Which social media scheduler should I use?

You’ll not find two social media managers who agree on whether or not to schedule or how to do it. There are lots of options and lots of reasons to go one way or the other. We’ll simplify it here for you so you can make the best choice for yourself both on if to schedule, and which social media scheduler to use.

Should I schedule my social media?

It depends on who you speak to — some believe social media should not be scheduled, and to do so negates the authenticity of it. Remember the introduction of the hashtag #latergram? Everything on social media was more or less “real time” so we felt we needed to alert everyone if it was otherwise.

Times have changed — as they are want to do — and most people realize your posts are not in real time anymore. You’re not fooling anyone if you are posting curated, professional photos of your products or services on Instagram, so there’s no need to pretend.

If you have timely, immediate updates, go live or share in your stories to connect with your audience in real time.

Why scheduling?

Keeping up with your social media is a full time job (I know, because it’s mine!). Business owners with products to create, stores or restaurants to run, or services to provide, likely don’t have time to be on social media at the best time to post. If you run a cute brunch spot that opens early, you’re likely not engaging on social at 11pm when your followers are.

Furthermore, most people work best in segments. It’s a lot easier to batch write and schedule 30 social media posts for the month in one sitting than writing one post every day consistently. Maybe you disagree, but that’s been my experience for me and most of my clients.

Which social media scheduler?

There are so many options for social media schedulers out there! It can be really overwhelming to decide which to use, finally invest in the app, and then find it hard to use or altogether not like it.

As a social media manager (who is a recovering people pleaser), I have used a loooooooot of social media schedulers. And if I’m being completely honest, I only like one.

LATER

Hands down Later is the best social media scheduler around — both the free version and its very affordable paid options. You would have to drag me kicking and screaming to another platform…

Why we love using Later

Oh, let us count the ways! As a visual person, I love the layout of Later’s platform. The calendar view is really handy. It’s also easy to move posts around and see in week or month views.

The media storage option is probably my favorite. It’s easy to add photos and videos from Google Drive or Dropbox and you can tag and filter for ease of use. You can also search and use stock photos directly from the platform.

The Notes section in each media file is really helpful to save caption drafts and other notes about the photo. We also love and utilize the saved caption feature for our hashtags and commonly used phrases.

The Linkin.bio feature is another awesome one that allows you to add custom buttons, featured image, and clickable posts for your audience. It’s Later’s version of Linktr.ee.

It’s also simple to manage and respond to comments and DMs within the Later platform, and delegate to your team. You can also search and save hashtags and related posts to share later.

Later also works with every platform we need to use, including:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Instagram Stories
• LinkedIn (personal + biz pages)
• Pinterest
• TikTok
• Twitter

Conveniently, you can also schedule the same post to multiple platforms at once, with just a click of a button. It’s super easy to edit the post per platform as well. For example, you want a clickable link in your Facebook and LinkedIn post but not on your Instagram; it’s easy to swap.

Does Later have any cons?

Of course, like anything, there are a few cons. The major one is the inability to post text only. For bloggers (or anyone) who prefer link previews to photos or graphics, this is a major downside. It’s something the Later team is working on because pretty much everyone requests this option. Fingers crossed this gets set up soon!! And then, this section will be without comment.

Conclusion

We are big fans of social media schedulers here at Social for Good. There’s no way we could manage all of our client work (and our own!) without the help of a system like Later. As social impact marketing experts, we believe that the important part of social media is the community and relationship building. Automating scheduled posts does not deter from that; in fact it opens up space for you to do more authentic connecting.

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