This is where the important topic of systems comes into play; setting up systems can free up your valuable time to spend more of it doing what you love. I"m a big advocate for organizing your social media posts using a scheduler. There are a ton of schedulers out in the market and it can be confusing to know which one you should use. So I've put together six key things to look for in a good scheduling platform.

 

Many platforms have a free option which is great. So the question you need to ask yourself is what features are paid-for and do you really need them? For example on Later.com you need to upgrade in order to schedule Reels or Stories and while you can pre-load images and video into the scheduler it only saves this info to your phone and reminds you when to post. You still have to do all of the work in the Instagram app. Essentially you are paying for a reminder to come through on your phone. If that is not worth the price to you, or you can find a free way to remind yourself, the upgrade may not be worth it. My recommendation is to search for a platform with a robust free platform (Later and Hootsuite are great examples).

 

When it comes to Instagram many folks like to make sure they have a curated feed that looks pleasing to anyone that searches their profile. In order to do this, it's helpful to see what your posts will look like in the grid and not just on a calendar. If this is important to your marketing strategy make sure your scheduler has a Grid View option.

 

There isn't much evidence that using a platform's native scheduler like meta business suite gives your posts more visibility than using a third-party app like Later but platforms do seem to be pushing creators in that direction by keeping their own scheduling ability front and center. The question here is; do you want to keep track of several different schedules for each platform you're on or have them all in one place?

 

While apps on our phones are handy they can be a bit of a pain when it comes to batching content. It's quicker and easier in most cases to write out captions, copy and paste hashtags, and edit photos from our desktops. So when looking for a scheduling platform make sure that there is a desktop version as well as an app.

 

While you can figure out the best time to post through various social media platforms it's nice to have the recommendation within your schedule. Both Later and CoSchedule will allow you to pick the "best time" or customize the time you would like it to automatically send the post to your social media platform.

 

Last but not least, make sure the scheduler will give you reports on how well your posts are doing. It takes some time to figure out the best hashtags, copy, and posting time, to get the most reach and engagement. Having detailed reports of how your posts are doing over time can help you make those decisions.