Social Media Guides

In this section you'll find key guides and links for social media platforms, on getting started and best practice, tips and hints. Click on the links below, to get to the platform header a little quicker.

Social Media Size Guidelines (PDF, 188 Kb)

Scheduling Tools

Here we have listed a few recommendations of free social media scheduling platforms which may be useful to help grow and boost your social media presence to support your organisation:

Meta Business Suite

Meta Business Suite offers a free plan that allows you to manage Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Pros:

User-friendly interface: simple and easy to use for both beginners and experienced social media managers.
Scheduling options: variety of scheduling options, including manual scheduling, and scheduling based on optimal posting times.
Analytics: basic analytics on post-performance, including engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares, as well as follower growth and reach.
Ad Creation: allows the creation of ads which can be set to target specific demographics, run for set durations and meet a daily budget.

Cons:

Limited social platforms only supports scheduling for Facebook and Instagram

Buffer

Buffer offers a free plan that allows you to manage up to three social media profiles, schedule up to 10 posts per profile, and access basic analytics.

Pros:

User-friendly interface: simple and easy to use for both beginners and experienced social media managers.
Multi-platform support: supports several popular social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Scheduling options: variety of scheduling options, including manual scheduling, bulk scheduling, and automatic scheduling based on optimal posting times.
Analytics: basic analytics on post-performance, including engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares, as well as follower growth and reach.

Cons:

Limited features on the free plan: only supports up to three social media profiles, 10 scheduled posts per profile, and basic analytics.
Limited reporting: the platform doesn't offer in-depth reporting features for analysing social media performance over time.
Higher pricing for more features: To access advanced features like social listening and advanced reporting, you'll need to upgrade to a higher-priced plan.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a free scheduling tool specifically for Twitter. It allows you to schedule tweets, monitor multiple accounts, and track mentions and hashtags.

Pros:

Free to use: free tool offered by Twitter
Multi-account support: allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single dashboard
Real-time monitoring: provides real-time monitoring of tweets, mentions, and hashtags.
Customizable columns: allows you to customise the dashboard with different columns for things like your home feed, notifications, direct messages, and more.
Scheduling options: allows you to schedule tweets in advance.

Cons:

Twitter-specific: limited to managing and scheduling tweets on the Twitter platform only.
Limited scheduling options: While TweetDeck allows you to schedule tweets, the scheduling options are basic compared to other social media scheduling platforms.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule offers a free plan that allows you to manage up to 10 social media profiles, schedule up to 10 posts per profile, and access basic analytics.

Pros:

All-in-one platform: all-in-one platform that offers social media scheduling, content management, team collaboration, and analytics in one tool.
Multi-platform support: supports several platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Advanced scheduling options: advanced scheduling options, including the ability to create social media campaigns, create reusable social media templates, and schedule posts in bulk.
Social listening: offers social listening capabilities, which means you can track brand mentions, keywords, and social media trends.
Analytics: provides in-depth analytics on post-performance, including engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares, as well as detailed reports on social media performance over time.

Cons:

Higher pricing: more expensive compared to some other social media scheduling platforms, for a paid plan.
Limited customisation: offers some customization options.
Limited support for non-English languages: primarily designed for English-speaking users, which may limit its usefulness for social media managers who operate in non-English speaking markets.

Later

Later is a popular scheduling tool for Instagram that also supports Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Its free plan allows you to schedule up to 30 posts per month across one social media profile.

Pros:

User-friendly interface: easy to use for both beginners and experienced social media managers.
Instagram-specific features: variety of features specific to Instagram, such as a visual content calendar, the ability to schedule Instagram Stories and videos, and a media library for storing and organising visual content.
Multi-platform support: several platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, in addition to Instagram.
Scheduling options: variety of scheduling options, including manual scheduling, bulk scheduling, and automatic scheduling based on optimal posting times.
Analytics: Later provides basic analytics on post-performance, including engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares, as well as follower growth and reach.

Cons:

Limited features on the free plan: free plan has limited features and only supports up to one social media profile, 30 scheduled posts per month, and basic analytics.
Limited reporting: doesn't offer in-depth reporting features for analysing social media performance over time.
Higher pricing for more features: To access advanced features like social listening and advanced reporting, you'll need to upgrade to a higher-priced plan.