It’s all about social media schedulers for authors to find what’ll work best for you, including answering various questions if new to these time-saving tools.
The story of an author… Is this you?
You’ve got a new book coming out soon and you want the world to know all about it. The first place many authors go to promote their books is on the socials. For some, that means getting up at 4 am to post the cover image of your book to Facebook, to ensure you make the best posting times. Then you’ll share that same image on Instagram at 5:30 a.m. In between tweeting over on Twitter, while trying to work out what board fits your book best on Pinterest. Then there are stories, reels, TikToks, shorts, DMs and… You drop your forehead to your writing desk at midnight, trying to get unstuck from this social media loop that’s killing your writing time.
What if I told you there was an easier solution?
A solution that shares your book promotions to various social media platforms at the one time, saving you precious writing time.
It’s called the social media scheduler, and it was love at first sight, the day I stumbled upon these amazing tools that work well for authors.
WHAT IS A SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULER FOR AUTHORS:
A social media scheduler is a tool that helps you schedule your content (those book promotions) across various social media platforms, any time you like, to multiple account names, and making it easier to manage for those authors writing under various pseudonyms.
3 REASONS WHY YOU NEED A SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULER:
Need is a harsh word, and so is the term can’t live without. Well, when it comes to these tools, they should come with a warning label that says, once you use these puppies you’ll never know how you coped with social media scheduling before. So, here are 3 out of a gazillion reasons why these tools work for you:
#1. TIME.
That’s right, social media schedulers for authors will save you time.
Your. Precious. Writing. Time.
Instead of logging on to social media seventy-one-thousand times a day, you can link all of your social media accounts in one place to load and schedule your work from there.
#2. IT’LL HELP YOU STAY ORGANISED.
You’ll never have to wonder if you posted to Twitter, and did you send those 5 out of 10 TikToks? You can see where and what content you’ve posted months ago. And some schedulers also have a buitl-in filing system, making it easier for you to find your past content, which is perfect when you want to run a last-minute book sale.
#3 IT’S A TOOL THAT’LL DO THE JOB FOR YOU.
No more fiddling with Facebook at 4 am, instead use that time to get elbow-deep in that epic scene in your new book. A social media scheduler will post your book promotions when and where you want, no matter the time zones. Some social media schedulers are so clever, they’ll even recommend the best posting times for you and have templates that’ll save you even more time.
3 COMMON QUESTIONS FOR USING A SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULER FOR AUTHORS:
Of course, there are many more questions on this topic, but we kept it short, as this is a really long post!
#1. CAN I KEEP MY PERSONAL PRIVATE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT WHEN USING THESE TOOLS?
Sorry. No. Most social media schedulers will only work for business accounts, so think about switching over from personal to business. Scary, huh? But think of it this way, it’ll make you a professional author then.
#2 ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC TOOLS THAT’LL HELP AN AUTHOR?
Great question. So glad you asked. It’s the basis of what you should look for when considering enlisting the help of a social media scheduler, it’ll help you narrow down your choices from the many styles of social media schedulers out in the world begging for you to try them. So, to make it easier for you, look for a basic set of tools such as:
- a calendar, that’s as simple as using Google Calendar to keep track of your scheduling days
- a content library that not only files your content but allows you to repurpose your content
- it must connect you to the various social media platforms that YOU use
- and a bonus is if they have some swanky analytics tool so you can learn what is working for you or not.
#3. WILL FACEBOOK HATE ME FOR USING AN OUTSIDE TOOL TO POST?
Facebook hates everyone, so don’t take it personally. And to answer your question, no. According to Agorapulse there is no penalty for using these social media scheduling apps on various platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
HERE ARE 10 SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULERS WE TESTED AS AUTHORS:
As mentioned before, there are many types of social media schedulers on the market. Some are more complex than the internal engine designs of a Tesla! Designed for full-time social media managers who run campaigns for various large companies, where those types of schedulers come with a hefty designer-label price tag, too.
What follows is from an author’s point of view.
These reviews are specific to the writer who does it all themselves, the bootstrapping budget-conscious writer, or that aspiring author about to release their first book.
So we went for the simplest social media schedulers, especially if you’re new to using one of these amazing tools.
We also corralled a few bestselling authors for cocktail hour and asked them for their recommendations.
What follows are the results, in random order.
#1 LATER:
Links to social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn
Pros: Easy to use. Amazing for Instagram for scheduling stories, reels, and posts. Allows the Linkin.bio to become your virtual book store. It also allows for storing #hashtags and tagging to help you find what you need quicker. Plus, their newsletter keeps you up to date with current trends—especially as social media is always changing, and they’re quick to react to these changes.
Cons: Only allows for images only with Twitter and not just message tweets.
Pricing: Free — $18 USD per month
Check it out here>>
#2 FACEBOOK CREATOR:
Links to social media platforms: Facebook and Instagram
Pros: Schedules to Facebook groups and stories. Instagram stories and carousel posts. As it’s constantly being pushed to use by Facebook, it’s easy to use once you have set up your business account for both Facebook and Instagram.
Cons: Only for Facebook and Instagram.
It’s a challenge to set up and link your Facebook and Instagram pages to those who have limited IT skills.
Annoyingly, it keeps showing deactivated pages, and you can’t make it focus on just the accounts you want to use.
Limits your post schedules to only 75 days in the future.
Pricing: Free
Find it via your Facebook Page’s dashboard.
#3 TAILWIND:
Links to social media platforms: Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook
Pros: Brilliant if you want to focus on Pinterest and Instagram only. You can create content inside their dashboard, where you can create and schedule in the same place. Access to Tailwind Communities (once called tribes) which is great for sharing each other’s pins, finding new trending topics, and an inbuilt emailing system.
Cons: Gets stuck at times, or is slow to react when scheduling carousels (multiple) images. The in-house emailing system is clunky and not recommended for authors serious about their email game.
Pricing: Free for 200 posts, then $12.99 USD per month
Find it HERE>>
#4 PLANOLY:
Links to social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
Pros: For those focused on brand colours and styles, Planoly’s dashboard excels in its grid formation to show how your Instagram feed will look like. It also has the Sellit bio app that can become your virtual bookstore.
Cons: Doesn’t auto-post to TikTok and Instagram Stories.
Doesn’t post tweets without an image to Twitter.
Stats are as basic as what you’d find on Instagram.
Aaaand…. Sorry, we don’t trust Planoly! It continuously disconnected us from Instagram and Facebook where half of our images weren’t scheduled. And not just us, but other authors. Also, it took their support team a week to get back to us!
Pricing:
7-day free trial—$13 USD per month
You can find it HERE>>
#5 PLANN:
Links to social media platforms: Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn
Pros: Easy drag and drop of content to make your feeds pleasing to the eye. The insights (analytics) are easy to understand, allowing you to create more content that works, and the scheduling is intuitive. It also helps inspire you should you struggle with what to create, and they also offer pre-written captions for your content.
Easy to keep track of your individual book promotions within their filing/ tagging systems in their media collections.
Allows for repurposing and rescheduling content—which for authors is a bonus.
Cons: Doesn’t link to Twitter.
Pricing: Free — $12 USD
Find it HERE>>
#6 TWEETDECK:
Links to social media platforms: Twitter
Pros: Owned by Twitter, TweetDeck is so simple to use when you want to schedule your tweets in advance. Plus, it’s easy-to-use dashboard allows you to keep up to date with those talking about you, your book, #hashtags, or what’s trending in the authors’ worlds. It’s great if Twitter is your preference, and if you manage a few Twitter accounts, I’d recommend using the desktop app for keeping on top of this fast-paced platform.
Cons: It’s only Twitter.
Pricing: Free
Find it HERE>>
#7 HOOTSUITE:
Links to social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn
Pros: Branded as the world’s most widely trusted social media management solution… We cut our teeth on Hootsuite, as our first social media scheduler. The Hootsuite Academy is really helpful if new to the entire process. The analytics are helpful, and it’s easy to use.
Cons: It’s pricey. It’s also a little slower in the uptake for accessing new social media platforms. Suited more to businesses than authors.
Pricing: As of 1st of March 2023, they abolished the free plan. $49—$739 USD per month.
Find it HERE>>
#8 TYPEFULLY:
Links to social media platforms: Twitter
Pros: If Twitter is where your readers are, this is a great tool. It’ll schedule your tweets at the best times to grab your readers by the eyeballs. It also auto-retweets and has tools to help inspire you with what to tweet. We love the way it automatically works out Twitter threads from a simple dump of text, all at the push of a button.
Cons: It’s only for Twitter. To access all their tools, you need to sign on to the business package. And that’s a big price jump from the starter package. And for the starter package, you can only pay annually.
Pricing: Free—$ 8 USD per month, per year.
Find it HERE>>
#9 CANVA:
Links to social media platforms: Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack, Tumblr, and Instagram.
Pros: Being able to create social media images and send them from the same desktop app is a BIIIG time saver. It’s easy to create new content while sitting in a coffee shop to post right then and there.
Cons: Only available to CANVA PRO USERS. Won’t do reels to TikTok—yet.
Pricing: Free—$12.99 USD per month.
Score a FREE CANVA Pro Trial here>>
#10 SOCIALBEE:
Links to social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google My Business, TikTok, YouTube, and RSS feed connection and more!!
Pros: This is the big Kahuna of social media schedulers, it’s for those bloggers who have evergreen content or those authors with a big backlist of books to post about. Besides having access to many tools, its best feature is the ease of auto-scheduling all your content on a continuous loop, tailored to each profile, so you’re not sharing the same stuff on the same day. You’ll never run out of content to share as it does it all for you.
Cons: Like any new program, you’ll need time to learn.
Pricing: Free 14-day trial—$ 19 USD per month.
Find it HERE>>
AS AUTHORS, WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULERS DO WE USE?
Below, we’ve split this into two camps, for fiction and non-fiction authors and bloggers. Besides my obsession with these tools that save us a tonne of time, we use a few to manage various author businesses. These are the tools we regularly use and recommend for scheduling our own social media content:
TYPEFULLY
For words-only tweets, even adding Gifs to tweets, and creating Twitter threads. TYPEFULLY is brilliant for non-fiction authors and if your audience is there.
CANVA
We use CANVA more for creating our content using our templates. But we use the scheduler for our clients once we’ve set up their author platforms. They’re paying for CANVA PRO (which is less than some schedulers), so why not use all their features, especially when starting out?
PLANN
As fiction authors, we focus on one new book at a time, where most of our author content revolves around that new book until it’s published. We generally focus on pre-release promotions, creating content such as character quotes, book cover reveals, reviews, etc., and we can schedule entire book launches months in advance. Leaving us free to then start on the next book. We like how PLANN allows us to see the aesthetics to ensure we’re keeping within our brand colours in our Instagram feeds, stories, and reels. We recommend their free plan if starting out to get a feel for it.
SOCIALBEE
We absolutely, undoubtedly 100000% love SocialBee. (*tries not to swoon too hard*) The ease of posting our evergreen blogs and various book promotions to ALL our social media platforms in one place is a game changer. We only add the new blog post once, and it’s done! SOCIALBEE automatically posts the new content, then recycles it in a continuous loop to reuse until we turn it off. As we have a large amount of content, it’s rare for our readers to see the same post in the same week on that platform. It’s a simple set-and-forget strategy. If you’re a blogger or an author with a big backlist of books you want to promote on a never-ending loop—SOCIALBEE is the social media scheduler tool for you.
But you need to do what is right for you.
SO WHAT IS THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULER FOR AUTHORS?
That depends on you and where your reader is. Knowing where your readers are is where you’ll want to be, and where you’ll want to share your social media content.
As for the type of content, well, that depends on you and your books.
If you need help, check out:
1. Your Author Socials>>
2. Social media Template kit for authors>>
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