Content Scheduling and Why Your Marketing Depends On It

I say it constantly, I schedule everything. 

If you are relying on your memory to adhere to a posting schedule, you’ll fail. 

This might sound really pessimistic, but there isn’t an entrepreneur out there that has the mental wherewithal to run their business, lead their team, stock their shelves, fulfill orders, pay their bills, AND remember to post on their stories every hour or make a daily reel. You’ll be lucky if you even get a post up every single day, let alone make sure it happens at the most optimized time. 

This is why I use a variety of content scheduling apps and make all of my content at once. 

Honestly? It’s a lot of work. It takes me 4-6 hours to complete a month’s worth of content and then another couple of hours to schedule it. It’s a task that usually takes up the first day or two of my month and then I can forget about it. It’s a lot less work than spending 30 minutes a day trying to figure out what to post and trying to take a photo. 

In this blog, I’m going to go over some of the scheduling apps, why I like them (or why I don’t), and how you should use them. I can also give you an idea of the overall cost and whether it’s worth spending the money. 

I would like to let you know that I am not affiliated with any of these companies or being paid to promote them. If you sign up, I don't get any kickback. I’ll just have the satisfaction of knowing you found an app that works for you! 

Content Schedulers

There are a lot of scheduling tools on the internet that will allow you to push to any social media platform in bulk. Some are admittedly better than others. I’m going to cover some of the big ones, plus options that are built into some of the websites you may already use. 

Canva

This is a tool that I use every day for myself and my clients. It’s primarily a content creation tool, but there are some built-in capabilities that allow you to come full circle once the content is complete. With a paid Canva Premium account you can use their library of stock videos, music, and photos for your own designs. It’s an extremely helpful tool when you’re not completely ready to create your content or unsure of what licensing rights you’re able to share for your business. 

Along with the ability to schedule posts directly from the app, Canva allows you to give live presentations, edit videos (both stock and your own), resize videos and photos with one click, trim and split clips, record online video, edit and convert PDFs, animate text for stunning graphics, edit photos, add texture, and even manage your brand identity by creating guidelines that serve as a default. 

There isn’t a lot of downside with Canva, it’s one of my favourite tools and I use it daily. The photo editing is of course not as robust as something from Adobe, but it’s good enough for social media content. It’s intuitive to use but does take some patience and time when you’re first learning how to create designs. Like any skill, practice makes perfect, and eventually, the content will be a snap to create. 

Though I don’t personally use their content planner, I do find it a little clunky. It’s hard to schedule many posts at once. But, if you’re only doing a one-off post Canva does have the ability to publish to most major social media platforms. 

My recommendation: Stick to using Canva for creating your content, then export it to another platform for scheduling. Use this particular tool if you only need to schedule a few posts at a time on one particular platform. 

Price: $16.99/month CAD, the scheduler comes with the Premium plan. 

Buffer

I used Buffer for a long time, nearly six years, so I’ve seen all of its updates and current iterations. There are a lot of really great features in Buffer, but one of my favourites (and why I used it for so long) was the ability to write a caption one time and then edit for each social media platform. It saves you so much time and keeps you from having to write it out in a document to copy and paste everything. Buffer publishes to most popular social media platforms and is quite intuitive to use. 

There are some helpful features built into Buffer’s interface that measure your social media analytics in an easy-to-interpret way, schedule your content ahead of time, and respond to comments directly in the app. Because of the analytics, it’s easy to see growth on your profiles and adjust strategy from there. 

We moved on from Buffer due to some inconsistent scheduling with Instagram. I wasn’t always able to add a first comment or the location tool was buggy at best. This isn’t a huge hindrance, but when you schedule for multiple accounts it can get irksome. Buffer also got expensive quickly with multiple accounts, but unless you’re managing 10+ accounts this isn’t a huge barrier. 

My recommendation: If you are just publishing to 3-4 accounts for your own business, use Buffer. It’s straightforward and has all the bells and whistles necessary to manage your social media effectively. There’s minimal downside if you’re just looking to maintain a consistent posting schedule.

Price: This does vary. The free plan is a good option if you’re only looking at posting a few times per day, however with only 10 posts per social media channel, this can get very restrictive. I wouldn’t sign up for the free plan unless you’re just looking for a trial period with the app, because you will eventually want to move up to the paid plan. 

The Essentials Plan is $5/month per social channel. So $15/month for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Keep in mind, Buffer is billed in USD. 

Later

I found Later on a whim, looking for Instagram schedulers that would also give me the ability to preview the profile. I had recently taken on a client that wanted to curate a beautiful aesthetic on her page and I needed to be able to see how the posts were flowing together outside of the copy in the captions. 

Later is a very dynamic scheduler, pretty much made for Instagram. It allows you to generate relevant hashtags based on popularity right in the app, save captions for other social profiles, and scheduling is easy with drag-and-drop functionality. All of your photos are saved in a gallery, so if you ever need to reuse a photo for a story or something like that, it’s waiting for you. 

Later also sends out emails tracking your analytics and can make recommendations about when to post. Out of all of the tools I’ve mentioned, this is my personal favourite. It’s the most pricey, but I think the cost is worth it if you’re managing multiple accounts on one social platform. There is little to no downside outside of the cost with Later, I really do think it’s intuitive and simple to use for every level of user. 

My recommendation: If you’re managing multiple Instagram profiles, want the ability to save your photos in the app, or simply want to preview your timeline before it’s published, choose Later. If you’re focusing HEAVILY on Instagram growth, CHOOSE LATER. I highly recommend this tool. 

Price: Anywhere from $8-$40/month with additional social sets being purchased separately. Keep in mind again that Later is billed in USD. 

Facebook Business Suite

Built directly into your Facebook page, Facebook Business Suite allows you to schedule ahead of time, even timing the boosts. If you have your Instagram connected, you can post to both.

Personally, I find Facebook Business Suite rather clunky. I find it hard to work with and it takes a tedious amount of time to get all of the media uploaded and captions written. However, it covers Facebook and Instagram easily in one fell swoop. I'm not going to go on about this tool because, to be frank, I just don't like it.

My recommendation: It’s free. So it’s better than nothing, but definitely not the best on this list. Consider this tool if you just need to schedule a one-off or if you have zero budget for a post scheduler. I wouldn’t recommend using this as a longstanding solution.

Again, I’m not affiliated with any of these tools and none of the links you click will put money in my pocket. So choose what is best for your business and know that there aren’t a lot of ways to go wrong as long as you’re still posting!

If you need more help, Grizzly Marketing is running one-on-one sessions with business owners and marketing professionals to help them develop a marketing plan. We are covering everything to do with scheduling content as well, so if you have any questions about a plan that works best for you, we’re happy to help. Simply call us today for a free 15-minute consultation call and if you like what you hear, we can set up a time to chat more!

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As always, if you need any help… you know where to find me.