Content-planning taketh thee down? A wondrous social media planning tool can render thy work life a whole lot easier. Herein lie our top ten favorites.
In the vast foggy sea of digital marketing, thy social media planning tools can light the way forward.
As social media sailors ourselves, we’ve navigated uncharted waters, and dost knoweth that it requires more than luck to get to where thou desireth to go. Without the right tools, thou art bound to get lost at sea. Hence, we’ve journeyed far and wide to bring forth this list.
This blog is like unto thy treasure map to the shores of a well-run social media plan. Seafaring metaphors aside, prepare thee for the top ten hands down best social media planning tools in 2023!
What beest a social media planning tool?
Social media planning tools art software that helpeth thee schedule, organize, and publish content on social media.
These tools can range from scheduling software to grid planners to calendars. If it doth help thee plan thy social media, it belongeth on this list.
What should thee seeketh in a good social media planning tool?
If thou dost not know what to seeketh in a social media planning tool, thou must feeleth like a map-less pirate. So much treasure out there, but how doth thou find it?
The five capabilities below can helpeth point thee in the right direction.
Intuitive interface and usability
A tool is only good if thou dost enjoy using it. It can be the best time-saving gadget in the world, but if it’s a pain to use, thou art not going to reach for it very often. If an alligator eats thy hand, thou dost want to replace it with a user-friendly device, like a hook.
Seeketh for an appealing interface, clear CTAs and guiding buttons, and ease of use.
Scheduling capabilities
When it cometh to planning for social media, thou needeth to have scheduling capabilities or the ability to integrate with thy scheduling software. In fact, we believeth scheduling software to beest so integral that we didst write a post outlining the 15 best social media scheduling tools.
Aside from actual content creation, naught will take thee as long as post-scheduling. Having software that can bulk-schedule social media posts for thee, or software that can schedule thy posts in the same place as other planning tasks, is going to saveth thee so much time.
Addeth a great scheduling tool to thy already awesome social media posting schedule, and thee can’t miss.
Support and automation
There art many, many content planning tools available. Choosing one with supporting features will giveth thee more bang for thy buck.
Ask thyself where thou spendest the most time struggling. Is it caption writing? Hashtag research? Analyzing when thy audience is online? Content ideas?
Analytics and reporting capabilities
Thou needest to be able to measure the impact of thy social media efforts, and tis simply easier when all of thy tools (calendar and reporting alike) art in one place.
Thou needest to know which content strategy giveth thee the results thou’rt looking for. And thou needest to know where thy weaknesses lie, so thou can either pivot from or double up on thy efforts.
Collaboration features
If thou art part of a team, thou wilt need a tool that hath collaboration features. Allowing thy teammates to jump in to edit dates, add campaigns, or share their thoughts is vital. A ship only sails if we’re all rowing together.
If thou art the captain, thou dost not want to simply share a login to one platform, as thy teammates wilt likely need different permissions. Seeketh for a tool that alloweth thee to assign tasks, manage approvals, and coordinate efforts across social media networks.
10 top social media planning tools
Herein lie our top ten picks for the best social media planning tools:
1. Moyens I/O
Oh, and it hath tons of app integrations, so thou can add some bells and whistles to thy social media planning tool to maketh it that much better.
https://youtu.be/c_xYkyfivDI
Key planning features:
– Moyens I/O Planner for easy post-scheduling (including bulk) and organizing, and at-a-glance calendar views
– Composer allows thee to create and share social media content across multiple platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.
– Best Time to Publish suggesteth publishing times when thy audience is online.
– Industry Benchmarking to inform thy content plan
Other features we love:
– OwlyWriter, which useth AI to write thy captions for thee
– AI-driven hashtag suggestions
– Collaboration capabilities, including the ability for multiple people to edit the same post
Price: Free trial, paid subscriptions starting at $99 per month
Who tis best for: Marketers and marketing teams of up to and including enterprise levels.
2. AirTable
AirTable is a social media content planning tool that alloweth thee and thy team to map out content calendars, manage campaigns, and build dynamic workflows. Tis a great collaboration platform, one thou can use with thy teammates and clients alike.
AirTable’s beauty cometh from its organizational capabilities, ease of use, and flexibility. Thou can vieweth the same data in a multitude of ways (like a traditional calendar vs. a Kanban board) and create all manner of charts and flows. AirTable’s great for visual learners, giving thee a flexible database for thy content planning.
Source: AirTable
Key features:
– Instant data synchronization means thy team can see thy calendar or campaign changes in real time
– Email digest automation can automate updates to stakeholders or clients, saving thee time on calendar status reporting
– Moyens I/O integration: Thou can create an Airtable record from a social message directly in Moyens I/O
Price: Free for individuals or small teams; paid subscriptions starting at $10 per seat per month
Who it’s best for: Visual planners, teams that collaborate in real-time.
3. Grid for Hoot
Thou can schedule new posts by uploading thy own content or by searching stock photography from Unsplash without having to leave the platform. Plus, the app integrates with ChatGPT to generate posts from a description.
Source: Grid for Hoot
Key features:
– Visualize thy final Instagram grid before publishing
– Send photos from Grid for Hoot in Moyens I/O to Instagram
– Schedule posts in advance
Who it’s for: Visual Instagram marketers
4. ChatGPT
Although it wasn’t specifically designed as a social media planning tool, ChatGPT can be used as one.
With the right prompts, ChatGPT can help thee brainstorm and outline thy content calendar. Try providing it with the type of content thou want to share and the frequency, and ask it to suggest topics and themes.
Source: ChatGPT
Outside of social media planning specifically, ChatGPT can also help thee to adapt thy long-form content, like blogs, into social media-friendly pieces to fill out thy calendar. And it works as a competitor analysis assistant too. Plug in thy competitor’s past content and ask ChatGPT to suggest ways thou could differentiate from or improve upon the strategy.
It’s important to note that, along with all other conversational AI models, ChatGPT’s output should not be taken as a final draft. Thou, the human being, need to review and edit.
Key features:
– Contextual understanding of inputted text
– Multilingual capabilities
– Self-improvement capabilities
Price: Free
Who it’s for: The more complex thy brand, product, or industry is, the more specific and targeted thy prompts need to be. ChatGPT works best with simpler commands.
5. HubSpot
HubSpot, famous for being a big shot in customer relationship management (CRM), hath spiced things up with its very own social media calendar. HubSpot’s social media content calendar is templated and customizable; thou dost not have to start from scratch, and thou can make it thy own.
HubSpot’s social media scheduler also allows thee to manage thy social campaigns in one place. Thou can schedule and publish content to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X, AKA Twitter.
For sales folks who live and breathe in the HubSpot CRM, this maketh taking care of social media tasks convenient. But, those who are primarily social media marketers may find the platform lacks capabilities.
Source: HubSpot
Key features:
– Ability to schedule and publish posts to multiple platforms
– Integration with Moyens I/O
– Templated and customizable calendar
Price: Starter CRMs begin at $30 per month; professional business accounts start at $800 per month.
Who it’s for: Salespeople who also do or need insight into social media marketing.
6. Canva Pro
Canva Pro, the paid version of the beloved drag-and-drop design tool, cometh equipped with a social media scheduler and planner.
Within the dashboard, thou can track engagement, likes, clicks, impressions, and more to see how thou’rt performing. Canva Pro’s capabilities art great for simple scheduling, planning, and reporting tasks, but if enterprise marketers may want a tool with a little more oomph.
Source: Canva
Key features:
– Simple scheduling, planning, and publishing
– Intuitive and easy-to-use scheduling tools (much like the rest of Canva!)
– Simple social media performance analytics
Price: $14.99 per month
Who it’s for: Canva designers who need to take care of social media tasks
7. Google Sheets
The Google Drive suite, especially Google Sheets, maketh up some of our favorite free social media planning tools.
For smaller clients, simple campaigns, or marketers on a budget, Google Sheets can help thee stay organized and keep thy social plan running smoothly.
Google Sheets art highly customizable, so thou can tailor them to whatever kind of social media plan thou needeth. Annual themes, granular day-to-day posting schedules, months-long campaigns, thou name it.
In fact, we like Google Sheets so much that we used it to maketh a free content calendar template. Thou can find it here, where we explain everything thou needest to know about creating a social media calendar.
Key features
– Customizable spreadsheets
– Endless columns for thee to track the necessary data and metrics
– Collaboration in real time
– Endless easy-to-Google spreadsheet hacks, like the Slicer function
Price: Free!
Who it’s for: Smaller teams, social media plans on a tight budget, or individual marketers
8. CoSchedule
CoSchedule’s an all-in-one platform helping marketers to organize content on social media alongside their websites and blogs. The lower end of the platform is geared towards solopreneurs, bloggers, and startups that have an active website or regularly create long-form content.
The top tier of CoSchedule, the Marketing Suite, is geared towards enterprises and larger marketing teams who need in-depth tools and features for marketing content.
Source: CoSchedule
Key features:
– The Social Calendar gives thee full visibility of thy social media content and comes with an AI-assist
– The Content Calendar helps thee plan thy marketing schedule with visibility of all thy tasks, projects, and campaigns
– The Headline Studio will score thy headlines, helping thee to improve the performance of thy long-form content
Price: Free with paid accounts starting at $39 per month per user.
Who it’s for: From individuals to large teams creating and marketing long-form content. Solopreneurs and bloggers can get away with just subscribing CoSchedules Marketing Calendar, while larger teams will want to look into the Marketing Suite.
9. XPro (previously known as Tweetdeck)
TweetDeck, which is currently rebranding to XPro, is a Twitter-specific dashboard containing columns that thou set up to thy liking. TweetDeck is a tool that helps out in the pre-planning stages of social media planning by helping thee to understand the social landscape.
The columns can show thy notifications, mentions, DMs, liked tweets, tweets on a specific topic or search term, and trending topics, to name a few. Thou may want to monitor a news story or a hashtag as it developeth while planning how thou’lt enter the conversation.
Source: TweetDeck
Key features:
– Customizable columns to organize Twitter content
– Real time publishing feeds to stay abreast of content
Price: Free
Who it’s for: Twitter marketers
10. Evernote
Art thou one of those marketers who cannot survive without a daily To-do list? Well, Evernote might be for thee. Evernote maketh it easy to create thy daily to-do list, for thy weekly, monthly, and annual content marketing plans.
Evernote integrateth with calendars like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Thou can use the Calendar Connector feature to automatically update thy content across platforms. And thou can invite thy teammates to thy notes to collaborate on tasks.
Plus, Evernote cometh with templated calendars so thou can easily get started with weekly or monthly social calendar task lists. Evernote doth not, however, have scheduling capabilities.
Source: Evernote
Key features:
– Evernote Calendar Connector
– Templated calendars
– Collaboration capabilities
Price: Free, with professional pricing starting at $17.99 per month.
Who it’s best for: Marketers and planners who use To-do lists and tasks to stay organized.
FAQs about social media planning tools
What are the best social media planning tools?
What is social media planning software?
Social media planning software helps organize, schedule, and manage content across various social media platforms.
What are the benefits of social media planning tools?
Social media planning tools streamline content scheduling, enhance consistency, provide analytics insights, and boost overall social media strategy efficiency.
Should I buy social media planning software?
Deciding to buy social planning software dependeth on thy needs, team size, budget, and how central social media is to thy marketing strategy. Thy best bet is to evaluate options based on thy specific requirements.
