The role social media plays in people’s lives continues to increase and shows no signs of slowing down, which has made it a valuable and necessary tool for businesses. However, with new social media outlets being introduced to the already vast number of existing platforms, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent presence on each one. For this reason, social media scheduling tools have become a requirement for businesses and are relied upon to keep social media accounts active and engaging while saving significant time and effort.

The leading social media scheduling tools are not only used to publish posts at certain pre-determined times but are also capable of utilizing sophisticated algorithms to determine things like optimal posting times, frequencies, and more. These valuable tools have the power to take your social media presence to the next level and significantly expand your company’s reach and audience. Here are our top five social media scheduling tools for 2023.

The Top 5 Best Social Media Scheduling Tools for 2023

SocialBee

A platform where you can create, schedule, publish, and analyze your social media posts from one central location. Since 2016, SocialBee has been one of the leading social media scheduling tools and is consistently adding to their wide stack of tools and features.

Pros: Manage up to 25 social media accounts in one place, flexible pricing, access to all social media profiles
Cons: Initial learning curve can be steep for some, can’t export reports unless you’re on the Pro plan, some have called the UI confusing

Agorapulse

A social media management tool that features publishing, detailed reports, team collaboration, social media monitoring, and more. Over 31,000 marketers and 11,000 companies trust Agorapulse to handle their social media management.

Pros: Easy-to-use interface, team collaboration, useful and high-detail reports
Cons: No free version, no post editing ability, no draft feature

Sprout Social

A social media management, marketing, customer care, and data and intelligence platform designed with ease of use in mind, simplifying social publishing, engagement, and analytics. Founded in 2010, Sprout Social is an experienced and established management solution that provides tools for every aspect of social media.

Pros: Well-organized dashboard, discovery feature helps expand your audience, useful analytics and reports
Cons: Limited to four social networks, no Instagram or LinkedIn support, higher cost than most competitors

Hootsuite

A social media management platform for building brand awareness, engaging with customers, and driving business results. Hootsuite was the world’s first social media management platform and has over a decade of experience helping businesses reach their customers efficiently across multiple platforms.

Pros: Access to the widest variety of social networks, useful app directory, schedule across multiple platforms at once
Cons: Lack of features on free version, UI requires longer learning curve

Scheduling Features to Look for

There are various features that should be considered a necessity for social media scheduling platforms, and others that provide you with valuable advantages over your competition.

Robust Scheduling: Let’s start with an obvious one—your scheduling features need to be flexible and intuitive. Important aspects include the ability to schedule posts on multiple platforms at once with no limitations on the number of scheduled posts on a paid plan. You also want your scheduling to be reliable, with little to no scheduled posts failing to be published.

Messaging: A social media management feature that can save you considerable time while keeping you organized is having all your messages from all social media platforms in one central location. Many leading platforms include dynamic messaging interfaces that allow you to easily manage all your social media inboxes.

Reporting & Analytics: It’s essential to know how well your social media posts are performing, and where they can be improved. The best social media scheduling platforms will include detailed reports on your posts and provide analytics and suggestions to increase your performance. For example, several platforms will analyze when your audience is most active and engaged on social media and suggest that you post during those times.

Intuitive Interface: Social media scheduling tools are designed to make social media management easier, not more difficult. Ensure that you and your staff are comfortable and confident operating on whichever platform you choose.

Supported Platforms: It’s crucial to ensure that whichever scheduling tool you choose supports every platform you have an account on. Also, don’t immediately rule out scheduling tools that do not include all social media platforms, as they only need to include the ones you actively use.

Trends in Social Media Marketing

Short Form Video and Bite-Sized Content

With TikTok and Instagram Reels rapidly growing in popularity, short form video is a clear trend to look out for in 2023. The ease of creation and solution for the decreasing human attention span have made short form video and bite-sized content a favorite among consumers and marketers alike.

Influencers & Micro Influencers

Utilizing the reach of influencers continues to be an effective form of social media marketing. Spending on influencer marketing is expected to increase going into 2023, as 80% of marketers find influencer marketing effective. Additionally, working with micro-influencers (typically less than 30,000 followers) has proven to be an extremely useful and cost-effective form of marketing.

Brand Authenticity is Everything

Presenting authenticity behind your brand and its message is no longer a consumer preference—it’s a requirement. 88% of consumers claim that authenticity is a key factor when deciding which brands to support. Additionally, consistently showcasing and standing behind your brand values and identity is essential and extremely valued by consumers, as consistent presentation of a brand has resulted in a 33% increase in revenue. Your campaigns and marketing material should have a consistent, singular voice that is well represented from the top to the bottom of your organization.

Social Media Commerce

One of the primary methods of converting prospects into online sales is by simplifying the buying process as much as possible. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by removing as many steps of the process as you can. Many social media platforms are now offering e-commerce solutions that allow companies to sell their products directly on the site to create a straightforward and efficient buying process. This is a trend that is only expected to pick up steam in 2023 as more companies begin to utilize this feature, so don’t get left behind!

Read our blog on 9 Social Media Marketing Strategies to Generate Leads for more tips on effective social media marketing.

Simplify Social Media Management

The amount of benefits that social media brings to a business has made it impossible to ignore for any company. However, between the increasing number of popular platforms and the post duration that consumers have come to expect, social media can become a time-consuming and tedious task to keep up with. Social media scheduling tools take away several of the pain points and time-consuming aspects of social media management and allow you to oversee all of your accounts in one central location. These tools provide businesses with competitive advantages over other companies not utilizing them and allow you to focus far more on the quality and performance of your content.

We hope this guide has provided value to you, and we encourage you to contact Vonazon if you require any further assistance selecting or onboarding a social media scheduling tool. Our social media experts can help you choose the perfect scheduling tool for your business and get you set up for success.