Social media promotion is one of the foundations of growing a blog. I mean, we all love Google traffic, but social media is also a valuable, consistent source of traffic if you use it correctly. And it's available to anyone starting on day one. So it's great for new bloggers.
However, it can be a huge time suck and get in the way of all the other tasks required to build a successful blog. That's where social media schedulers come in.
My favorite thing about SocialBee is the ability to repost the same (or variations) of a social media message over and over. That's not a feature you find in most social media schedulers which is unfortunate because it's such a time saver!
They also have a unique way of setting up your content, you set up categories and then set those categories to publish at certain times and on certain profiles. While it does take a while to set it up at first, it's extremely handy once it's up and running.
By switching to social media management software like SocialBee, you can automate your social media marketing efforts, letting you focus on content creation while consistently growing your social fanbase.
What Is SocialBee?
SocialBee is a social media management suite that began in 2016. If you’re a blogger or ecommerce store owner who wants to simplify and automate your social media strategy, SocialBee is for you.
The platform also offers social media training, content writing packages, and other “concierge services” that you can use to help spur your marketing efforts. But, at its core, SocialBee is a social media scheduling tool that helps you save time so you can focus on writing great content.
SocialBee lets you schedule blog and social media posts to major social media platforms, including:
- Facebook (profiles, pages, and groups)
- Instagram (business and personal profiles)
- LinkedIn (personal and company profiles)
- Google My Business (locations)
I use it to schedule posts to LinkedIn, Facebook, and the Facebook Group. I use Tailwind to schedule to Pinterest and Instagram.
SocialBee Features
SocialBee is a social media scheduling tool at heart. However, it’s more robust than a simple auto-scheduler where you just fill up a queue of articles to post. There are actually numerous features that help streamline and automate your social media promotion efforts.
1. Category Based Scheduling
SocialBee's scheduling works differently than other social media schedulers.
For most schedulers, you create social media posts, select the profile and time you want that post to publish and it simply creates a list based on date, and sometimes you can also see it in a calendar view. Pretty straightforward.
But SocialBee is different. It is organized around the type of post you are sharing rather than where the message will post.
So when you are setting things up, you decide what types of content you want to share, then choose where and when that particular category will post.
For example, I share new blog posts, old blog posts, memes, mentions on other blogs or media, quotes, promotions for my courses, and more.
Each one of those categories has its own feed. Here's a screenshot of what this looks like.
Other category ideas might be to group your best affiliate posts into one category, or your favorite posts from other bloggers into another.
Once you have this decided (and it can be changed at any time) you can decide when and where you want each of these categories to post.
Here's what a snapshot of my calendar looks like.
So, if you look closely, you can see that on Wednesday at 8 am my new post is shared to my Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and LinkedIn.
I'll admit, it feels complicated when you first start planning your content, but once you have it set up it makes a lot of sense. It's much easier to plan and ensure that you are posting varied and interesting content all the time.
Related: 3 Types of Content (Evergreen, Seasonal, and Current Events)
2. Evergreen Scheduling
Once you have your categories and schedule set up it's time to start scheduling some posts.
Click on one of the content categories to start creating a post. As you would expect, you can upload an image or video and write your social media message including hashtags and links.
But SocialBee goes a step further. You can create up to three variations of the same post and customize each post for the specific profile. For example, you can have a slightly different version for LinkedIn than Facebook.
You can also choose if you want the post to be put back in the feed after it's posted. I love this feature and what makes SocialBee standout from other schedulers. If you have some evergreen content it could just go around and around in the feed for as long as you want.
One thing I hate about social media is that you spend all this time creating content and it's gone in just a few hours. But with the option to recycle the posts it can live again — and you have a feed of ready made content going all the time.
This actually saves time. If your current scheduler doesn't allow for this then you aren't really saving time — you are just batching your social media.
But don't think that recycling your content makes it stale. You can set expiration dates for posts to remove them from your schedule. That way you don't have the same post going over and over for years. You could stop recycling it after, say, six months or after it's posted five times.
This is also useful if you’re promoting an upcoming event or course launch on social media but want to stop posting at a certain date.
I'm not aware of another social media scheduler that works this way. At least not at this price level.
Here's a screenshot of what the post creator looks like.
3. Custom URLs and Tracking
Using short links for social media marketing is important since you don’t want to clog people’s feed with massive links that are a jumble of characters. Additionally, short links can help you earn more money with your blog and affiliate marketing since the links are more enticing to click on.
I mean, which link would you trust more:
- www.hitpublish.com/SocialBee
- https://www.dpbulvw.net/click-8757220-12929751?
You get the idea.
Thankfully, SocialBee integrates with numerous URL shorteners, including:
- Bitly
- BL.INK
- JotURL
- Rebrandly
- RocketLink
You can also use SocialBee’s own URL shortener if you prefer.
I also like that SocialBee lets you set UTM parameters for each category you create. This lets you track the performance of your social media posts for every category.
For example, if you run a food blog, you can create categories for different cuisines and assign each category a UTM parameter. That way, you can see all of the social media traffic you get for different categories to learn what type of content people interact with the most.
Related: The 10 Best URL Shorteners — Shorten, Brand, and Track Your Links
4. Analytics
SocialBee provides analytics so you can keep track of what is doing well. Each week they send an email with a summary of what you posted and how much engagement each post received. There is also an analytics tab within SocialBee that you can check out any time.
It shows how often you posting on each profile and a list of the posts with how many likes, shares, or comments each post received.
I'll be honest, I personally don't pay too much attention to analytics for social media. I glance at them but I'm not obsessed. I have a feeling the analytics they provide would be pretty light for someone who is more concered with analytics than I am.
If you want a lot of information about your posts then you may be disappointed with their analytics.
4. Concierge Service
If you just want to use SocialBee to automate your social media marketing, it has all of the functionality you need.
But, if you’re trying to scale your blog or ecommerce business with additional channels, SocialBee’s concierge services might be of interest.
Currently, SocialBee offers various add-on services for variable monthly fees. Services include:
- Social Content Creation: Starts at $99 per month; get a social media specialist to create posts every week for you
- Content Marketing: Starts at $99 per month; get blog posts and use a copywriting service to improve your website
- Community Management: Starts at $99 per month; have a community manager for Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter
- Paid Ads: Starts at $249 per month; run paid advertising campaigns for Google and Facebook
Every service has different pricing tiers, so you get more of a service the more you pay. For example, the $99 per month social content creation service provides you with three posts per week. But if you pay $249 per month, you get seven posts per week.
I haven't used these services so I can't speak the quality of the work but it's an interesting add on feature. They do offer a 30 day money back guarantee so if you aren't happy you could get a refund. Keep in mind though that you can always hire a VA for this type work as well, which may be cheaper.
SocialBee Pricing
SocialBee has three monthly plans that provide different numbers of social profiles, content categories, and scheduled posts per category:
| Feature | Bootstrap ($19 Per Month) | Accelerate ($39 Per Month) | Pro ($79 Per Month |
| Social Media Platforms | All platforms | All platforms | All platforms |
| Workspaces | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Users Per Workspace | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Social Profiles | 5 | 10 | 25 |
| Content Categories | 10 | 50 | Unlimited |
| RSS Feeds | 10 | 50 | Unlimited |
| Posts Per Category | 1,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| Weekly Time Savings | 8 hours | 10 hours | 16 hours |
If you’re a solo blogger, the Bootstrap plan is likely enough to cover your main evergreen categories and any time-specific categories you want to promote. Having 1,000 posts per category also allows for a ton of blog content — likely more than you'll ever need.
SocialBee has a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 14-day free trial that doesn’t require your credit card. If you like SocialBee, you can also email the company to switch to yearly billing and get two months per year for free.
Pros and Cons
SocialBee is a comprehensive social media scheduling tool that relies on category-based scheduling to help you plan your marketing strategy. But, before deciding if SocialBee is right for you or not, it’s worth considering some advantages and disadvantages.
Pros:
- Works for all major social media platforms
- Category based scheduling
- Evergreen scheduling available
- Assign UTM parameters to categories
- Affordable beginner plan
Cons:
- Can be confusing to set it up for the first time
- Analytics are light
- Not as useful for Pinterest scheduling as software like Tailwind
SocialBee Alternatives
I enjoy using SocialBee to schedule and post my content to social media. But, there are numerous SocialBee alternatives that are better choices depending on your style and what platform you prioritize.
Buffer
Buffer is one of the most popular scheduling tools for Instagram and Facebook, and you can post Instagram stories and do hashtag research. It is a very easy to use scheduling tool, you create a post and schedule it. It doesn't have the option to recycle posts which I think is such a handy feature of Social Bee.
However, Buffer does have a free plan which is nice for new bloggers. On the free plan you get three social profiles and can have up to 10 posts per profile scheduled at a time.
Their lowest level paid plan is $15 a month and allows up to eight profiles and 100 posts per profile scheduled at a time.
Later
Later can schedule to any of your major social platforms (including TikTok) but seems to really specialize in Instagram. They have a lot of extra features for Instagram such as analyzing when it's best to post and help finding hashtags and shareable content.
They also have one of the most generous free plans out there and their paid plans are quite affordable as well. Their free plan offers one “social set”, which is one profile on each of the main platforms, and the ability to schedule up to 30 posts per profile at a time.
Tailwind
If Pinterest is an important source of traffic for your blog, Tailwind is the best Pinterest scheduling tool you can use. It allows you to schedule pins in advance and it has “smartloop” which allows you to repin content over and over.
They also offer communities that make it easy to find content from others to share and gets your content shared as well.
I use Tailwind to schedule both my Pinterest and Instagram posts.
Here's my full Tailwind review.
There’s nothing wrong with using multiple tools to handle your social media marketing. Just make sure monthly fees don’t get away from you. Growing a social media following is an investment for your blog, but if your traffic isn’t growing or converting, take a step back and reevaluate why your content isn’t working.
Want some more options? Here are the seven best free social media schedulers out there.
Summary
I think SocialBee is one of the most reasonably priced social media schedulers on the market. I also love the category-based scheduling and the ability to recycle your content. If you have an established blog and are ready to automate a large portion of your social media marketing, I hope my SocialBee review helps you decide if making the switch is worth it.
Just remember: it’s important to keep up with content creation while balancing your social media presence. This is the difficult yet crucial balancing act bloggers need to master to continue growing.
If you want a helping hand, you can check out my new course Consistent Content to learn how you can pump out amazing content while simultaneously marketing your blog.
