The internet is immensely competitive. So, while it’s nice to focus on writing, you also need to promote your content if you want to build an audience.
But if you’ve ever tried managing several social media platforms simultaneously, you know how time consuming it is. Between creating content, writing captions, and actually posting, you’re potentially looking at hours of extra blogging work every week.
Not to mention every time you go online to post something you get sucked into social media rabbit hole.
Thankfully, there are numerous free social media schedulers you can use to automate a massive part of your workflow while still effectively promoting your blog — and saving your sanity.
The Best Free Social Media Scheduling Tools
Many free social media schedulers use a freemium model. This means certain features are free but you have to pay to access every feature or unlimited post scheduling.
However, you can still schedule social media posts for free with beginner plans to keep costs down while growing your blog. When you’re ready to upgrade, the following platforms also offer affordable monthly plans to help you scale on social media.
1. Later
If you want a generous, free social media scheduler that also helps you brainstorm content ideas, you need to try Later.
With Later, you can quickly create a content map and post schedule with Later’s visual planning tool. Essentially, it’s a calendar where you drag-and-drop content onto a posting timeline. Later also provides hashtag suggestions and outlines the best times to post.
If you run out of content ideas, Later also has you covered. You can find content to reshare by searching for specific profiles and hashtags. Later also lets you use Unsplash photos to beef up your text-based posts.
In terms of pricing, Late’s free plan includes:
- One social set (includes Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest)
- 30 scheduled posts per social profile
- One user
Plus, Later lets you create a clickable Linkin.bio button for your Instagram profile that sends clickers to a landing page with your links. If you sell products for your blog, this feature helps you turn Instagram traffic into more revenue.
If you want greater scheduling capacity, paid plans start at $15 per month. Unlimited scheduling costs $40 per month.
Later’s free version doesn’t have hashtag suggestions or posting time recommendations. But 30 posts likely covers at least a week of content, so you can use Later to save time and simply refresh your content schedule once per week.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a long-standing favorite in the world of social media management. With Hootsuite, you create and schedule social media posts, make content calendars, interact with followers, and even launch Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads from the platform.
All of this functionality makes Hootsuite versatile; massive publications and independent bloggers alike use Hootsuite to handle their social media accounts.
Plus, Hootsuite has a free social media management plan that includes:
- One user
- Two social accounts
- Up to five scheduled posts
Five posts isn’t much, but if you just want to automate one post a week to a specific channel, Hootsuite’s free plan suffices.
The Professional plan unlocks unlimited social media scheduling, 10 social accounts, and follower messaging for $49 per month. You can use the 30-day free trial to test if Hootsuite is the social media scheduler you’re looking for.
3. Buffer
Buffer is another leading social media management tool that lets you schedule posts for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Like Hootsuite and Later, you can also reply to comments and engage your followers right from Buffer rather than logging into individual platforms.
Buffer uses a calendar-style post scheduler like other popular social media management tools. You can create content right in Buffer, add it to your post schedule, and manage all of your social accounts from one central dashboard.
Buffer’s free plan includes:
- 3 social channels
- 10 scheduled posts per channel
- One user
Buffer’s free version doesn’t include hashtag research, Instagram stories, or Pinterest. A lack of Instagram stories and hashtags is a downside. As for Pinterest, you’re better off using Tailwind, the go-to Pinterest scheduling tool, over any free social media scheduler if Pinterest is your focus.
If you want 100 scheduled posts and Pinterest support, Buffer costs $15 per month. For the full software suite, it’s $65 per month, putting Buffer on the pricier side.
Overall, Buffer is a middle ground between Hootsuite, which doesn’t offer much scheduling capacity for free users, and Later, which basically has the same capacity as Buffer but is more flexible in terms of channels.
4. TweetDeck
If you rely on Twitter for driving blog traffic and networking with other bloggers, TweetDeck is a must-use tool.
This free social media scheduler only works for Twitter, as the name suggests. In a nutshell, TweetDeck transforms your Twitter homepage into a powerful dashboard with real-time timeline updates, easy inbox access, notifications, and a trending tab.
You can also customize your homepage with:
- Lists and collections
- Likes
- Mentions
- New followers
- Messages and mentions for all your Twitter accounts
Finally, you can publish right from TweetDeck and schedule Tweets.
I like TweetDeck because it centralizes everything. So, when you’re crafting posts, you can pepper in trending hashtags, engage with recent followers, or chime in on the latest industry news.
TweetDeck is 100% free, so if you’re a frequent Twitter user, it’s the perfect social media scheduling tool to try.
Related: 15 Fast and Free Ways to Drive More Blog Traffic
5. Socialoomph
Most free social media scheduling tools inevitably get you to pay because they limit scheduling capacity.
In contrast, Socialoomph is one of the only scheduling tools that offers unlimited posting with a free account. As a free user, you get:
- One social profile
- Unlimited post scheduling
- Basic posting features and account management (so no fancy RSS imports, just basic social posting)
Additionally, you can only publish up to three posts per hour. But if you’re only active on one platform, Socialoomph lets you create a massive content queue, set it, and forget it.
Plus, Socialoomph works with a variety of social media platforms, including:
- Discord
- Mastodon
- StockTwits
A lack of Instagram support is a notable downside. However, integrations with community-based websites like Reddit, Discord, and Mastodon are useful if you’re an admin of a group and want to regularly publish content for members.
If you want 10 social profiles, 60 posts per hour, and more in-depth posting options like using RSS feeds, Socialoomph costs $25 per month.
I’d probably go with SocialBee or a premium plan with Hootsuite or Later before paying for Socialoomph. But if you only care about one social platform, Socialoomph is one of the best free social media schedulers out there.
6. Creator Studio
Sometimes, the easiest way to schedule social media posts for free is to stay on-platform.
A prime example of this is Facebook’s Creator Studio. This free content management tool lets you create and schedule content for Facebook and Instagram. You draft posts with Creator Studio just like publishing a post on your Facebook page or Instagram account, except you can schedule them. Like other social media marketing tools, you can view recent comments and engage with your followers right from Creator Studio.
And, in true Facebook fashion, analytics is the name of the game. Creator Studio lets you track stats like:
- Total minutes viewed for videos
- Follower growth
- Total engagement
- Audience demographics
Video content is a focal point of Creator Studio. Firstly, you can actually make money with your video content if videos are at least three minutes long and show ads. Plus, you can create and schedule videos for IGTV. Support for Instagram stories is also coming.
Tools like Later and Buffer are faster for creating mass amounts of scheduled content. But if you want to avoid third-party software and rely heavily on video, I’d stick with Creator Studio.
Learn more about Creator Studio.
7. Post Planner (Best Budget Choice)
Free social media scheduling platforms either limit your scheduling capacity or how many social networks you can use. And, for most bloggers, this probably means switching to a paid scheduling tool at some point.
But if you still want to keep costs down, Post Planner is your most budget-friendly option.
The Starter Plan is only $4 per month and includes:
- Three social profiles (includes Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter)
- 300 scheduled posts
- 12 posts per social profile per day
- One user
Post Planner also lets you republish evergreen content, so you don’t even have to rework your schedule queue too often. More expensive plans let you curate and reshare other social media content within your niche automatically to keep your feeds more active.
If you’re a blogger who wants to post to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest a few times per day, this $48 per year plan has you covered. You have to pay upfront for the entire year which is the only downside.
Learn more about Post Planner.
Bonus: SocialBee
SocialBee isn’t technically a free social media scheduling tool since the only free plan is a 14-day free trial. But it's what I use here at Hit Publish and it's an inexpensive yet comprehensive way to schedule social posts and repost your evergreen content.
With SocialBee, you create content categories to automate social media posting. You create a schedule and feed in the different categories and SocialBee pulls from the designated feed at the set time.
For example, if you’re a food blogger, you can make content categories for different types of recipes, cocktails, and desserts. You could set it to pull from the “quick and easy recipes” on Monday, “tacos” on Tuesday, “product reviews” on Wednesday, “chicken dinners” on Thursday, “cocktails” on Friday, and “desserts” on Saturday.
You can set posts to publish over and over on rotation through the feed, or only publish a set number of times. SocialBee also lets you add post variations like new images or text to refresh your content.
SocialBee works with Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and even Google my Business.
What makes SocialBee a useful social media scheduling tool is how much time you save on content creation. You can upload posts with a CSV file and from a RSS feed of your recent blog posts. The CSV upload takes a bit of getting used too since it’s entirely text-based, but it’s the fastest way to beef up your content calendar.
For pricing, SocialBee’s cheapest plan starts at $19 per month and includes:
- One user
- Five social profiles
- 10 content categories
- 1,000 posts per category and evergreen reposting
According to SocialBee, this saves eight hours per week on average. If various free social media scheduling platforms fall short, SocialBee is the best paid solution to try.
Related: SocialBee Review: Why I Use This Social Media Scheduling Tool
Summary
Social media is just one part of the blogging puzzle. To find success, you still need to learn skills like SEO and actually write consistently (which my course Consistent Content can help with!)
But there’s something to be said for working smarter, not harder. If you currently spend hours of your week publishing social media content, try one of the free social media schedulers I covered in this post.
Even if a scheduling tool supplements your posting strategy rather than replacing it, the right tool can save hours of effort per week without costing a penny.
