Social media is an essential component of successful digital marketing strategies. From live streaming to your fan base to creating viral rich image campaigns, social media provides fast and potentially lucrative access to a wide audience.
However, managing all your social media accounts effectively to get your message in front of your audience can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are many automated social media tools available to help you maintain and grow your online presence.
Dlvr.it
Dlvr.it is an easy-to-use tool that automates social media tasks. It works by connecting RSS feeds to social media profiles and then auto-posting articles, photos, and videos to your social networks based on the schedule you define.
Major Features
- Automatically share new content: Add your blog RSS feed and any other blogs whose new content you would like to share.
- Recycle social media posts: Add your best photos, posts, and articles. After an item is posted, Dlvr.it will recycle it back into Everqueue.
- Auto hashtags: Enter the best hashtags for each content feed. Dlvr.it will automatically include them with your posts.
- Google My Business auto-posts: Schedule and automate posts, latest offers, updates, and promotions directly to Google Maps and search.
- Schedule social media posts in bulk: Search the Internet for blog posts, photos, and articles you want to share. Import them in bulk instantly, schedule when you want to post them, and customize with attribution and hashtags.
- Share and promote your blog posts: Connect your WordPress blog, search your blog for the best posts, schedule them for sharing and resharing on social media.
- Use the Chrome Extension to find content and share it instantly or put in your dlvr.it queue.
Pricing
The Basic plan is free forever. It includes two platforms, three daily posts per social account, three site feeds, 15 queued social items, and feed updates every three hours.
Dlvr.it also offers two premium options:
- Pro account for $8.29/month (billed annually)
- Plus account for $24.88/month (billed annually)
Limitations
Dlvr.it is not as robust as other automated social media tools, and its analytics only offers follower stats and click stats. It doesn’t provide in-depth demographics of followers.
The free version is very limited. Most of the advanced tools require a paid upgrade.
Outstanding Feature
It is very convenient and saves time. Users specify the RSS feeds, connect their social accounts, and set the intervals. Dlvr.it does the rest for you automatically according to the schedule you specify in the settings.
Buffer
Buffer is an app to help you manage your social media accounts. It is an automated social media scheduling tool to help brands build and handle multiple social media teams and accounts integrated into one dashboard.
Major Features
- Scheduling: create a publishing schedule for each social media account.
- Tailored posts: tailor your posts for each social channel.
- Calendar: See an overview of all content scheduled for posting.
- Collaborate: Work with teams to create draft posts, provide feedback, stay in sync, and refine content.
- Instagram: Plan, schedule, and post and repost directly to Instagram.
- Reminders: Plan posts in advance and get reminders to post natively.
- Simplicity: Easy-to-use interface and simple to set up an account.
- RSS feeds: Add feeds from blogs and easily share content.
- Simple analytics: It’s easy to see which posts are performing the best.
- Browser extensions: Makes sharing content quick and easy. It is currently supported on Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
Buffer can also be integrated with in-house collaboration tools like Chatter and Microsoft Teams so you can share content throughout your own private social or internal business networks.
Pricing
Buffer offers three premium plans (paid monthly or annually), free trials and a basic free option.
- The Free account allows users three social media accounts, ten scheduled posts, and one user.
- Pro: Billed monthly at $15/month or $144 billed annually ($12/month) includes eight social accounts, 100 scheduled posts, and one user.
- Premium: Billed monthly at $65/month or $663 billed annually ($56/month) includes eight social accounts, 2000 scheduled posts, and two users.
- The Business plan is for larger teams and costs $99/month (billed monthly) or $1,010 billed annually ($85/month). It includes 25 social accounts, 2000 scheduled posts, and six users.
Limitations
Buffer focuses on seamless scheduling and isn’t as robust as some other automated social media tools. Some of the advanced features it does offer such as social interaction and analytics are not included in the free version.
Outstanding Feature
Buffer users point out that the tools are very intuitive and easily integrate with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn. They also like the responsiveness of the customer support team.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is an all-in-one platform that enables users to schedule and curate content, measure social ROI (Return On Investment), and run social media ads.
Major Features
- Scheduling: Keep your social media accounts active and save time by scheduling posts.
- Curate content: Find, manage, and share content and images on social media.
- Analytics: See the performance of your social media efforts across channels tracked by timeframes and create custom reports.
- Promote: Create and manage promoted campaigns from the same dashboard used to manage organic social content.
- Monitor: Follow topics that matter to you and create custom streams of organized content.
- Manage teams: Effectively collaborate with flexible assignment and approval of workflows.
- Secure: Set custom permission levels and get immediate security notification alerts.
Pricing
Hootsuite offers a tiered pricing plan starting with a limited free account. Each paid level includes a free 30-day trial.
- Free: Three social profiles, 30 scheduled messages, one user.
- Professional: $29/month, ten social profiles, unlimited scheduling, one user.
- Team: $129/month, 20 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, three users.
- Business: $599/month, 35 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, five to ten users.
- Enterprise: Custom solutions.
Limitations
Hootsuite includes a lot of useful tools. However, there is a tradeoff in that the dashboard is complex and not very user-friendly. The most powerful features offered by Hootsuite are only included for enterprise plans. The analytic and reporting tools in the free and lower cost pro plan are limited.
Outstanding Feature
Hootsuite includes a wide variety of features in its comprehensive tool to make it easier to manage social media activities for multiple clients or accounts.
Meet Edgar
Easily schedule and automatically share your content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn with Meet Edgar.
Major Features
- Auto variations: Edgar will find and pull quote-worthy text from blogs or articles for you at the click of a button.
- Browser extensions: Automatically generate pre-written posts directly from the source with Meet Edgar’s Chrome extension and a bookmarklet for Firefox and Safari.
- Category scheduling: To easily sort your content, use color-coding.
- Content library: Posts are not deleted once posted. They are saved in your own content library for re-sharing.
- Reshare content: Meet Edgar will continue to publish your content even when you reach the end of your queue.
- Upload and edit automatically: Create a content library from many sources such as podcasts, YouTube, and RSS feeds.
- Photos and videos: Add single or multiple image posts and videos to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Time-sensitive or evergreen content: Use any post or promotion once by giving it an expiration date or re-use it.
- A/B Testing: Test different messages using click data and variation analytics.
- Report: Get a weekly email report of social stats, including clicks and follower counts.
- Link shortener: Meet Edgar has its own link shortener and also integrates with Bitly and Rebrandly.
Pricing
Meet Edgar has one subscription price at $49/month. They are also offering an introductory four-month promotional offer to new customers for $29/month (saving of $20/month). The subscription includes:
- 25 social media accounts.
- Smart composer to automatically write status updates for you.
- Unlimited content library.
- Organize content with unlimited categories.
- Access to premium social media courses.
Limitations
Meet Edgar only works with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Another limitation is users can’t retweet, share posts to other social networks, or comment through the platform. Some users think the price is too high.
Outstanding Feature
Users will never run out of content. Meet Edgar’s auto-scheduler will pull posts from your unlimited content library.
Before you can decide which is the best automated social media tool for your needs, you must know what your needs are. Start by focusing on the tools that can help you automate what you are already doing.
There is no need to use a platform that offers lots of bells and whistles if you don’t have an immediate need for them. Once you have that nailed down, analyze how you can enhance what you are currently doing, and which tools offer the features you will need to improve your social media marketing strategy.