What are the best social media schedulers for 2021?
Using one of the best social media schedulers out there is a necessity if you want to drive more traffic to your website, your landing pages and your products. This way you'll be able to get more eyes on your blog posts, more people signing up to your email list and also be able to sell more products. So it's pretty important to use the right tools.
There are many social media schedulers out there, and most of them offer similar functionality, but they're all different. So finding the right one for you can make a huge difference.
Here are some of my favourite social media schedulers for 2021.
More...
[Disclaimer: Some links in this post contain affiliate links. This means I get a commission if you purchase the product through my link at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.]
HOW I CHOSE THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULERS FOR THIS POST
I started with Buffer and Hootsuite years ago, and I know many people still use them.
But for me, I wanted a tool that would allow me to manage several social media profiles easily, cos I have more than one website, and I also wanted to be able to put some of my content on autopilot. And I didn't want to spend a fortune doing it.
So I've only included tools that allow you to automate your social media and don't rely on your uploading new content all the time to keep your queues full.
I also think price is an important issue for most people, so I've picked tools I think are affordable for most users.
Most of these tools are also easy to use and will allow you to schedule your social media posts in minutes.
NOTE: Prices are correct at time of publication and are based on getting an annual subscription.
WHY AUTOMATE SOCIAL MEDIA?
I've heard that using schedulers harms your reach, or that you'll be penalised if you repeat the same post. This might be true for Twitter (and Pinterest loves fresh content, too), but some of these tools have features that allow you to work around these restrictions from Twitter.
Anyway, the truth is that only a small amount of your followers get to see your posts when you first publish them, so why not give them a chance to see them again?
If you use these tools wisely and also curate other people’s posts, it won’t bother your followers to see the same post repeatedly, cos they won't even notice.
Most people are not stuck to their Twitter or Pinterest all day; Facebook’s algorithms make sure you don’t see everything a Facebook Page posts.
And not all your followers live in the same time zone either.
Repeating your posts will end up getting you more engagement and more traffic in the long run.
Because more people get to see your posts and, as your collection of posts increases, your feed stays varied and people don't get bored with your content.
Try creating variations so they don't look the same!
Last but not least, automating social media will save you hours of work each week and you will get a lot more done.
You'll need a bit of planning to automate some of your seasonal posts, but then they're all being posted at the right time when people need them.
I mean, what's the point of posting your Best Planners post in the middle of July when everybody's looking for planners around December and January?
Pin it for later?
Busy? Why not Pin it for later?
Thank you!
so what are the best social media schedulers for 2021?
So here are my favourite social media schedulers for 2021, they're not in any particular order, by the way:
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is one of the first tools that allowed you to automate your social media and create recurring posts. But it's also one of the most expensive, so I wasn't sure if I should include it or not.
In the end I am including it in the list because there is a Meet Edgar Lite version now that gives you unlimited scheduled posts, 3 accounts, 10 automatically recurring time slots per week and 4 content categories for $19.99 a month.
You can use MeetEdgar to post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram (MeetEdgar now has full permission to schedule (and re-schedule!) your Instagram posts STRAIGHT from Edgar. ) and Pinterest.
For me, it's a bit basic because I need more categories and more profiles, but if you have 1-3 profiles and you mostly share your own content, it should be plenty for you.
One thing MeetEdgar has that other tools don't is an Unlimited Content Library. This is super handy if you run sales, or have to create new launch offers or announcements. So rather than create brand new posts from scratch, you can repurpose content you already have.
Let's say you're an author, for example, and you create launch and promotion posts for every book that you create and you don't want to have to redo this every time you have a new book. With other schedulers, your posts get deleted, but Edgar saves them forever, so you could find them, make a couple of changes and repurpose them as you need.
Another very powerful feature MeetEdgar has is that it creates posts for you!
Edgar crawls your URL and finds quote-worthy text from articles or blogs so it can create variations for your posts.
You can (and should) create your own variations as well, but I've found Edgar's options helpful too because I wouldn't have picked some of its suggestions myself.
So it won't take you as long to create variations to fill your queue.
best for authors, freelancers and solopreneurs
SocialBee
SocialBee's greatest advantage is the number of posts you get in your queue.
Their cheapest plan at allows you to have 5 profiles, with 10 categories, 10 RSS feeds and 1000 posts in the queue and it currently costs $19 a month. You can post to Facebook, Facebook Groups, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and now Pinterest, though this is a bit tricky to set up for Pinterest and you have to do it through Hootsuite, which is very limited.
You can create themed categories so you can have one for products, blog posts, services, affiliate marketing, tips and tricks, interactions with your followers, quotes, etc.
I also have some categories that are completely automated.
You add one RSS feed to one category and set it up so every new post is automatically approved, so you don't need to do anything at all after you set it up.
It's great for sharing other people's content, for instance, if you're a consultant sharing industry news as well as your own content.
The only thing is, don't abuse this, because you don't want to be posting things that are irrelevant or use it too often. So be selective with which RSS feeds you use for this and limit this to 10-15% of the content you curate.
Another good thing about SocialBee is how many improvements they make to the app.
For instance, they've recently added Instagram as one of the social media you can now post directly to. And now you can post images and videos directly to Instagram from it, schedule 1st comments, tag users or customise your image sizes directly from SocialBee.
For bloggers with lots of content or small consultancy businesses
Post planner
Post Planner is very basic, but I decided to include it in my list of best social media schedulers because it's the most affordable if you want to automate your social media.
If you post mainly to Facebook and Twitter and don't have a big budget, it's a great choice.
And if what you want is to grow your engagement, finding engaging content for your profiles is super easy:
It does really work to boost your engagement and you'll get more comments and views on your posts.
Its cheapest plan is only $3 a month and you can have 300 posts planned.
It’s not very sophisticated, but it allows you to have evergreen posts rotated continually by deciding which type of posts can be recycled: Text, photos or articles.
TIP: It’s easy to set up recurring posts for weekly, monthly and yearly events (be careful with your Twitter posts, though) and it will even help you to fill up your queue with suggestions for viral images, viral articles, status messages, etc.
best for facebook and tight budgets
Smarterqueue
SmarterQueue starts at $13.99 for 4 profiles and 500 messages in the queue and 10 posts per profile per day. You can use it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.
It's my favourite tool for automating social media posts for Twitter.
In SmarterQueue you set up categories for your posts such as Products, Blog Posts, Articles, Tips, Quotes, Affiliate Links, etc.
It takes a little while to load up your schedule with the different categories because you have to specify it post by post. So there is some work to do at the beginning, but the amount of time it will save you later is absolutely worth it.
It also lets you know what percentage of posts are dedicated to each category, so you are not being spammy. And SmarterQueue also stops posting if it’s running out of posts and would end up posting the same thing over and over again. So it’s great to keep a “healthy” feed of articles, own blog posts, affiliate marketing posts, etc.
SmarterQueue also allows you to use variations, just like MeetEdgar, but what SmarterQueue does is use each of your text variations with each image you have included for the post. So if you have 1 text and 2 images, you get 2 variations, but if you have 3 texts and 3 images, you get 9 variations.
This is a very powerful feature to keep your queue full and learn what posts perform better.
best tool for twitter engagement and growth
VIRALTAG
With ViralTag you get 10 profiles and get unlimited posts. At first glance, it’s more expensive than the others. However, having unlimited posts and being able to post to most social media makes up for that.
It works on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. It’s best suited for visual content and you can schedule videos directly from Vimeo, YouTube and Daily Motion, to.
The main advantage of ViralTag is that it allows you to have unlimited posts and you can cover ALL of your social media profiles with it.
To be fair, I haven’t used ViralTag much. But I have used it for Pinterest.
It allows you to pin your own content in evergreen (for seasonal posts) categories easily and will post to multiple boards with a couple of clicks.
And though I don't recommend keeping evergreen pins on your queues, repeating some of your most popular pins at the right times can help, but you'll have to keep an eye on your analytics.
If you have a lot of visual content, this is a good option for automating your social media posts.
ViralTag costs $24 per month.
TIP: If you want to save some money with it, write a blog post reviewing the tool and you will get 6 months for free.
best tool for creatives, food and craft bloggers
If This Then That
OK, so this is not a social media scheduler, but I had to include it because you can use it to automate social media if you already use a scheduler, but your plan is not big enough for all your profiles.
I am not going to go into detail here about how to automate your social media with IFTTT. What you can use IFTTT for is to connect one of your FB pages, for example, to a different social media profile.
So posts shared on FB will be shared automatically to your Twitter account, for instance.
You can also use it to add posts to your calendar and post them at the right time, so good for scheduling your holiday and special occasion messages every year, if that's what you want.
The only thing is that you can only have 3 applets running with the free version, as they've now turned it into a paid product.
The pricing for the PRO version is currently $3.99.
best as an additional tool
Tailwind
Though some of the other tools I am including in this list of best schedulers also allow you to post to Pinterest, I'd still recommend Tailwind as a separate tool.
Because
- It's one of the few tools that allow you to schedule pins to multiple boards and set up intervals with only a few clicks.
- You have access to Tailwind's Communities. Here's a post on how to use them.
- You have SmartLoop for automating your seasonal and evergreen content.
- you can also create pins and schedule them directly from Tailwind.
If you want to try Tailwind Create to create your pins:
First, click here to try Tailwind for FREE. You have access to both Tailwind Create and Tribes.
Tailwind costs $9.99 a month per Pinterest account, which is very accessible, though you have to pay extra for some of the extra features.
Automating seasonal pins
One thing you can do with Tailwind is add your seasonal pins to SmartLoop so they're being pinned at the right time. You could set up all your seasonal posts for each month, quarter or even for the whole year in advance.
Here's a blog post to help you set it up.
It's not a set it up and forget it process, though. You still need to look at the analytics and decide what stays and what doesn't.
So after it's been running for a while, or the season is over, you can remove poor performing pins, add new pins, change schedules. And this you can do in 15-20 minutes once every month or two.
best social media scheduler for pinterest
Publer
Publer is a newer tool that you'll love if you have evergreen posts or you want to show recurring posts for your Facebook account, Google My Business, Facebook Groups and LinkedIn.
It's a great choice if you have recurring posts for multiple accounts or if you are running a lot of sales.
Its pricing is flexible so you can build it to suit your needs, for example, for 5 profiles and a single user you pay $8 a month. But for 6 profiles and two users, you pay $10.40 a month.
You can use Publer to post to Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Google My Business, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
They've recently been approved to post directly to Instagram, so you can now schedule your posts, interact with comments from Publer, watermark your photos, and even save groups of hashtags so you can reuse them.
Pinterest are also available through an integration with Hootsuite or Zapier, but this is not ideal because the Hootsuite FREE plan is very limited, so is Zapier's.
If you sell your own products and plan seasonal sales campaigns or have lots of seasonal blog posts, though, this would be the tool for you.
Another thing I like about Publer is that you can share the same post to different accounts after a delay.
Let's say you have a Facebook Page and a couple of Facebook groups and you want to add the same post, but you don't want it to be published at the same time.
You can set up Publer to share the post to one account and then share it after a delay to a different account.
You can also add comments to your posts directly from Publer before you publish them.
This is great for bumping up your posts in the feed!
Although Publer won't allow you to use the same post on repeat for Twitter, one thing you can do is use its Comments feature to write a whole thread from it.
best for ecommerce and sales campaigns
Planoly
Most of the social media scheduling apps I've included in the post can now post to Instagram, but I thought it was a good idea to include a tool designed for Instagram, cos it can help you plan your posts better.
Tailwind does have an Instagram app, and you can try it for FREE here, but I thought I'd show you Planoly because it offers a FREE plan to get you started and because it has some features the others don't.
The tool I came up with is Planoly, I have tested the FREE plan a little bit for one of my profiles and I like that you can schedule 30 posts a month for FREE, which will be plenty for any beginner, and you can get your LINKIT bio to drive traffic to your website.
If you're trying to figure out if Instagram is the right social media for you, it's good to try it out for a few months on the FREE plan.
And if you decide to pay for one of Planoly's paid plans, starting at $7 a month, you can also use it to comment on your posts directly from Planoly, auto post your first comment, share to Twitter and Facebook, and you can apply Filters to give your posts a consistent look.
You can also use it to search Instagram user generated content for inspiration and resharing. You also get access to FREE stock photos you can use when you're feeling creative and want a quick way to create a post.
Using Planoly to sell your products
Now this is not a feature for everybody and it costs more to have it, but I know a lot of you sell your own products online. So I wanted to point it out for you, just in case.
Planoly's Sellit is an all-in-one solution to plan your posts, tag products for single-click checkout or link to your eCommerce, drive traffic back to your site, and convert your social media browsers into buyers.
So if you want to sell your products on Instagram too, it's worth considering.
best social media scheduler for instagram
Hope this list of best social media schedulers helps you find the ideal tool for you and your business.
But I want to give you one last tip before you decide which is the best social media scheduling app for you:
If you can't choose between 2 or 3 tools, don't look at the number of profiles included, but the number of posts you can have in the queue and see if that's right for your needs.
