What is a Social Media Scheduler?
A Social Media Scheduler is a tool used to plan social media posts. While some social networks have built-in social media schedulers, there are also many third-party ones available such as Buffer, Hootsuite, or StatusBrew. They are a vital tool for social media managers who often need to post specific content at specific times, as well as post in real-time and respond to real-time events and comments.
Social Media Schedulers work by users inputting future social media posts and adding a date and time. The scheduler will then automatically post that content to the user’s account(s) at the specified time and date.
Many social media schedulers come with the option of uploading a spreadsheet of posts to schedule all at once. This can be especially time-saving for social media managers.
While social media schedulers used to be widely free to the user, they are now generally a paid-for service. Due to this they often now have additional services tacked on to them such as reporting, link shortening, and recommending content to post.
7 Things To Know About Social Media Schedulers
- Use a scheduler to get out important posts – but also post in real-time. Your scheduled posts should be in addition to (not instead of) you posting and reacting on social media as usual.
- Many schedulers have limits on the number of posts you can schedule. Use this limit to help you decide what a cost-effective scheduling schedule is for you.
- Use analytics to work out what are the best times each day to post, and use that to inform your schedule. Regularly review these times and do some testing – stop the worst performing one(s) and try a new time.
- You can often add a limited amount of profiles to a scheduler. If you are working to a budget you should use this limit to bring into focus which are your most important profiles (and close the rest).
- Social Media Schedulers used to commonly be free-to-use. That model changed mostly when Hootsuite starting to charge users a few years ago.
- Social Media Schedulers are a real time saver if you use them right. Try and always have 2-4 weeks of posts scheduled. *Note*: Double-check the posts in the week they go out in case current events have changed their meaning since you scheduled them.
- According to Datanyze.com HootSuite is the most popular social media scheduler, followed by Sprout Social.
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