LinkedIn is a very specific and extremely business-oriented platform. Therefore creating a well-rounded posting plan for LI can be quite a challenge. So, what can help you work smarter and not harder? We’ll take a look at two tools: Hootsuite and Postfity.
Hootsuite for LinkedIn — social media scheduling
Are you just getting into social media scheduling and want to know what it’s all about? A special tool that posts the content that you have created at the selected time. For example, you begin your week on Monday and you have already gathered lots of materials for your LinkedIn. A social media scheduler then lets you save this content in the form of posts for each day of the week, or in a special library of drafts. Immediately, or whenever you want, you can schedule them for Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on, for any time that you see fit. You don’t have to go to that social account at that exact hour that’s best, the scheduler will send and publish the post for you. The better the tool, the more you can plan. Some great tools let you plan months in advance.
Hootsuite is advertised as “A smarter way to manage your LinkedIn Page” and is supposed to let you “easily manage all your social media.”
Key Hootsuite features
What features does Hootsuite list on their page?
- Creating and scheduling posts.
- Managing and monitoring social media channels.
- Planning campaigns and collaborating in real-time.
- Inbox for messaging and boosting comments.
- Measuring performance with analytics.
- Staying on top of trends with Insights.
- Promoting your organic content with paid ads.
Hootsuite supports the following platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Hootsuite pricing
All Hootsuite plans include an unlimited number of pending posts, but they differ in the number of users and social media accounts that can be linked.
- Professional Plan is designed for 1 user and 10 social media accounts for $19.99 per month.
- Team Plan lets 3 users have 20 social media accounts in total for $99 per month.
- Business Plan accommodates 5 users and 35 social accounts for $599 per month.
- Enterprise Plan has to be requested and the price is not set. It allows unlimited users and posts, but only 50 social accounts.
In general, Hootsuite is supposed to let you plan and schedule your content to different platforms (you can see which those are on the pricing screenshot). They let you plan in a calendar view mode, where you can clearly see the dates and the select the hours. Moreover, you can see your board of posts and mentions in other people’s posts as well. The app’s interface is based on so-called “Streams” which you design yourself by clicking the buttons in the menu on the right.
When it comes to making a post, you simply select the social media account to which you want to schedule, type in or paste a text, and then choose media from your library or upload them through ‘drag and drop.’ Then, there’s an integrated link shortener that you can use.
Moreover, you can manage Hootsuite’s integrations in-app directory and select those that matter to you. Explore the app to find out its other functionalities.
Hootsuite for LinkedIn and more: an alternative tool — Postfity
Organize, plan, and get inspired! What can be better than Hootsuite for LinkedIn? Postfity is a social media scheduler and a powerful SM management tool for personal and professional use. Postfity supports scheduling to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Vkontakte, Google My Business (and very soon — Pinterest), both for desktops and mobile devices. With this tool, you can draft, schedule, share your posts with clients, publish to multiple platforms at once, and more!
Postfity can aid you in:
- social media scheduling,
- posting to different time zones,
- graphic editing and uploading images/videos,
- working on post drafts with a team or with a client outside Postfity,
- content creation,
- reporting and analytics.
What is great in Postfity for LinkedIn?
Whatever your target audience may be, Postfity will help you schedule posts with them in mind. You choose the time, but that’s not all. Postfity lets you plan each of your posts with the right time zone in mind.
Moreover, what is very important for those who work on many different platforms, you can schedule one post to multiple platforms at once. Postfity’s editor allows you to keep the core text intact while also making subtle changes and additions (like specific hashtags), so you can actually publish an important piece of information to many different social media.
What is more, you can schedule directly in Postfity’s Calendar, or just do it in the editor, and then go and see all the scheduled posts in Calendar view. There are numerous great additional features integrated into the Calendar, which we will talk about more in the following subsections.
Video and images for LinkedIn in Postfity
Hootsuite prides itself on their integration for uploading videos to LinkedIn. Well, guess what… Postfity also lets you upload a video with your LinkedIn post. What is more, Postfity’s got an innovative uploading interface, where you can not only drag and drop, but also just paste previously cut pieces of videos directly, without saving them anywhere. The same goes for images!
Furthermore, Postfity has a few great features that can help you edit your photos and pictures. The editor allows you to crop, rotate (transform), or resize the image. What is more, you can add layers and backgrounds (and merge them), filters, drawings, stickers, shapes, and text.
Additionally, you can choose any photo or image you want from a free database. Moreover, in the editor, you can add a watermark to your image.
Then, there’s also Snapshot generator — a simple tool that allows you to change plain text into a ready-to-be-posted image.
Teamwork and features for working with clients
Post Drafts is a functionality designed to help you collaborate with your co-workers, employees, and clients more effectively on creating and approving shared content. While working on LinkedIn posts, some of you need a tool that will make it possible to send posts in bulk for your work to be approved before publishing it. Or — the other way round — you will need to receive and assess the content someone wrote for your client, where you’re just an intermediary.
Moreover, you can also make drafts… just for yourself, e.g. when you come up with great copy for a few posts, but you don’t have the right image to schedule them just yet. And there’s no limit to how many drafts one can make in Postfity!
Most importantly, you can manage your drafts with your client inside the Postfity account, or send drafts in bulk, in special packages that can be approved outside of Postfity.
What Hootsuite for LinkedIn lacks: Content creation supporting functionalities in Postfity
Postfity offers tools to aid you in the content creation process, such as:
- Social Tips Calendar, with ready-to-use posts relating to holidays, famous quotes, etc. with hashtags and pictures/photos for every day of every month.
- Holidays Calendar and Ideas — a list of holidays for that day and inspiring articles that we share in the Calendar view, so you can easily add them to your scheduled social posts. With these features you are one click away from preparing inspirational content.
If you’re not sure about them, just check them out during the trial period (you’ll see they make your work much easier).
Basically, Ideas is a database of well-written evergreen articles that you can use to create your posts and link to your followers. The database features articles on various topics pertaining to multiple fields of interest, such as technology, games, society, sports, health, business, and more.
Reporting and analytics
As you’ve seen in the first section, Hootsuite for LinkedIn advertises that you can measure your performance with analytics inside the tool. Postfity will make a graph out of any metric, such as link clicks, comments, reactions, and more. What is the most useful, you select the time period which you want to see on the graph (a week, 12 random days, a month, a month and a half, a few consecutive months etc.).
In addition, you can compare two chosen metrics on one graph, which is great for noticing trends and reporting.
List of all Postfity’s functionalities
Let’s see the most important funtionalities of Postfity. With Postfity social media scheduling tool you can:
- schedule and publish to multiple accounts — directly to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, VKontakte, and Google My Business,
- make unlimited drafts and a pending list of up to 10,000 social media posts,
- use the Calendar view to manage your posts, publish and plan posts for each day of the month,
- work with a team, grant different access levels, and send draft packages to your clients for approval,
- program automatic link shortening by simply ticking the right box in your settings,
- post photos and videos to your profile,
- edit your photos with a built-in image editor,
- watermark your photos with a built-in tool,
- create Snapshots to share on Instagram and other social networks,
- link to multiple pages at once in Instagram and TikTok bios with MyList.bio,
- save and add group of relevant hashtags with Snippets,
- get inspired with Holidays calendar,
- use Ideas and Social Tips Calendar with ready-to-use texts, hashtags, and images to engage your audience daily.
Hootsuite for LinkedIn alternative: Postfity’s pricing
What is very important to most people, Postfity may definitely be classed as an affordable tool. There are three plans to choose from: perfect for individuals, influencers etc. (Mini), great for those working in teams or with clients e.g. virtual assistants (Professional), and ideal for small businesses or mid-sized agencies (Agency).
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Choose the appropriate plan for you or your team/business. Trial version is available as well, so you can fall in love with Postfity on your own terms.
Conclusions
Now, you should be able to decide which tool will make your life and work easier: Hootsuite or Postfity. If you’re still having qualms about paying for Postfity scheduler, click to read how Postfity has been awarded the title “High Performer in Fall 2021” by G2.
You can also read how Visnja grew her consulting business using Postfity. Finally, remember that we offer a trial version for free!
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