Building your social media empire might initially come across as an uphill task, resembling Sisyphus’ task of pushing a rock up the mountain and ultimately having it roll back down. In the bevy of social media influencers you will encounter online, it may be a daunting thought to compete with these social media giants who gain thousands of followers on a daily basis. However, you will soon come to learn that this may be managed in a more easy manner, by recruiting the right tools for you to wield.
In order to grow your popularity on any social media site, you need to ensure that you have a commanding presence on more than just one social media site. This would boost the chances of you reaching more individuals and each social media site has its own added benefits and niche.
Thus, in order to equally manage your accounts and to get more engagement, you will need to use a tool that allows you to access all these different sites on one unified platform. There are several options for you to choose from in order to do this, but two tools that stand out are Buffer and Post Planner. Here we shall go into an in depth comparison of both the sites.
1 The Price plans offered.
Buffer follows a pricing plan that is in the form of a hierarchy. There is a free version available to be used, that allows for up to three social media accounts to be added to the dashboard. Buffer limits you to only 10 posts per month on its free version.
They have a pro version that is priced at $15 and this is for the period of one month. This pricing plan allows for 8 social media profiles and for 100 posts per month. The next tier of the pricing plan is the business plan. Buffer begins its plans at $99 per month.
Post Planner does not offer a free version of its software, which will hence be a downside if you intend to be more economical in your approach to handling your social media. Its Pro version also begins at $19 per month and is priced higher than Buffer, hence if you want to make a more economic decision, then Buffer would be the software you should choose.
2 The Features provided
The features provided by Buffer and Post Planner are similar in many aspects, as they both deal with handling multiple social media accounts. Buffer provides integration with several different social media sites, including integrating with Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and as well as Blogger integration and Business content sharing.
Providing hashtag management and posting Instagram stories are available on higher tiers of payment for Buffer. Post Planner provides basic report provisions on your social media sites, it imports and exports data as well as commendable customer support.
Therefore, Buffer provides several features that are highly recommended if you are a small business, whereas Post Planner would be more geared towards an individual’s needs. Thus if you are an individual focusing on building your personal page, you could consider using Post Planner over Buffer, as the lower rungs of pricing plans would help you more.
However, if you are a small business, using Buffer may prove more useful as it has several features that would support your business’s growth, including more in depth analytics of your social media profiles.
3 Ease of Use for Consumers
How easy a software is to use is a critical point of discussion. Often the dashboard and panels of a software can be hard to understand or navigate. While both Buffer and Post Planner have easy lay-outs and are relatively understandable for a first-time user, there are more resources provided by Buffer.
Buffer provides its customer care and help online, and is easy to reach out to with queries. It also provides a vast knowledge base that can be accessed, and additionally, it provides for video tutorials to understand the software better. Post Planner on the other hand only provides online customer care, and does not have many other features explaining how to use it. Thus, for a first-time user, you might prefer to invest in Buffer.
4 Target Audience
Buffer allows you to create multiple profiles and users at lower levels of payment hence gearing itself towards a team or a small business, which Post Planner advertises itself to help you save up to two hours on your personal social networking pages.
The features provided also would demonstrate the same. Buffers business plans are created for large businesses and with several users, while Post Planner does not provide for the same. Thus small businesses starting out may benefit more from investing in this rather than Buffer.
In order to make a calculated decision for which software to invest in, we hope that you consider these factors that we have put together for you. While it is entirely a personal decision, in order to make it an economically viable one, considering the need for the features provided by each software and what those features are geared towards would be imperative.
While Buffer may cater more towards small and large businesses, Post Planner is designed to help you at an individualistic level to grow your page. However, both these softwares will help you to grow your page and will be beneficial for you to endeavor to continue focusing on building your social media profiles.