You have a rough idea about what you want to promote but finding the best social media scheduling tools is proving difficult.

Each time you do a search online to help you save time with scheduling content you are presented with dozens of options.

In fact, you are beginning to think that you will need a tool for each social platform.

It is possible that you have seen a number of reviews recommending an awesome tool but the price tag was jaw dropping.

As if planning out your social media content wasn't bad enough you never realised that choosing a tool would be so time consuming.

What if there was a way for you to know what key features to look out for when choosing a tool that will save you time and heartache.

In this post, you will learn what you need to have in place before choosing a scheduler, which ones to choose and why.

Also, how to use them to save you hours, constant overwhelm as well as unnecessary trial and error in the long run.

Disclosure: Please note that this post may contain affiliate links which means that if you buy one of my recommended products I get paid a commission for sharing the link at no additional cost to you.  I only recommend products that I have tried myself and have experienced success.

Why Use Social Media Scheduling Tools Anyway?

In case you never knew these tools existed, social media scheduling tools are apps or software to help you automate posting to social media platforms.

There are broadly two schools of thought when it comes to posting content to social media.

The first group believes firmly that posting to social media should be done 100% manually in order to get more reach.

However, the second group sanctions that it is okay to use third-party scheduling tools as long as it is combined with regular manual posting.

I am a firm believer that small business owners should not become slaves to social media platforms.

This means that it should be okay to schedule some content then post some manually and engage with your followers.

We all have a life to live so it would make sense to automate daily promotion as much as possible so that you can spend time doing what you love.

Social Media Marketing Pre-work

Before looking at all the amazing tools that are available to help you and me to automate social media marketing the content needs to be mapped.

In other words, social media scheduling tools are just pieces of software to help you automate tasks.

It is important to realise that once you sign up for these tools there is a certain expectation for them to be effective.

The most important thing you need to have are business objectives or goals about what you hope to achieve from using social media.

After you know an understand your objectives and goals then it is time to map out the content.

This may sound obvious but your content should have a direct correlation to your goals and objectives.

For example, if your goal is to launch a course or increase membership sales then the content inside your plan should reflect that objective.

Let's spend some time looking at an example of a 90-day plan to help you get your content on point.

90-Day Social Content Planning Example