How to schedule social media posts like a boss without paying money

How to schedule social media posts like a boss using free social media apps for bloggers. Ease the sharing load without spending money & save tons of time! –

Reading time: 12 minutes –

Once your blog is out there, you need to promote it. You know that but you have already so many tasks on your plate.

Thank God there are social media schedulers that ease your sharing load! There are many great options out there but most will cost a monthly fee.

But as a beginning blogger, you might be on a shoestring budget. Your blog isn’t making a lot of money yet and you hope for the day it will pay not only itself but you, too.

This day is yet to come.

In the meantime, you have to grow a following, engage with other people’s content, create content, and of course, promote it!

Fear not. There are some options for you to get the sharing done using social media tools that don’t cost you money. You can totally do this without spending a dime.

Let’s find out about the best free social media management tools to get you started today!

If you feel a little overwhelmed by all the options keep reading till the end of the post. There is a little summary to help you recap and choose your arsenal of social media tools.

Commit

It all starts with you. You want to grow your blog. You want people to find, share, and love your content. Now that you have decided to make the best use of social media or blog hubs like Pinterest you need to schedule in some time to prepare your social media content.

Decide how much time you want to spend on social media scheduling and if you want to do a weekly or monthly working session.

Choose platforms you want to be active on. I suggest you pick Pinterest (a must-have) and one to two other platforms. Don’t stretch yourself too thin. You rather want to be strong on one platform than dropping posts irregularly without engaging with the network.

These questions are important to find the best social media scheduler for your needs.

With these free social media management tools, you can easily repost all your content to a ton of places and then check which ones did make sense for your blog later. Some tools include social media analytics so you can measure if what you do works or where you get the most engagement.

Getting ready to schedule social media content for free

You decided on your platforms, working hours, and if you need social media monitoring included.

Alright. Next, schedule in some time to create all the social media content for that week or month. Have it all ready to go when you set up your social media scheduler.

Prep Work and tools for filling up your social media calendar

Use a free tool like Pocket, Evernote, or Feedly for collecting and curating other people’s stuff you want to share. Or whatever works for you!

Some free social media tools in this post let you curate and schedule other people’s content, too.

Create visuals for each social media platform. I like to keep it simple and use my featured image for Facebook and Twitter while I create 1 to 3 graphics for Pinterest.

Canva is a free tool for creating social media graphics with ease and free templates. It is easy to use and one of my very favorite tools to create graphics or downloads.

A monthly calendar spread, printed out or digital, comes in handy for overseeing your posts for the month. You don’t want to spam your followers with the same old post again and again. Also, you want your blog content and social media posts to compliment each other. Fill in launches, seasonal and regular content.

Create some recipes to automate social media posts for free

Zapier is an automation app that lets you create up to 5 “zaps” and a maximum of 100 tasks per month in the free plan. How? This YouTube video by blogger Dana Kaye shows you how to use zapier as a social media tool. But you can, of course, use it for other automations, too.

IFTTT is an app that lets you create recipes. You tell the app, “If THIS happens, THEN do that”. Thus, the name “If this, then that” or IFTTT. You can come up with a few different recipes to automate your social media or to automatically share on Twitter what you posted on Instagram, for example.

Here is a video to show you how to set up social media automation with IFTTT.

Skip the first four minutes of the video to see the app in action.

Repost blog posts to Your Social Media Accounts in WordPress

Creating recipes and zaps seems to be too tedious? You prefer to manage your social media content within your WordPress dashboard? Then, blog2social is for you!

Blog2Social is a WordPress plugin with free and paid plans.  With Blog2Social you can create posts tailored to each social media platform right within your WordPress dashboard. You can customize the social media post to get more engagement and have a blog post you publish automatically posted on your social media accounts as well. Use a different image or description, add hashtags, add tags, etc. for each account.

You can later use the plugin to re-share posts on social media. With the reporting dashboard, you can see at a glance what has been published or scheduled where. This helps to keep your social media management on point.

Scheduling Facebook posts directly in Facebook

If you are mainly active on Facebook and you don’t want any extra tools or software, I got you covered.

I didn’t know about this little hack until recently. But when you write a post on Facebook, you can schedule it rather than publishing it immediately. Hit the little arrow next to publish, and select “schedule”. Next, you can choose the time and day your post will go live.

To create a week of Facebook content for your business page, you could do seven posts (one per day of the week) in one session and you are good to go.

Using Buffers free plan to curate and share content

Buffer is a social media scheduler that is easy to learn and use. That is making the platform very popular. Their paid plans start at 15 $ a month.

You can do a lot with the free subscription, while it has some limitations, though.

First, you can only connect up to 3 social media accounts. And this does not include Pinterest. (Which is ok, you’ll learn why below.) Then, you can only schedule up to 10 posts at a time for each account. That means you need to go in there weekly and refill your queue. But hey, it is free and still saves you a ton of time.

Buffer has a browser extension so you can save and schedule other people’s content that is a great fit for your audience, too.

If you decide to use a different social media tool for your own posts you could use Buffer for curating and sharing the content of others.

Hootsuite’s free plan

The free version of Hootsuite allows you to connect up to three social media profiles (including Pinterest). It’s easily overlooked and for years I used to think they only have paid plans (which start at around 30 $/month).

Hootsuite’s free plan allows you to schedule up to 30 social media posts at a time. So, you could create a month’s worth of content with this free social media scheduler. This is great if you need to take some time off for a sprint at work or vacation.

To beef up your account you can add apps and tools some of which are free, too.

HootSuite has free training resources for users. See in this video how to create and schedule posts in Hootsuite.

Later’s free plan

Later (formerly Latergramme) is another social media scheduler that offers a free plan. It lets you schedule 30 posts (for Twitter 50) at a time for each social media account you add. You can add one profile for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Later started as an Instagram scheduler and is an official partner of Instagram. It uses Instagram Graph API to share on the platform. This is great as you will not be flagged as a spammer.

With the free plan of Later you can share photos only. If you want to share videos or Instagram stories, you need to upgrade to a premium plan which starts at 9 $ a month.

With Later, you can do a monthly planning and scheduling session and make sure your content gets out there every day. The downside is, that you have to wait until next month to do the next scheduling session.

On the first of every month, your free monthly posts are reset. When your limit is used up before that you will have to wait until then. Slots you haven’t used will not carry over, either.

To use Later, you need to have an Instagram account which is then used to create an account on Later. Many popular Instagram bloggers use Later.

Build a content library for reposting with Recurpost

Recurpost is a platform with free and paid plans. You can build a content library in Recurpost and then use their editorial calendar and scheduling tools to repost to your social media profiles.

In the free version, you can add up to 3 social media accounts. You can then start building your library of content and schedule up to 10 daily posts to each account.

With Recurpost, you could create libraries for your promotions, launches, or Evergreen content. The free tool also includes social media monitoring. It has an editorial calendar, tracks your efforts and includes analytics so you can tweak your schedule and content.

You should make it a habit to add each new blog post to your content library.  Over time, you will have a wealth of content to go back to and share.

Scheduling pins on Pinterest

With Pinterest, it’s a little tricky. I don’t know of any free scheduler that I can recommend for Pinterest. Using social media management tools for Pinterest can make you look spammy in Pinterest’s eyes. Their only official partner is Tailwind. Pinterest sometimes flags posts shared by other social media schedulers as SPAM.

You can still schedule pins without paying money.

Let’s see the options.

Pinterest has its own free scheduler. When in Pinterest, create a new pin. Press the “Create Pin” button on the left of your screen or the red circle with the white cross on the upper right.

Then, upload your pin image, fill in the text fields, select a board from the drop-down list, and at the bottom, select “Publish at a later date”. Choose a time and date. Finish.

This is a safe way to schedule pins for free but it is pretty cumbersome as you most likely want to publish 10 to 40 or even more pins per day.

You can re-pin pins using the Pinterest app on your phone and schedule in some minutes of pinning several times a day. But this is manual pinning, not scheduling, right?

Fair warning, you can still come across as a spammer if you pin the same pin to the same board several times in a short amount of time. Makes sense?

Automate and Schedule Pinning

You want to get rid of the pressure of manual pinning daily but creating and scheduling pin after pin is taking way too long. Then, you should consider using Tailwind.

You can get started for free and publish 100 pins to see Tailwind in action. After using up your 100 free pins, you can upgrade to a paid plan to publish more pins. You can get Tailwind as a monthly (14,99 $) or yearly (119 $) subscription.

Sign up for your free Tailwind account and get a 15$ bonus on me! (Referral link)

You really should check out the free trial because you will get access to Tailwind’s analytics and find out which boards and pins are performing well and which not. Great for evaluating if a group board is worth your time or a pin dumping ground.

It will also show you when your audience is most active on Pinterest. Posting at the right time can help to give your pins more traction.

Tailwind has free Pinterest courses, too! (And one on Instagram.)

Even if you decide paying for Tailwind is not for you, these insights are golden and you can have them absolutely free. Even if you don’t upgrade Tailwind, you will want those analytics. If you are on a few group boards you can finally see if they are worth your time or just stink and drag down your profile.

If you consider upgrading, the paid plan is worth every penny! If you are still on the fence, use my referral link for reader’s of Mom Can Do This. Get started with Tailwind for free and get 15$ as a bonus on me once you upgrade!

Sign up for your Tailwind account and 15$ bonus here!

Tailwind is one of only a few official partner of Pinterest. And Pinterest is very strict against spammers.

BoardBooster was the major competitor of Tailwind and the scheduling of my choice back in the days. But they failed to partner with Pinterest and we all know what happened next. (If you don’t, BoardBooster shut down.)

A big blogger I know has been marked as SPAM on Pinterest after using Viraltag to schedule pins.

So, it’s up to you.

You can either pin manually (a couple of minutes several times a day), create and schedule each pin for each board individually, use a free scheduler from the above list, or bite the bullet on paying for Tailwind (referral link).

For me, using Tailwind works fine and it’s one of the tools I don’t want to blog without. I pay for premium hosting, email marketing, stock photography, and Tailwind after careful considerations!

To me, these are the blogging expenses that are totally worth it! They make my blog run smoothly and save me a ton of time!

Tailwind saved my tushy many times when I just couldn’t make it to the screen. And as soon as I let my Tailwind queue run empty I see my traffic tanking as a consequence.

I don’t want that.

Let’s Recap: The Best Free Social Media Scheduling Apps for Bloggers

You now have several options to schedule your social media posts for free with these social media apps and tools.

Choose one that fits your needs. Try it out for the next month or three and see how it goes.

• Blog2social. Free WordPress plugin so you don’t have to sign up with yet another service. Schedule and manage your social media posts right within your WordPress dashboard. Includes reporting and lets you customize posts for each platform.
• Zapier or IFTTT. “Recipe” automation software that can be used for more than social media management. While you can use them to automate more in your blogging work it is not made for social media. So no reporting or extras.
• Buffer. Popular social media schedule. In the free plan, you can schedule up to 10 posts at a time for up to 3 social media profiles. Pinterest not included.
• Hootsuite. Another popular social media tool. With the free version, you can schedule up to 30 posts at a time to up to 3 different accounts, including Pinterest.
• Later. Social media tool originally created as an Instagram scheduler. You sign in with your Instagram account and get 30 monthly posts (50 for Twitter). You need a paid plan to post video content.
• RecurPost. With this social media tool, you can create content libraries to easily re-post content. Includes editorial calendar, analytics, and more.
• Tailwind. The only scheduler I’d recommend for Pinterest. The free plan lets you schedule 100 pins, no matter when. Includes Pinterest performance analytics that can be very helpful to master the platform and get a massive amount of traffic. Use my referral link to sign up for your free trial of Tailwind and you will get a bonus of 15$ for an upgrade on me!