Social media has grown into a powerful—if not necessary—public relations and marketing tool for socially responsible companies and nonprofits. In June 2018, Instagram announced it had reached 1 billion average monthly users. Facebook boasts 2.27 billion monthly active users, and Twitter has 326 million.
As a free or low-cost option for advertising and marketing, social media is an increasingly appealing way for nonprofit organizations to affordably reach their target audiences. But being free does not mean it is easy to do. Having three-plus platforms to manage can be incredibly time consuming. Fortunately, there are numerous programs available to help manage your nonprofit’s social media presence, and many of them have free options to help with scheduling content and measuring analytics.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite’s free option is a great way to get started scheduling content and listening to conversations about your organization and industry. The free version allows you to have up to three social profiles, but we find Hootsuite best for scheduling and monitoring Twitter. You can auto-schedule up to 30 posts per month and use the Tweet streams to follow specific hashtags or keywords associated with your nonprofit. You can also set up a stream to follow your Twitter lists. For example, use Twitter to build a list of members within your organization or other thought leaders championing a similar cause, and follow that list as a stream in Hootsuite to engage with them on a regular basis.
Later
Later is a great tool for scheduling Instagram content, but it can also be used with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. With the free version, you can schedule 30-50 posts per month depending on the program. Later offers both a desktop and mobile app platform. The desktop version has a calendar to see what you are posting each day. Captions and hashtags can be saved and copied into future posts to save time. Later is one of the few apps that truly enables auto-posting (other apps will send you a notification when it is time to post, and you have to copy and paste the content into Instagram). Once your scheduled post is live, you’ll receive a push notification on your phone.
Preview
Preview is an app for visually scheduling and posting content to Instagram in relation to the rest of your profile. (Think of those accounts that have great “flow” with color coordination, filters, and photos split into grids.) Preview has an app for your phone for easy scheduling on the go, but it does not desktop version. As you type hashtags, Preview offers suggestions for your most-used and related hashtags. The analytics are similar to what is available within the Instagram app unless you upgrade to a paid account.
Planoly
Similar to Preview, Planoly is another visual planner for Instagram, but it offers both a desktop and mobile application. Another notable difference is that Planoly can splice your photos into multiple squares. To schedule posts, Planoly will send you a notification when it is time to post content and you can copy and paste captions directly to Instagram. The best part of Planoly (and Preview has this feature too) is the ability to see the layout of your entire profile and drag and drop posts to get the optimal visual arrangement.
In addition to the platforms above, you should take advantage of the insights and tools available natively within each platform. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all offer analytics natively with business accounts, and Facebook has a scheduling tool within the platform that is simple and user-friendly.
Everyone has their own preferences with content scheduling and analytics, and each platform offers something slightly different. Since these tools are free, you can test each out and see what works best for your organization before investing in a paid version. Ultimately, scheduling helps takes the headache out of social media and helps you create a consistent and cohesive content strategy.
Happy posting!
