborate with your team seamlessly.
You can also assign custom roles to your team members so that they can work on different projects.
Overall, Zoho Social is a great tool for social media management and a free alternative to Hootsuite.
8. Combin
Are you looking for a way to grow your Instagram following? Then look no further than Combin.
Combin is the perfect tool for anyone who wants to increase their followers and engagement on Instagram.
It’s simple, easy to use, and can help you quickly gain real followers.
Combin offers two different plans – Growth and Scheduler.
The Scheduler tool is completely free to use and includes 15 Instagram accounts management, bulk image uploading, location tagging, user tagging, etc.
You can use Combin to find influencers in your niche or industry so that you can collaborate with them and get more exposure.
Or, if you want to promote your account, then this is the perfect tool as well.
Their growth plan includes more powerful features such as it can detect who doesn’t follow you back, checking your Instagram audience quality, monitoring audience activity, and more.
9. Friends plus
Friends plus is another free tool for scheduling and automating your social media posts.
You can create great content, collect it from all over the web, and then bulk schedule it with their desktop application.
They also have browser extensions that make it easy to share on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, or Pinterest right from your browser.
And if you’re using a mobile device, they also have applications for iOS and Android so you can manage everything in one place.
The dashboard is very simple and doesn’t include many features as other tools.
10. TweetDeck
By the name, you can understand what this tool does. TweetDeck is a free tool for managing your Twitter accounts in one place.
It’s easy to use and packed with features that help you to reach your audiences and discover the best of Twitter.
You can easily track conversations, find new people to follow, messages, and get updates from all the people and lists you are following.
Using TweetDeck is very simple. All you have to do is log in with your existing Twitter account, and you are good to go.
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11. Loomly
Loomly strives to make it easier for businesses to manage their social media. You start by setting up your calendar, time zone, and industry.
Then, you can schedule your posts directly in Loomly, including publishing directly to Instagram. Where Loomly really shines is its workflows.
You can use it to set up workflows to move your content from draft through publish and it doesn’t take much to get your new posts set up.
Just set the post details and choose the social media platforms you want to publish the content on.
From there, you can define generic content as well as fine-tune your settings for each social channel.
12. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a great tool if you need something to help you schedule posts, engage with your followers, and report on your social media metrics across social media channels.
It includes flexible scheduling options, automatic report scheduling, ad comments management, top-notch customer support, and more.
13. Socialpilot
SocialPilot is a cost-effective social media scheduling tool that is the go-to for teams and agencies.
You can use SocialPilot to make daily social media tasks easy and increase community engagement.
It covers basic social media functionality needs like bulk post scheduling as well as offers a range of other powerful features that make it great for multiple types of businesses, from small businesses to marketing agencies to large enterprises.
14. ContentCal
ContentCal is great for eCommerce merchants and bloggers with a big focus on visually appealing content.
The platform makes it easy for your entire team to view, approve, reject, and remove content using approval workflows.
ContentCal also has Planning Channels so you can choose the number of social media platforms you want to schedule posts for. Plus, adding and removing social media channels to your list is a breeze.
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15. NapoleonCat
NapoleonCat is a social media scheduling tool that can help you manage your social media engagement across all major social media platforms.
With this platform, you can automate publishing, run in-depth reports, and conduct competitive analysis.
16. Died Social
Sked Social’s 360-degree platform lets users plan, create, save, and publish social media content from a single place and makes it easy to collaborate with customers and team members.
The platform includes image editing tools with more than 60 filters, cropping tools, stickers, texts, and overlays so you can make your content stand out.
Then, when you’re ready, just drop your content into the queue.
You can pick just the right time to publish, create a calendar with your own special holidays and promotions, and filter your content by day, week, or month.
17. Planony
Planoly is an official Instagram and Pinterest partner that helps users draft, plan, schedule, and publish content quickly and easily.
It has Instagram direct publishing, analytics, reporting, and is great for all size businesses.
You can create and customize content for your social media platforms using Planoly’s collection of designer templates and design app.
The platform makes it easy to create and customize social content, create multiple content buckets, save your favorite templates, and even save and import content to Planoly to schedule it any time.
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18. RecurPost
With RecurPost, you can automatically share your social media posts at the right time, saving time and increasing your engagement.
The social media scheduler makes it easy to implement your social media marketing strategy and improve customer experience.
You can track and respond to chats, mentions, comments, and more from a single place.
19. IFTTT
IFTTT isn’t a traditional social media scheduling tool. However, IFTTT makes it easy to connect your favorite social media platforms so you can share content based on whatever rules you want to set.
Do you want to automatically tweet out any of the images you share on Facebook? IFTTT can make that happen, automatically.
20. Friends+Me
Friends+Me is a free social media scheduling tool that helps you create and publish content automatically across your favorite social media platforms.
It has a browser extension you can use to capture content you want to share from anywhere on the internet and you can schedule bulk posts with a single click.
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CONCLUSION
Each of these best free social media scheduling tools will help you automate your social media strategy and get more return for less effort.
Our list features either free tools or those that are free to try so you can see if it’s right for you before paying.