How to choose a social media posting app

Start from the week you actually have

Most comparisons start from features. Start from your calendar instead. Work out how many minutes a week you can honestly give to posting, and when. The right app is the one that turns that much time into a steady run of posts.

Then write down where your last attempt at regular posting broke. Was it thinking of ideas, making images, writing captions, or the chore of publishing in several places? The step that broke is the step the app has to take off you.

Eight questions for any posting app

Ask every publisher the same eight, and have each answer demonstrated on a post of your own.

• What form does the product take: browser, phone app, chat? Where would I actually use it?
• Does it help me decide what to post, or only publish what I bring?
• Can it make the image or video, or do I supply every visual?
• Which platforms does it publish to? Name them.
• Can anything be published without my approval? Where do I see a post before it goes?
• What does it offer in a week when I have no ideas?
• What will it show me afterward about how the posts did?
• What will I pay, what am I committing to, and how would I cancel?

Five warning signs

None of these rules a product out on its own. Each should make you slow down and press for detail.

• 'Posts to all social media.' Nobody does. Ask for the platforms one by one.
• Promised growth. No product can know how many followers or sales you will gain. A number offered up front is a sales line.
• A posting frequency sold as a rule. The right frequency is the one you can keep.
• Publishing you cannot preview. If a post can go out unread, an error reaches customers before it reaches you.
• Sample accounts only. Ask to see your own business.

Check the form, not only the features

Think about where you will be when you use it. An owner who plans the week at a desk on Sunday evening has different needs from one who approves posts standing at the counter between customers. If a phone matters, do not assume a phone app exists because the word 'app' appears in the description. Ask to be shown.

The same goes for how you will be told things. Find out how you learn that drafts are waiting, that a post went out, or that one failed on a single platform. An app that relies on you remembering to open it asks for the same discipline that ran out last time.

Try it against one real week

Descriptions only go so far, and that includes this one. Where a demo or a pilot is on offer, use it this way.

Keep your notes. If you look at a second product, run the same three posts through it, so the comparison rests on your own material and not on two sales presentations.

• Before. Pick three things you would truly post this week, with the photos you already have.
• Idea to draft. Hand over the first idea and note the time until you have something you would publish.
• Publish. Approve one post, then look at it on each platform as a customer would.
• The empty-week check. Ask for ideas as though you had none, and count the ones you would use.
• After. Write down every step that was still yours.

What we recommend, and why

Our own choice is Link AI by Linkme, and the grounds are Linkme's description of it. The agent plans the week, and its trend ideas can go straight onto a calendar. It makes the pictures and video. One post is then published to five platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn), and only after the owner approves.

What stays open is form and terms: a phone app, the number of accounts, the price. Those are for Linkme to answer. Take the week-long check above, and posts of your own, and try Link AI in a demo.

The criteria we use

Idea-to-post time

The gap between a rough idea and a post you would publish decides whether you keep posting. Measure it with one real idea and a clock. Link AI, in Linkme's description, is a chat that makes the content and drafts the post, so time it in the demo.

Planning help

Some apps store what you have already decided. Others help you decide. Ask what you would see on a Monday with no plan. Link AI, as Linkme tells it, draws up the week and offers trend ideas you can add to a calendar.

Named platforms

'All social media' is never literally true, so ask for the list and compare it with the places your customers actually look. Linkme names five for Link AI: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Take any other network to the demo.

Your approval

Nothing should carry your business's name until you have read it. Check where a post waits before it publishes and how you change it. With Link AI the agent drafts and the owner approves.

Slow-week support

A routine is tried hardest in the week with no news. Ask what the app offers then. Linkme's prompts for Link AI include one that plans a week from trends and one that asks which recent posts did well.

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