3 Tools to Automate Your Social Posts and Grow with Zero Budget
How to manage your social channels with the help of AI if you are a Solopreneur and have a tight budget.
Hi, my name is Piero and I am an educator with a passion for information technology and web technologies. My project "Free from Big Tech" aims to give you the tools to have more control over your privacy while online, escaping the pervasive control that Big Tech has. At the same time, I extend a helping hand to everyone professionally entering the web by pointing out free or low-cost alternative tools that you can use instead of expensive web services and software. Welcome here.
As a Solopreneur, time is your most valuable resource-and often the one that is most in short supply. Managing an effective social presence requires planning, creativity and consistency, three elements that can easily turn into a full-time job. That's why an automated editorial calendar is no longer a luxury, but an absolute necessity for those who want to compete in today's digital marketplace.
Social media marketing platforms integrated with artificial intelligence are a game changer for small business owners. It's not just about scheduling posts in advance: we're talking about tools that analyze your audience's behavior, suggest the best times to post, generate optimized content, and automatically adjust your strategy based on the results you get.
Well, let's get started.
Meet 3 tools that offer a free plan and allow you to manage multiple social channels from a single platform. Paid plans come at a lower cost than other more popular platforms, but are more suitable for companies and web agencies than the small business owner.
Buffer In English, connection of up to three social channels in the free plan, AI support. Paid plans starting at $5 monthly.
Publer has a somewhat limited free plan, but the Professional subscription is competitively priced compared to other platforms: only $4 monthly.
Metricool is an interesting tool. It has a free plan with many features; the Starter plan costs $14 per month.
Let's look at the following in detail
Buffer
Buffer is a popular solution for individuals, small businesses and teams looking to simplify social media management. It also offers analytics tools and a clean, intuitive user interface.
Strengths
Ease of Use and Intuitive Interface: One of Buffer's greatest strengths is its clean and simple interface. It is easy to learn and use, even for those new to social media management tools. Navigation is smooth and scheduling posts is a quick and intuitive process.
Powerful Scheduling: Buffer excels at scheduling posts. It allows you to schedule content well in advance, set custom queues and view your editorial calendar. Supports posting to multiple platforms, including Facebook (pages and groups), Instagram (business and personal accounts), X (Twitter), LinkedIn (pages and profiles), Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.
Free Plan: Buffer offers an attractive free plan that allows you to link up to three social accounts and schedule a limited number of posts. This makes it a great option if you want to test the platform or have very basic social management needs.
Integrated AI Tools: Buffer includes an AI assistant for refining and reusing content, as well as features for organizing ideas into Kanban-style bulletin boards.
Useful Analytics: the platform provides analytics on published posts, including data on best times to post, most effective formats, and frequency. Includes basic metrics to understand content and audience performance.
Browser Extension: Buffer's browser extension is very convenient for quickly adding content to the publishing queue from any web page.
"Start Page" for Links in Bio: Buffer offers the ability to create a "Start Page," a simple, customizable landing page ideal for links in bio on social profiles, which can include videos, music, images, and newsletter sign-up forms.
Weaknesses
Limited Monitoring Features: Unlike other more comprehensive social management platforms, Buffer does not offer advanced tools for social listening, monitoring mentions, searches or hashtags in real time. This means that for in-depth monitoring, you may need additional tools.
Price Based on Number of Channels: Buffer's paid plans increase in price based on the number of social channels you want to manage. This can make it less affordable if you plan to use paid plans.
Conclusions
In summary, Buffer is an excellent platform for scheduling and publishing social content, with a great user experience and a very generous free plan. If your main needs are basic planning and analysis, Buffer is an excellent choice.
Publer
Publer is a social media management platform that aims to simplify the process of managing and publishing content on various social platforms. I propose it because I have noticed the high number of social channels supported.
Pros of Publer
Wide Range of Supported Platforms: Publer stands out for supporting a large number of social platforms, including Facebook (pages, groups, personal profiles), Instagram (business and creator profiles), Twitter, LinkedIn (business profiles and pages), Pinterest, Google Business Profile, YouTube, TikTok, and even WordPress and Telegram. This broad coverage makes it an all-in-one solution you could use.
Flexible Scheduling and Advanced Features: offers powerful scheduling options, including the ability to schedule single, recurring, or mass posts. Queuing and post recycling features are especially useful for maintaining a steady flow of content. "Smart" scheduling suggests the best times to post based on past engagement.
Feature-rich Content Editor: Publer's editor is intuitive and offers several options for customizing posts. It includes a hashtag generator, tools for editing images and creating GIFs, integrations with stock image archives (such as Unsplash and Pixabay), and the ability to add watermarks to media.
Useful Integrations: in addition to direct integrations with social platforms, Publer also connects with tools such as Canva for charting and Dropbox/Google Drive for media storage, improving workflow efficiency.
Analytics and Reporting: provides detailed analysis and reports on post performance and profile growth. This will help you understand what is working and what is not.
Competitive Pricing and Free Plan: Publer offers a free plan with basic functionality, and is only good for you if you have limited needs. Paid plans are competitive with other solutions on the market, offering good value for money.
Clean and Intuitive User Interface: the platform is well organized and relatively easy to navigate, even if you have never used such a tool before.
AI Assistant (AI Prompts): the introduction of AI-based features for generating ideas for posts or rewriting text can be a significant time saver and a tool to overcome writer's block.
Cons of Publer
Initial Learning Curve for Advanced Features: although the interface is intuitive, some of the more advanced and customizable features may take some time to fully master.
Price Based on Number of Channels: even Publer's paid plans increase in price based on the number of social channels you want to manage.
In Conclusion:
Publer is a robust and versatile social media management solution, particularly suited for freelancers looking for a comprehensive platform to schedule and manage their content across a wide variety of channels.
Its strengths lie in its scheduling flexibility, broad platform support, and collaboration features. It offers excellent value for money and a robust toolset for day-to-day social media management needs.
Metricool
Metricool is an all-in-one social media marketing platform that aims to simplify online presence management for freelancers and content creators. It offers planning, publishing, analytics, automation and reporting capabilities, all from a single dashboard.
Pros of Metricool
All-in-one platform: allows you to manage multiple social media marketing activities from one place, including post planning, performance analysis, ad campaign management (Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads) and competitor monitoring.
Ease of use: has an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate, making it accessible even to those without much experience with similar tools.
Advanced scheduling and planning: offers the ability to schedule posts in advance, including the "Smart and Advanced Queuing" feature that suggests the best times to post based on audience engagement data. The repeat post feature is useful for repurposing successful content.
Comprehensive analytics: provides detailed metrics on engagement, follower growth, reach, impressions and click-through rate for various social platforms. It also allows you to track website/blog performance.
Reporting: generates customizable reports that can be quickly downloaded, useful for monitoring ROI and optimizing strategies.
Ad campaign support: a distinguishing feature is the ability to create and monitor ad campaigns on Google, Meta and TikTok Ads directly from the platform, offering a unified view of performance metrics.
AI functionality: offers an AI assistant to help with social media text creation.
Free plan: has a generous free plan that offers several useful features, albeit with some limitations (e.g., analytics data only from the last 3 months, no LinkedIn or X/Twitter in the free plan).
Chrome extension: allows you to share content directly from the browser.
Cons of Metricool
User interface (for some): although many find it intuitive, some users have reported that the interface can be user-unfriendly or "clunky" in some areas.
Cost and limitations of cheaper subscription plans: advanced reporting features and more accounts are often exclusive to more expensive subscription plans. Adding extra accounts is expensive.
Data updates: Some users have noticed delays in updating data, which can mean that reports do not always reflect the latest metrics in real time (especially for social media, where there can be a 48-72 hour delay).
Planning limitations for some platforms: Limitations or problems with automatic publishing have been reported for platforms such as Instagram (video size) and YouTube Shorts (inability to select thumbnails or add related videos).
Limited historical data in the free plan: In the free plan, you only have access to the last 3 months of analytical data.
Lack of built-in media editing tools: Requires external preparation of images and videos before uploading.
In summary:
Metricool is a robust and versatile solution for social media management, particularly valued for its comprehensive planning, scheduling and analytics capabilities, unified with ad campaign monitoring.
It is a good choice for those looking for an all-in-one solution with a strong focus on analytics and campaign management.
🙈 Buzz
The site that tests the level of privacy for the most popular browsers in this category. To choose the one that is most suitable for you.
Version 6.17 of Tails, the privacy-oriented Linux distribution,has been released. The new release introduces significant improvements to benefit users who need to operate anonymously.
Flow, the film made with the open source sowtware Blender, has won numerous awards, including the Golden Globe for best animated film. You can see the trailer here.
🐔 Useful tools for productivity.
Actitime Time tracker also available for free (but with limited functionality) for up to three users.
Followr Social media marketing platform. One-time spend. Lifetime subscription if you buy on AppSumo.
WorkFlowy is a simple but powerful note-taking tool that allows you to organize your thoughts and ideas in an infinitely nested hierarchical format. It is excellent for writing, project management, planning and general organization.
🐔 Useful tools for privacy.
Just Delete Me is a website that offers a comprehensive database of direct links and instructions for easily deleting accounts from hundreds of online services.
Exodus Privacy is an essential Android application for anyone who wants to understand what goes on "behind the scenes" of their apps. It analyzes the apps installed on your smartphone to reveal embedded trackers and permissions, providing detailed reports to help you make informed decisions about your privacy.
NoScript is a powerful browser extension designed to offer granular control over scripts and other executable content on websites. It blocks JavaScript, Java and other plugins by default, allowing you to enable them only on trusted sites.
That's all for today, let me know what you think by leaving a comment or writing to me at: info@pieromazzini.com
🎓Citation of the Day
"It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who hold it, and fear of power corrupts those who are subject to it." - Aung San Suu Kyi