As a follow up to the previously posted blog post on Scanning Social Schedulers, we decided to test a few of the scheduling sites and apps in depth for you. The first one that we put to the test was Later. As our organization relies heavily on LinkedIn this may seem a bit counterintuitive; however, there is a method to the madness. We have used the free version of HootSuite for years, and to ensure that we were able to give all sites and apps a fair review, we had to get out of our comfort zone first.
Later was one of the recommended apps for small businesses and nonprofits seeking a free option to test the waters of social media scheduling and the multitude of benefits associated with being able to chunk time into focused and productive activities; however, it does not have the ability to connect to LinkedIn at this time. With the ability to connect to facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, this scheduling software as a service still packs a punch for small businesses and nonprofits.
Drag and drop with counters
One of the biggest pluses for Later for our clients, is the ease of use. As a small business owner or nonprofit founder, you are already a busy individual likely wearing many hats. There is no need to add learning yet another process to your growing list of responsibilities and hats. The idea is to work smarter, not harder.
With a dedicated central location to upload media, counters to indicate how many times it has been utilized, and a calendar to the right showing on which account the media was utilized and when it was released, you have a quick way to schedule all of your social media pushes for the week during one of your power hours allowing you
TO WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER.
The downside to this robust free plan is the lack of analytics for the free option. Specifically, Instagram analytics is the only data available with a high level overview. Now, this is a negative but here is where I feel like Later may be ahead of the competition a bit:
Lowest monthly price for a small business or nonproft $16
This price point has a lot to do with our continued interest with this relatively newcomer to the market. In fact, intriguing enough that we upgraded to the paid plan after years working with free plans. We will continue our thorough review of Later, including the paid features, well later.
HOW WE HAVE UTILIZED LATER
Our consultants believe in chunking or blocking time. If you don't already utilize this method of planning your week, reach out to us, and we can help you organize your time to begin chunking or blocking your time. For us, one hour is spent researching content using Feedly, trending hashtags, questions from clients, and then planning our social media strategy for the week utilizing our intel. Another hour is spent crafting the content and graphics. And sometimes, that hour turns into two, but trust us, it is worth chunking or blocking the time and doing it at once. The creative juices begin to flow and sometimes (not often) we find ourselves creating more than is needed, meaning when the time comes when we can't allow an extra hour, we have content ready to go.
Chunking time and utilizing social media schedulers like Later, have really helped our clients streamline their most precious asset: TIME. Let us help you develop strategies for your business and implement them so that the fruits of your labor are evident to all. We help you find the solution, implement the solution, and train you on the solution so that
your business operates on engineered excellence.
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