The way social media has evolved over the years is a fast growing industry. 3.5 billion were on some form of social media in 2019, equating to 45% of the current population. With such a wide population to gain traction from, actively using social media can be a great way to grow brand awareness. However, with a busy working schedule, time available to spend on social media can be limited. That’s where social media automation comes in.
What is Social Media Automation?
You might see this phrase and wonder what it means. With the ability to streamline posts so you don’t have to, social media automation is implementing software or tools to publish scheduled posts without any human operation. Through these tools, you can schedule a specific time that will help you create, find, or share a post to any social media platform.
10 Best Free Social Media Automation Tools
Now that you know what it means to automate social media posts, let’s look at the best free social media automation tools and what each one’s primary feature is. Read through the descriptions and find which one best suits your needs.
1. Hootsuite
A leading service among users, Hootsuite is a popular choice. It offers a free 3-day trial, so you and your team can use it to schedule your posts and monitor competition. You’ll also receive reports that analyze the effectiveness of your posts on any account. Hootsuite offers a free 30-day trial for their Professional and Team plans.
2. Buffer
Another one widely used is Buffer. This lets you use one dashboard that hosts all your accounts on different social media platforms. You can also include a “first comment”, where you can include hashtags you may not want to clutter your main caption. No credit card is required for 14-days, and you can cancel anytime.
3. Sprout Social
With a unified social inbox, all your notifications will come to one place. You can use the team plan to plan and execute content. It also helps you uncover trends and other insights to plan a marketing strategy. A free 30-day trial can get you started.
4. Agorapulse
Useful for tracking performance, Agorapulse includes an automated inbox assistant that assigns messages to be reviewed, hidden, or otherwise labeled. Another feature is the ability to queue content by time slot and topic for your own team to see. A free trial is available for all their tiers.
5. Crowdfire
Crowdfire sets you up by suggesting relevant articles and images that are based on topics of interest you choose. You can also create your own updates from your website, blog or e-commerce shops that help generate traffic back to you. They offer a limited free version to try out.
6. CoSchedule
This tool provides a social media calendar, where different team members can insert their tasks and schedule automatic social media posting. They can check off their tasks if it’s a multiple-person job, so that the next team member can take over. A 14-day free trial can get your company started.
7. IFTTT
“If this, then that” is a free tool that sets up rules for how various apps, channels, and tools trigger one another. The tool helps your business extend and expose your API, connect to over 630 brands, and embed these features directly in your own app.
8. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is great for content marketers. The service finds trending content topics and filters them based on location to help maintain relevance for your audience. Influencer marketing is also a growing field, BuzzSumo provides a way to find and start a connection with them. A free 7-day trial is a commitment free way to test it out.
9. Scoop.it
If you’re looking for curated content, Scoop.it is a free tool that will discover content from global sources and share them with your network. It also uses content and puts it into templated newsletters that you can then email to a client base.
10. Pocket
This tool acts as a virtual pocket for content you find on the internet. It lets you save articles, videos and stories, then curate them into a space where you can post from later, or read for your own enjoyment. A free account, along with a billed membership, allow you to access different features.
Bonus: Social Compass
That’s right—it’s yours truly! Whether or not you have used Spotlight Media Group’s services, you might be wondering why we include ourselves on the list.
Simply enough, Social Compass offers the ability to schedule, select, and publish content from a pre-curated library. With a variety of topics to choose from, the library will have a collection of articles, videos, images and more to select for quick auto post social media. You can also create your own content by directly uploading content you want to share from your computer or phone, or copy and paste any URL to see a generated preview. Included in Social Compass is our new tool, Compass Create. Templates and other elements are pre-loaded into the tool, available for you to customize and create a graphic, making it a one-stop shop for branded social media posts and sharing them to all your platforms.