Best Social Media Management Tools 2024: Metricool vs Buffer vs Hootsuite vs Typefully 🫣

Summary

In this video, the creators evaluate three popular social media scheduling tools—Metricool, Buffer, and Hootsuite—while sharing their journey of automating content posting across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Twitter. Despite initial excitement, they encountered limitations with each tool, particularly with video formatting and scheduling features. Ultimately, they settled on using Buffer for Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, while scheduling YouTube Shorts and TikToks manually. They highlight the difficulties of finding a single perfect tool, concluding that native posting may still be the best method for key platforms.

Takeaways

• 😴 The team initially manually posted content across various social media platforms but sought automation tools to save time.
• 🔍 They evaluated tools like Hootsuite, Metricool, and Buffer to streamline their social media posting process.
• 🚫 Upon testing, they found limitations with Metricool, such as lack of optimization for YouTube Shorts and formatting issues on TikTok and Instagram.
• 🛠️ Buffer offered a more user-friendly interface and successfully posted to Instagram Reels without video size issues, unlike Metricool.
• 📈 Buffer also lacked automatic analytics and optimization suggestions for posting times, requiring manual input and adjustment.
• 💸 Hootsuite, being more expensive, had a dated interface and similar limitations to Metricool and Buffer, making it less appealing.
• 📱 The team discovered TikTok's native desktop app scheduling feature but found video quality degradation to be a significant drawback.
• 📅 They devised a hybrid strategy: using Buffer for Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, manual posting for TikTok, and YouTube's native scheduling for Shorts.
• 🔒 Concerns were raised about the extensive permissions required by these tools to access and manage social media accounts.
• 🔍 Typy was recommended for scheduling on Twitter and LinkedIn, offering auto-saving, analytics, and power user features like auto-posting and direct messaging.

Q & A

What was the main issue the speaker faced with posting on YouTube Shorts using Metro?

The main issue was that Metro did not allow for optimization of YouTube Shorts, such as adding a description or choosing a thumbnail, which are important features for the speaker.

Why did the speaker decide to pause using Metro after encountering issues with video size on Instagram?

The speaker decided to pause using Metro because the tool required resizing of all videos to be posted through the app, which was not only time-consuming but also seemed to defeat the purpose of using a scheduling tool to save time.

What was the speaker's experience with Buffer in terms of user interface and scheduling posts on Instagram?

The speaker found Buffer's user interface to be prettier and more friendly than Metro. They also experienced no issues with video size when scheduling posts on Instagram, which was a significant improvement over Metro.

How does Buffer handle scheduling for YouTube Shorts compared to Metro?

Buffer allows scheduling for YouTube Shorts but, similar to Metro, it has limitations such as not being able to add tags, descriptions, or thumbnails.

What was the primary reason the speaker and their team decided against using Hootsuite?

The speaker and their team decided against using Hootsuite because it was not as user-friendly, had similar limitations to other tools they tested, and was priced significantly higher without offering the necessary features for their needs.

What alternative strategy did the speaker adopt for scheduling posts on TikTok after testing various tools?

The speaker decided to manually upload and schedule posts on TikTok using the native app, ensuring better control over video quality and caption formatting.

How does the speaker plan to use Buffer for social media scheduling?

The speaker plans to use Buffer for scheduling posts on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as they found it to be the most reliable among the tools tested for these platforms.

What feature of YouTube did the speaker discover that allowed for better scheduling of YouTube Shorts?

The speaker discovered that YouTube's native app allows for scheduling of YouTube Shorts, which means they can upload the video, save the thumbnail, and then schedule it for future posting.

What additional tool does the speaker recommend for scheduling posts on LinkedIn and Twitter?

The speaker recommends using Typy, a tool that specifically works with Twitter and LinkedIn, for those looking to grow their following on these platforms.

What are some of the benefits of using Typy according to the speaker?

Typy offers auto-saving of drafts, which prevents loss of content, and provides analytics to track growth and engagement. It also has power user features like auto post, auto DM, and auto plug.

Outlines

00:00

🔍 Exploring Social Media Scheduling Tools

The speaker discusses their journey to find the optimal social media scheduling tool. They initially planned to automate their social media posting process using software tools like Hootsuite, Metricool, and Buffer. After manually posting content on various platforms, they decided to seek software assistance. Despite initial excitement about features like cross-platform posting and audience analytics, they encountered limitations with each tool, such as formatting issues on TikTok and video size restrictions on Instagram. The speaker also highlights the importance of YouTube as their primary channel and the need for careful management of its content.

05:00

📊 Analyzing Buffer and Hootsuite for Social Media Efficiency

The speaker compares Buffer and Hootsuite, noting that Buffer's user interface was more appealing and offered a cleaner scheduling experience. While Buffer successfully handled Instagram Reels without issues, it still couldn't format captions for TikTok or add descriptions and thumbnails for YouTube Shorts. Hootsuite, despite its higher price, showed an outdated interface and similar limitations. The speaker also mentions the lack of detailed analytics for YouTube with Buffer and the more team-oriented features of Hootsuite, concluding that neither tool fully met their needs for a comprehensive scheduling solution.

10:02

🛠️ Crafting a Custom Social Media Posting Strategy

After evaluating various tools, the speaker decides on a hybrid approach to social media management. They choose Buffer for Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn due to its reliability and ease of use, despite minor issues with Twitter. For YouTube Shorts, they opt to use YouTube's native scheduling feature, appreciating its ability to batch content effectively. TikTok, being a more critical platform for them, is managed manually to ensure post quality. The speaker reflects on the challenges of finding a one-size-fits-all tool and the realization that native app posting might be the most effective approach.

15:03

🔗 Final Thoughts on Social Media Scheduling and Additional Tools

The speaker concludes with a recommendation for Typy, a scheduling tool specifically for Twitter and LinkedIn, praising its auto-saving feature and analytics capabilities. They also express concerns about the extensive permissions required by social media tools to access YouTube accounts. The video ends with a call to action for viewers to share their social media scheduling strategies and desired features, emphasizing the ongoing search for the ideal scheduling tool and the value of manual posting for quality assurance.

Keywords

💡Social Media Scheduling Tools

Social media scheduling tools are applications designed to automate the process of posting content across various social media platforms. In the video, the creators discuss their experience with tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Metricool, aiming to find the most efficient way to schedule and automate their social media posts. These tools are crucial for managing content across multiple platforms without manual daily posting.

💡Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows users to schedule posts, monitor social media channels, and analyze performance. The video mentions Hootsuite as one of the top contenders for social media scheduling, but the creators found it to be outdated and not as user-friendly as they had hoped, especially when it came to posting on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

💡Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that simplifies the process of posting content on various platforms. The video highlights Buffer as the most user-friendly option among the tools evaluated, with a clean interface and reliable scheduling capabilities. However, it also has limitations similar to other tools, such as the inability to add descriptions or thumbnails for YouTube Shorts.

💡Metricool

Metricool is a social media management tool that the video creators initially considered due to its frequent mentions by YouTubers. It offers features like a posting calendar and audience activity insights. However, the creators encountered issues with video size limitations and unformatted captions when trying to schedule posts, leading them to pause their evaluation of the tool.

💡YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts is a feature on YouTube that allows users to create and share short videos. In the context of the video, the creators express the importance of being able to schedule and optimize Shorts with descriptions and thumbnails. They found that most scheduling tools did not fully support these features for Shorts, which was a significant drawback.

💡Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels is a feature on Instagram that enables users to create and share short, engaging videos. The video script discusses the creators' challenges with scheduling Reels through third-party tools due to issues with video size and caption formatting. Proper scheduling and formatting are crucial for maintaining the quality and engagement of their content on Instagram.

💡TikTok

TikTok is a social media platform known for its short-form videos. The video mentions TikTok in relation to the challenges faced when trying to schedule posts through third-party tools. The creators care about their presence on TikTok and want to ensure that their captions and thumbnails are well-formatted, which was not always possible with the scheduling tools they tested.

💡API Limitations

API, or Application Programming Interface, limitations refer to the constraints imposed by the platform's official software interface when third-party tools try to interact with it. In the video, the creators discuss how API limitations affected their ability to schedule posts with certain features, such as video size restrictions and the inability to add captions or thumbnails.

💡Manual Posting

Manual posting involves creating and uploading content to social media platforms without the use of automation tools. The video concludes that, despite the desire to automate, manual posting might be the best option for certain platforms and types of content. The creators found that for YouTube Shorts, manual posting through the native YouTube app provided the most control and quality assurance.

💡Native Scheduling

Native scheduling refers to the use of a platform's own built-in tools to schedule posts. The video highlights the benefits of using native scheduling for YouTube Shorts, where the creators can upload, schedule, and later add descriptions and tags through the YouTube app, providing a balance between automation and control.

Highlights

The team evaluated Hootsuite, Metricool, and Buffer for social media posting.

Manual posting was initially used but became unsustainable.

Metricool was popular among YouTubers but had limitations with YouTube Shorts.

Buffer had a user-friendly interface and successfully posted to Instagram Reels.

Hootsuite, despite its high price, had similar limitations to Metricool and Buffer.

The team considered using TikTok's own scheduling tool but encountered issues with video quality.

Buffer was chosen for Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn due to its reliability.

YouTube Shorts can be scheduled natively within the YouTube app.

TikTok content is carefully managed for SEO and engagement.

The team concluded that native app posting is often the best method.

Typy was recommended for scheduling on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Typy offers auto-saving, which prevents loss of draft content.

Social media platforms' APIs require full permissions, which raised concerns.

The team encourages viewers to consider their social media strategy and platform priorities.

The video concludes with a call to action for feedback on social media scheduling tools.

Transcripts

after sleeping on it and taking some

time to really think about how we can

optimize our time we landed on this

formula for posting this is a video that

we never intended on making in this

video we're going to give you a

breakdown of our findings from

evaluating hoot suite and Metric cool

and buffer and in the end of the video

we're going to tell you the

unconventional path that we ended up

going down for social media posting we

recently filmed a minseries podcast and

from that we got our video producer to

make a bunch of short form content that

we were posting on Instagram and Tik Tok

and YouTube shorts and then even Twitter

and Linkedin and guess who was doing

that manually this girl after a month or

so of doing this we decided that we

needed to turn to software to help us

automate some of this process we thought

that we would have our variety of tools

to choose from and this would be a

really simple decision but we were

totally wrong all right now let's get

into it

[Music]

first up metric cool so when we started

doing research for our social media

posting tool we jumped on YouTube and

started watching some reviews and demos

and one tool that kept popping up was

metrol and we had heard of hoot site and

buffer before but metrol was it seemed

like more YouTubers were talking about

it so it was the software that we wanted

to look at first and when we watched

tutorials online it just looked like it

had all the features like I really

thought that we found the greatest

Solutions you can post on all the social

media platforms from YouTube shorts to

Instagram to Tik Tok Etc and it even has

a cool calendar that shows you when your

audience online and the best times to

post so we signed up for an account we

connected all of our social media

accounts and within the first couple of

minutes of using it and actually trying

to schedule post we started seeing some

of the limitations the first thing we

noticed was that posting for you shorts

isn't optimized so while you can use it

to post to shorts you can't actually add

a description or you can't pick your

thumbnail which is a newer feature that

YouTube released and one that's really

important so for us YouTube is our most

important channel so we're more

protective of that so immediately we

knew that we weren't going to be able to

use metrol for YouTube but for the other

channels like Tik Tok and Instagram and

Twitter we thought maybe we can use

Metro cool for all of those and then

just keep manually posting to YouTube as

we've been doing but you guessed it we

ran into more trouble because when we

scheduled our Tik Tok for example it

posted and the entire caption was

unformatted and it just doesn't look

very good especially when you've put so

much work into creating the content and

then the real trouble came when we went

to post a reel on Instagram so like I

said we've been posting these videos

manually for quite some time now and

I've had no issues from doing them from

my phone however when I uploaded the

same video that we always get back from

our video editor edor into metri cool

there was an error with the video size

metrol was saying that our video size

was too large and when I contacted their

support they had suggested that we

resize all of our videos for them to be

posted through this app at that point

you start thinking is this really saving

me time or is this going to waste more

of not only my time but my team's time

as well so their chat support were very

insistent that this is an API limitation

and that there was no way around it and

this is just what we had to do so at

that point kind of decided it's time to

put metrical on pause and evaluate some

of the other tools that's when we took a

look at the next tool which is buffer

the first thing that we noticed when we

logged into buffer was that the user

interface was much prettier and much

more friendly than that of metric upon

connecting our accounts it had pulled in

all of our previous social media posts

and put them on a nice calendar which

gave us a bird's eye view of all the

content that we've been posting and in

just the experience of using their

scheduling tool just felt like a little

bit more clean and refined so prettiness

aside functionality is what matters at

the end of the day we tried to schedule

our Tik Tok post and we also ran into

the same issues with not being able to

choose a thumbnail and also not being

able to format our captions then we went

to schedule a reel on Instagram and to

our surprise and Delight it's scheduled

and posted right away and we had no

issues with the video size which for us

was a huge wi with buffer you can also

post on YouTube shorts but you also have

the same limitations as you did with

metrial with not being able to add tags

or a description or a thumbnail like I

said before we knew already that we are

going to be protective over our YouTube

channel and continue to post that

directly through the YouTube app another

limitation we found with buffer is that

it didn't automatically analyze all of

our previous data and give us the

suggestions for the best time to post

and I did contact them and ask them

about this and they said the more that

you use buffer to post the more that

they're able to give you the best times

to post and that kind of data speaking

of data if you are concerned with

reports and metrics it doesn't pull in

analytics for your YouTube account and

it does for the other platforms but I'd

say metric cool did a slightly better

job at showing you all sorts of

analytics all this being said both Alex

and I on our team we go into the apps

and we just look at the analytics from

the apps themselves so because we're a

small team we don't have reports and

stuff like that that we're pulling out

to show other people on our team so that

feature is not something that's super

useful for us we really wanted to use

social media scheduling tools to

schedule social media and that is the

main thing that we looked at so with all

this being said we were impressed with

buffer however we couldn't help but

wonder that maybe there was going to be

this one dream tool that was going to do

it all and really just help us out and

save us time from having to schedule

these posts manually so then we went on

to evaluate the next tool which is hoot

site hoot site has been around as long

as I can remember in the social media

space and they are priced higher than

buffer and Metric cool starting at 99 a

month but given we're a business and we

thought if it could really save my time

and from doing this manually it would be

worth the price tag if it could take

care of all the needs that we have that

we created an account and we put our

credit card on file and by the way out

of these three apps it is the only tool

that actually required us to put a

credit card on file and with that I just

want to give a big shout out to Bill

spend and expense for allowing us to put

a virtual credit card on file and not

being worried that it was going to be

charged because we could easily freeze

it right after creating an account so

we're in the account and within I'd say

five minutes my stomach started sinking

because I had quickly realized that this

tool wasn't going to be all that I

thought it could be it's very apparent

that HootSuite was built a long time ago

in terms of the user interface they have

some parts of the tool that are newer

but then you can click the wrong button

and you get into this really old archaic

view so that wasn't really impressive

and then when it came to actually

scheduling it felt more limiting than

buffer nevertheless we connected all of

our accounts and found that there were

the same limitations as we had before so

in terms of Tik Tok we didn't get that

caption formatting we couldn't pick a

thumbnail with Instagram it gave us the

same error that metric cool did with the

file size and then when it came to

YouTube shorts again same limitations no

thumbnail no descriptions no tags I've

said it three times by now so paying $99

a month and it doesn't even have all the

features that something like buffer does

that's free for three accounts it just

didn't make sense but upon looking at

hoot Suite A little bit more it's very

clear that the tool is created for teams

and like I was saying at the beginning

teams that need comprehensive reporting

they need to show their team Trends in

social media they need permissions they

need approvals and all that kind of

stuff so they're very featur rich in

these more Team Tools so in terms of

being the best scheduling app it wasn't

it so within I'd say 30 minutes we

disconnected all of our social media

accounts and we Sunset the idea of using

hoot site as an option okay so where did

we end up today I wish I can tell you

that there was one tool that we really

discovered and we really loved and it

really met all of our needs but that

wasn't the case we did take a look at

some other ones here and there but in

terms of the top three contenders we do

think that it is hoot sweet buffer and

Metric cool the best app that we found

was buffer and we were really between a

rock and a hard place as they say where

we were thinking do we continue to post

manually or do we use buffer for some of

the apps so went back to YouTube and

started doing a little bit more research

to try to dig into what other people are

doing and then I found out that Tik Tok

actually actually created their own

scheduling tool within the desktop app

now that was interesting because then I

thought what if I use buffer for

Instagram and for Twitter and Linkedin

and then I use the Tik Tok desktop app

for Tik Tok and then I can just post to

YouTube as I've been posting and I

really thought I was on to something so

of course I tried it I uploaded my post

I wrote my caption and I scheduled it

and it flopped dramatically what

happened it posted to Tik Tok and the

caption was formatted

but then I realized that the video

resolution had scaled way down like to

the point where our skin looked grainy

and gross and it was also sitting at one

view for over an hour which if you post

a Tik Tok that just doesn't happen

because their algorithm just puts it in

the flow right away so I think it like

descaled their video and then didn't do

anything with it so this might be a

feature that Tik tok's building out and

they're going to put more TLC into and I

think it has a lot of potential but as

of right now of recording this video

it's unusable on our end anyway so my

friends we went to the drawing board

again what were we going to do we really

wanted to save time here and not make

our process even more complicated with

trying to figure out a batching solution

to post after sleeping on it and taking

some time to really think about how we

can optimize our time we landed on this

formula for posting we were going to use

buffer for posting to Instagram and

Twitter and LinkedIn because as far as

those platforms go there was no issues

that being said we did have one

experience when we tried to schedule a

post on Twitter and it failed however

when we rescheduled it for later that

day it worked so I'd say in terms of

reliability I'd give it maybe like a

nine out of 10 right now one thing we're

also monitoring with buffer is social

media engagement so we've been sending

our post to Instagram and we've been

trying to track if it's getting less

views than we normally do when we

manually post it so far we don't really

have a solid answer it seems to be okay

because our views have been consistent

up and down with Instagram anyway but

it's a platform that we generally care

about less like our audience is not

really on Instagram so just getting the

content out there is enough for us on

that platform I think this is an

important distinction to make when it

comes to these tools I think you really

have to take a look at all the social

media platforms and think what do I care

about the most and where do I want to

invest the most time and what's okay to

sacrifice a little bit and that's what

we did through our strategy with our

YouTube shorts we actually found that

you can schedule the shorts through the

YouTube app which is really cool and an

idea that we didn't really think about

we fell across it when we were trying to

save some drafts on our phone so you can

open up YouTube you can upload your

video you can save your thumbnail and

then instead of posting it you can go to

schedule and schedule it for a future

time and then upload the video and then

you can go to the desktop app and add

the description and the tags and related

videos and all that sort of thing right

within the desk desktop app for us we're

totally fine to do that because we could

still batch our content this way which

was a really big unlock and something

that made us really happy and we've been

using that now for over a week and it's

been working really well for Tik Tok it

is a platform that we do care more about

than Instagram so we didn't want to just

post content with Messy captions that

weren't cohesive or coherent to read and

we didn't want to have thumbnails that

we didn't select ourselves and one of

the reasons that we do care about Tik

Tok is that we do find that is good for

SEO like some of the content that we

posted a year ago is still getting

favored and liked and people are

commenting so I do think that the way

that Tik tok's algorithm is built it's

optimized to incentivize creators like

us to create content on their over

Instagram which kind of feels like you

post it and then your content just dies

so that's our strategy we're using

buffer for LinkedIn for Twitter for

Instagram we are then planning our

content up to two weeks in advance then

we're taking all of those videos I

transfer them over to my phone I upload

them all to Tik Tok at once I write the

caption I save everything in my draft

and then go manually post one video a

day and then in terms of YouTube we're

using the native scheduling tool all

this being said is it better than what

we were doing before with manually

posting once a day yes absolutely it

takes about one day to schedule a couple

weeks worth of content and then we don't

really need to think about it anymore I

think what we're realizing is that these

social media apps don't really want want

to make it easy for any external tool to

schedule posting a lot of these tools

rely on YouTube for example to build

features into their API to be able to

relate a video through the API or to

choose a thumbnail through the API so if

YouTube's not building that then no

external tool is actually going to make

this possible YouTube Instagram Tik Tok

what they would love and what they get

more benefit from is having you open up

the app to post every day because you

get distracted sucked in and then they

can show you an ad and it really plays

well to their ad Revenue model I wish

that this could be a more positive video

with having one hero tool that can do

everything for you but we really just

wanted to brain dump all the information

that we learned over the past couple of

days to hopefully save you some time

when doing your own research posting

natively to the social media apps is the

winner here and doing it manually is

probably the best way but if you have

platforms that you care about less like

Instagram Twitter LinkedIn we'd say

buffer would win that

category hey okay so Alex from the

future here so there is one other

scheduling app that we wanted to

recommend as we've been using it since

recording this video so if you're

someone like me and is trying to grow

their ex

following like Twitter X so the tool is

called typy and it only works with x in

LinkedIn but if you're someone like me

that is trying to specifically grow

their X following that's kind of where

the community is that I'm closest with

I'm finding that I'm actually posting

now on LinkedIn which is also great

because I don't even need to think about

it I write the tweet that I want to PO

post on X and then I end up posting it

to LinkedIn as well I'd be willing to

bet that anyone that you're following on

X that also is posting on LinkedIn is

probably using tifully that's kind of

what we've uncovered if you're also

someone that posts on X you've probably

experienced a bug in which you've just

completely lost a draft that you've

spent the last half hour or an hour

writing maybe it was due to a Refresh on

your browser or on your phone mobile app

crashing this is something that you

don't have to worry about with typ f

because it's Autos saving at all points

in time so your draft is always right

there and present one of the unintended

benefits of using a tool like typy is

that you don't get sucked into social

media before or after writing your post

you can just write them schedule them

and get out do me a favor and the next

time that you post on one of these

platforms see how much time you waste

afterward scrolling through other

people's posts Tyle also has some other

power user features like Auto post autod

DM and auto plug so the next time that

someone has their thread that goes viral

I bet you there's going to be an autop

plug they're going to be pitching why

you should go check out their website in

the second comment they're probably also

using typ F the last thing is typ does a

really great job at analytics so you can

see how you're growing from week to week

month to month and you could even see

what posts are giving you the most

engagement so you can focus more on

doing more of that all right now back to

Andre one more little thing to note is

that every platform that we connected

our YouTube account with asked for full

permission and access to our YouTube

account to even delete videos and if

you're investing a lot of time in your

YouTube account that's obviously pretty

scary we even reached out to the founder

of metric cool to ask about this and

every platform was consistent with the

fact of saying that it's part of the API

requests and they have to get your

permissions but they will not delete

anything but for us it just feels a

little bit too Ry so if you made it to

the end of the video we want to know how

do you schedule your social media post

and if you had a request for any of the

apps we talked about what would your

dream social media scheduling feature be

if this video helped you would love for

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