List of the Best Social Media Planner’s Available
Social media managers are super busy and sometimes they need a helping hand to get the best results for their marketing strategies. That’s when the value of a social media planner becomes very obvious. Such tools allow marketers to focus on the important things while still getting everything done.
With that said, not all of them have calendar features. We decided to save you some time and make a list of the social media planners that have this feature. Having a calendar makes things so much easier.
Just What Is a Social Media Calendar?
Well, it is exactly what you think when you hear ‘social media calendar’. It is a calendar that is used to schedule social media content. Thanks to these tools, we don’t have to stay up at odd hours to post content that will reach our global audiences.
Of course, you can go the old-school way and mark times on a paper calendar, setting alarms to remember posting and sharing content. That can be an uncomfortable strategy though. We recommend that you use a tool that offers you an easier option – doing it for you.
The Benefits Of Using A Social Media Planner
There are many reasons why incorporating a good social media planner in your daily life is a good idea. Here are a few of them:
Saves Time And Effort
If you’re running a business or working on social media marketing campaigns, you don’t always have a lot of time for managing social media accounts. This includes searching for good content, making sure it’s good enough for your brand and then sharing it.
With the help of a planner, you can schedule ahead and make sure your accounts are consistently sharing fresh and interesting content. The good planners also offer to search for content on your behalf, making your job even easier.
Freedom And Flexibility
By using a scheduling tool, you have the freedom and flexibility to roam and to mix social media management with other tasks without elevating stress levels or workload.
It is easier to find top-performing content, compose posts and share them whenever you want to, and it’s all automated.
Cater To Your Audience
It is important for good marketers to have their target market in mind at all times. Instead of posting at a time when you have a minute between meetings or trying to get a post sorted before you sign off for the day, you can focus on choosing times that are going to have the most impact.
You don’t want to share a Facebook update or an Instagram story that is aimed at young professionals on a Thursday morning at 10.30 when the vast majority of your target customers or followers are likely to be at work, for example.
Simplicity And Consistency
A social media planner (that has a calendar) makes for a simpler and more consistent content sharing experience. You can find high-quality content, plan ahead and keep a record of what you’ve shared. Because you can schedule, your accounts can be consistent in the posting of new stuff. As a result, your followers and fans will be much more pleased with you. Also, you’ll gain a reputation as a brand that is reliable and can be trusted.
Our Top Pick – SocialPlanner
SocialPlanner offers a diverse range of features at affordable rates. Using this tool allows you to discover all the most popular and trending content at the time of your search. Finding top performing content from the web and social media is very important. You want to stay ahead of your competition in sharing relevant and fresh content.
With SocialPlanner, you can post the content you find directly to your social media accounts. Also, you can export the content to your desktop to use with another tool or manually. The tool makes it easy to use its calendar as well.
The user-friendly visual calendar is an integral part of this social media planner. Very well-organized, this drag and drop calendar is a must for all users looking to make the most out of their social media marketing, and get a clearer idea of their ongoing content plan for the future.
More than this, it allows you to see what other brands and businesses are doing well and what’s driving results for them. Which means you can take what others have done well, and do it better. That’s how you become successful in the world of business. Just as Picasso famously said – “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”
You can choose between three plans which range between $19 and $99, with a seven-day free trial.
Social Media Planner With Calendar Features – More Choices
After browsing through all the other options, we’ve settled on sharing the following planners with you. You should find everything you need with SocialPlanner, but if you want additional tools, try out one of the following:
DivvyHQ
This American-created and run tool is proud to offer users a simplified content creation process. It offers real-time updates on projects and performance. The calendar feature is very easy to use. The dashboard shows tasks that need to be finished, workflow management and more.
It should be noted that DivvyHQ is ideal for high-volume companies. It is possible that it might not be the best tool for smaller companies. The pricing does consider ‘the small’ guys though and varies between $25 and $195 a month.
Buffer
This is one of the longest-running tools in the field and has been going strong for 10 years now. Considered a veteran in the field, Buffer offers users many useful features. You can plan and publish content for many different platforms all in one place.
You can also coordinate your team and work on your social media marketing campaigns with Buffer’s useful tool. It allows you to schedule a different plan for each of your social media accounts.
The calendar offers you a view of all the content you’ve got scheduled and offers an interactive interface. Working with Buffer is easy and simple but it is also very versatile. You can expect to achieve a lot with this tool.
When it comes to Buffer’s fees, there are three business packages on offer, varying between $99 and $399 per month.
Hootsuite
This is another popular social media planner that is known all over the world and used by millions of marketing teams. Although it has a bit of a different approach to the standard calendar, it is still very efficient.
‘Streams’ are used rather than a typical calendar and each of your social networks can have a different one. You can make use of tabs to organise your streams and have a simplified experience. Hootsuite offers auto-scheduling, which helps your accounts stay active.
You can set up a content schedule and this will ensure that your content is shared when you want it to be. You can also upload your created or curated content onto Hootsuite in a CSV file if necessary.
Pricing is varied and kicks off at $29 a month up to $599 a month. There is also the option to have your own custom plan, which will obviously have a unique price. You get a 30-day trial to test out the tool before committing.
ContentCal
With this tool, you get an intuitive and simple experience that is focused on planning. You can plan, publish and analyse all your social media content with ContentCal. In addition, there is another feature called ‘Respond’ that allows you to reply to messages on your social media accounts.
Thanks to its scheduling features, this is a popular social media planner tool that will make your days much less complicated. You can drag your ideas onto the posting schedule and share it. Also, you get an ‘at-a-glance’ look at your calendar should you wish to quickly peek at what’s going on.
Pricing starts at $17 a month and can go up to $79 a month for the premium option. You can also choose the ‘Agency’ option, which is more custom and will vary depending on your needs.
Kapost
This is a social media planner tool more aimed at the ‘big guns’ and might not be suitable for smaller companies. However, if you have a generous budget, Kapost is definitely worth checking out.
It is one of the most well-known and trusted calendar tools on the market and has dealt with many important clients in the past. You get access to really powerful software when you sign up to work with Kapost. Workflow, execution and distribution are made much easier with this tool.
With many features, including a really good calendar, you won’t likely find yourself needing any additional tools when using this one. But, the pricing is quite steep. You can start with a fee of $3 500 and go higher from there. Costly, but ideal for big teams and companies.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is also a well-known and admired tool that has been around for about a decade now. It is considered a very formidable option and has worked with many important companies in the past.
The calendar feature that you have access to with this social media planner is quite the beast. You can use the ‘compose’ window to plan and schedule your content. Sprout Social makes use of advanced tools to enhance this experience. From this window, you can also post your stuff.
There is an automated scheduling feature that lets you plan and schedule your content as well. Also, the ‘ViralPost’ feature will calculate the best times to share your content for the best results.
You also get to choose an analytics package that makes getting insight so much simpler. The ‘Asset Library’ allows users to edit images as well. There really is a lot on offer from Sprout Social.
Pricing isn’t as steep either, with fees starting at $59 per month going up to $249 a month. You can try their free trial before you decide whether or not this is the tool for you.
How To Use A Social Planner
Now that you’ve been informed about the benefits of social planners with calendar features and know about the best on offer, you need to know how to make the most of them. We’ll briefly discuss the steps you need to take to prepare for using a social planner most effectively.
It is suggested that you conduct a social media audit. Before you can start to really use your social media planner, you need to determine a few things – the content you’ll use and the channels you’ll share them on. Of course, this will be influenced by your brand and marketing strategy.
You should establish where your audience is and what the most effective social media channels are for reaching them. Take into consideration the growth of the different platforms as well. Which of them has been showing the most growth over the past year? Are they attracting your audience? Let your audience lead you on this path.
Determine the types of content you’ll be posting by taking a look at your audience – which works best with them? You can choose between text, images, videos and links to external content. You may find that a mixture of all of these is the best approach.
After you’ve done all this, you can start using your planner and scheduler. This step will be determined by the tool you use. In most cases, you’ll be guided through this step, so pay close attention to the information shared by your chosen tool.
Conclusion
There you have it. The best social media planners with calendar features and how to use them. Now you just need to start using the knowledge you’ve been given here. It is suggested that you make use of the wealth of information we share with social media marketers.
We give guidance on how to get verified on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, discuss the most popular social media platforms to use for marketing as well as all the channels to help market your business. We also share useful social media promotion ideas for 2020, current trends to know about and tips on how to correctly use images on social media platforms. All this advice will go a long way to enriching your social media marketing campaign.
