20 Buffer Alternatives for Your Social Media Strategy in 2021

Social media is the backbone of any good digital marketing strategy. In order to succeed on social media you need to create and curate content, build engaged communities and analyze countless data points. That’s a lot of work but thankfully there are a handful of social media tools out there that can help ease the burden of an otherwise overwhelming workload. 

Buffer is one such tool. Launched in November of 2010, Buffer quickly became a go-to choice for social media marketers looking to easily schedule posts to multiple social media platforms. 

Nowadays we have more players on the field and compared to Buffer many of these tools integrate with more social media platforms, offer more comprehensive analytics and make team collaboration much easier.  

In this article we’ll go over 20 of the best Buffer alternatives for 2021.

Characteristics of a good Social Media Tool:

A good social media tool will help you execute a multifaceted social media strategy with ease. Here are a few must-have features that you should look for in every social media tool:

Integrations:

Most social media tools are designed to work with major social media channels. Make sure that your social media tool integrates with the social platforms your business prioritises.

Content Management:

The modern digital marketer depends on social media content management features such as content curation, content repurposing and developing market-specific content calendars. Make sure your tool has strong content management capabilities.

Budget Friendly: 

Pricing for SMM tools varies greatly depending on the perks said tools provide. Keep your requirements in mind and avoid paying for more than what you need. Most tools provide pricing plans with complementary features.

Buffer

Buffer is used by hundreds of thousands of businesses that want to intuitively schedule and publish content. Buffer’s WordPress integration, Chrome extension and no-frills dashboard creates an effortless user experience that many novice marketers enjoy. 

What are Buffer’s pros? 

• Ease of use 
• Buffer Analyze relays valuable data 
• Unified social inbox 

What are Buffer’s cons? 

• Its Expensive:

Buffer is a collection of three apps; Buffer Analyze, Reply and Publish. In order to take advantage of all of Buffer’s features you’ll have to buy each package individually. 

• No AI:

In the midst of AI- powered social media tools that provide effective content generation ideas, Buffer becomes limited with its basic static data reports. 

• Limited Team Collaboration Options

Since Buffer’s focus is on easy scheduling and social media analytics, team collaboration features are not included with all of the plans.

20 Buffer alternatives to consider:

1. Kontentino

Kontentino is a human-friendly social media tool made with ease of use and collaboration in mind. We make it easy to schedule posts, create and organize posts and talk to your team. Seamlessly reschedule or copy posts by using the drag and drop social calendar. Manage multiple clients, create custom reports, collaborate with translators, graphic designers and copywriting, all within one intuitive platform. Marketing teams are saving up to 41% of their time wasted on menial tasks by incorporating Kontentino into their everyday workflow. 

What Makes Kontentino unique: 

Kontentino is trusted by over 4,000 brands and agencies to organize their internal communication and client collaboration. Kontentino lets you tag your colleagues, assign tasks and comment on and approve posts within the visual content calendar. 

Core Features

• Content Plans
• Mobile app
• Planning and collaboration
• Client approvals 
• Community management
• Instagram scheduling
• Insights and reporting

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a one stop shop for all your social  media needs.  From WordPress, Mailchimp and Slideshare integrations to in-depth analytics, Hootsuite has all of the bases covered.

What makes Hootsuite unique: 

Hootsuite hosts a plethora of support content  including courses, certifications, webinars and resource libraries. Whether you’re a newbie or a professional, chances are Hootsuite has the resources you need. 

Core Features:

• Social Analytics
• Social Publishing
• Ads
• Amplify
• Impact
• Insights
• Mobile Apps
• Sparkcentral

3. Zoho Social

Zoho Social lets you  schedule posts, dynamically create reports, monitor mentions and manage your team through a fully customizable dashboard. 

What makes Zoho Social unique: 

Zoho Special lets you create live listening columns where you can monitor brand reviews, track mentions, discover trends and respond to engaged followers. 

Core Features:

• Publishing Calendar 
• Content Queues
• Curate Content
• Listening dashboard
• Livestream data collection
• Direct messages
• Custom reports

4. SproutSocial

Sprout Social is trusted by Chipotle, Zendesk and other brands to manage their social media. The platform is a holistic social media management tool that provides marketing, community management, analytics and content management solutions. 

What makes Sprout Social unique: 

Sprout Social’s social CRM, sentiment analysis, content curation and distribution optimization capabilities helps large businesses streamline their social media management.

Core Features:

• Smart Inbox 
• Brand Keywords
• Contact Views
• Collision Detection
• Message Completion
• Conversation History
• Facebook & Instagram Ads
• Comment Moderation

5. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is an established platform making waves with its Agency Love program, unified social inbox and intuitive publishing. Agorapulse helps agencies with networking, business development and lead generation in addition to the traditional social media management features.

What makes Agorapulse unique: 

Agorapulse offers an Inbox Assistant that manages inbox items for you by reviewing, assigning, or labelling them automatically.  Set up inbox tags and rules and the Assistant can detect and assign them to your registered team members. 

Core Features

• Upload content in bulk
• Social Ads Comment Management
• Social Media Reporting
• Social Inbox Zero
• Queue Categories
• Social Listening
• Follower profiles

6. Loomly

Loomly uses trend analysis and RSS feeds to give you post ideas based on your niche, making it simple to create a winning community management plan.

What makes Loomly unique: 

Loomly assists you in creating quality posts & ads that are sure to resonate with your target audience. By giving you live optimization tips and integrating with Facebook Preferred Audience & Audience Restrictions you can reach the right people at the right time.

Core Features:

• RSS Feeds
• Twitter Trends
• Events, holidays & date-related content ideas
• Data-driven post ideas
• Subject & labels
• Optimization tips
• Organic and paid content mockups
• Approval workflow
• Commenting system
• Version logs

7. Sendible

Senndible is a productivity tool that saves you time with social media planning and execution. They provide effective lead generation, social media monitoring, content management and analytics tools. They also let you manage users and administrative accounts, a feature agencies can appreciate. 

What makes Sendible unique: 

Sendible boasts an incredible amount of integrations including Google My Business, Facebook Ads, Pinterest, Youtube, Blogspot, Medium, Tumblr and more.

Core Features:

• Get content suggestions
• RSS feeds
• Visual content
• Shared publishing calendar
• Content flow with queues
• Assign conversations
• Approve social media posts before scheduling
• Limit access to certain users
• Keyword alerts
• Social listening on Twitter

8. TweetDeck

TweetDeck is for those who focus solely on Twitter marketing. They offer great real-time tracking and engagement features that help organize and optimize your Twitter content and outreach efforts. In addition to scheduling posts, Tweetdeck houses a dashboard where you can customize columns in a way that best fits your Tweeting needs. 

What makes Tweetdeck unique: 

Acquired by the social media giant Twitter in 2011, Tweetdeck is the most powerful Twitter tool for live engagement tracking and content organization.

Core Features:

• Manage Multiple Accounts
• Real-time Timeline Streaming
• Manage Multiple Timelines
• Schedule Tweets in TweetDeck
• Get Notifications and Alerts
• Mute Words or Users on Twitter
• Teams feature to Share an Account

9. Social Oomph

Social Oomph has a smart analytics tool that provides users with meaningful insight into strategies commonly used in their niche. The platform also comes with a content suggestion feature to help you produce high quality posts. 

What makes Socialoomph unique: 

Socialoomph lets you schedule self-deleting posts so your social feed doesn’t contain outdated information. Socialoomph also offers a post flood control feature that automatically limits the amount of posts you upload so your followers aren’t spammed with content.  

Core Features:

• Precise scheduling
• Self-destructing posts
• Post flood control
• Post tags
• Webhooks

10. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is designed with freelancers and solo entrepreneurs in mind. Edgar provides you with an evergreen library that automatically uploads and updates content. You can view traffic sources within their analytics dashboard, schedule posts and blogs, split-test and monitor social engagement. 

What makes MeetEdgar unique: 

MeetEdgar is a social media scheduler that automatically pulls posts from an extensive  auto-updating content library. Edgar utilizes automatic variations to write and publish evergreen content that you can manually segment into different categories for different social media platforms. 

Core Features:

• Social media scheduler.
• Automated social sharing.
• Automated content repurposing.
• Auto-refill queue.
• Unlimited content library.
• Category-based scheduling.
• URL shortener and in-app tracker.
• Browser extension.

11. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a robust tool that helps enterprises scale their CMX (customer experience management) . They provide access to 23 social channels, 11 messaging channels and universal access to all mainstream blogs and forums. Sprinklr integrates an AI engine that centralizes valuable data for extensive benchmarking, social listening and UGC curation.

What makes Sprinklr unique:  

Sprinklr protects your brand’s social reputation by implementing auditable approval processes, governance structures and compliance frameworks so you can deliver a consistent customer experience at every touchpoint. 

Core Functions: 

• Computer Vision
• Network Growth Analysis
• Anomaly Detection
• Natural Language Generation
• Similarity Engine
• ROI tracking 
• Conversational Commerce
• Community creation/management 
• Chatbot setup

12. Falcon.io

Like most platforms in this list, Falcon.io helps social media marketers organize, plan and schedule content. Their content calendar lets you schedule both paid and organic posts, manage multiple channels and plan campaigns. Falcon.io also gives you the option of merging your CRM with their built-in analytics.

What makes Falcon.io unique: 

Falcon.io provides consultancy services for auditing, content creation and reporting services from their inhouse senior strategists. 

Core Functions:

• Manage multiple social channels 
• Accessible, easy to understand   data 
• Tailored content
• Track social mentions 
• Audits & Analytics
• Centralized customer base
• Engaged follower profiles

13. Social Bakers

Social Bakers is an ai-powered platform that provides data to help you better understand your audience. Their powerful social listening tools provide a holistic view of your social media performance by analyzing every touchpoint throughout your users’ journeys. The persona mapping functionality helps save you time by suggesting hard-hitting niche-specific content that’s guaranteed to perform well. Social Baker’s AI can also analyze your audience and recommend influencers to partner with. 

What makes Social Bakers unique: 

Social Baker’s Influencer Discovery feature lets you connect your data to the platform and find influencers that are most relevant to your business. You can vet influencers by engagement rates, audience demographics and even hashtags.

Core Features:

• Actionable Listening
• Community Care
• Track user touchpoints
• Community KPIs
• AI-Powered Content Inspiration

14. Fanbooster

Fanboosters lets you share, schedule and monitor content across most major social media platforms (including TikTok). Their Compare tool lets you compare network performance so you can see which social platform provides the highest ROI. You can also build custom reports and schedule them in advance, making Fanbooster a solid choice for agencies.

What makes Fanbooster unique: 

Fanbooster’s app offers many of the same functionalities found on their desktop dashboard. You can create and schedule content, monitor post performance, share web content and compose custom messages. 

Core Features:

• Geocode your publication
• Bulk Schedule
• Native Canva integration
• Content syndication
• Automatic publishing
• Unlimited Presentation-Ready Reports
• Editorial workflow
• Sophisticated Analytics

15. eClincher

Customer segmentation, competitor analysis, and keyword filtering are a few of the many high-end features eClincher has to offer. Automate blogs, recycle evergreen content and collect valuable data all within an easy to use dashboard.  

What makes eClincher unique:

eClicher eases the burden of content creation. You can use keywords to curate content and save feeds to your dashboard. Manage and save creative assets by connecting your Google Drive and/or Dropbox account.

Core Features:

• RSS feeds
• Manage dashboards
• Visual calendar & scheduler
• Automate posts with smart queues
• Bulk upload & scheduling
• Drag & Drop Instagram feed manager
• Link Shortener & Tracking
• Pocket App Integration

16. Tailwind

Tailwing is the smart Instagram and Pinterest assistant that automatically schedules, analyzes and suggests content. The SmartSchedule tool works out during which times your audience is most engaged and schedules your posts accordingly. Tailwind Create transforms photos you upload into Pins that are automatically personalized to your brand.  

What makes Tailwind unique: 

Tailwind is perfect for Pinterest-focused businesses. Tailwind Communities let you grow your reach in over 4,000 niches, find a fresh supply of Pins content and meet and team up with different Influencers from various Pinterest communities.

Core Function:

• Manage branded content
• Customized visual planning
• Personalized SmartSchedule
• Shoppable Smart.bio feed
• Tailwind Communities
• Tailwind Create 
• Dynamic content creation

17. Publer

Publer is a social media scheduler that integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google My Business and Youtube. Publer lets you automatically recycle content, store and organize content within the in-site media library, connect unlimited RSS feeds and even add watermarks to your videos. Publer’s AI can suggest relevant and trending hashtags for your posts. 

What makes Publer unique: 

Publer lets you auto-schedule up to 500 posts at once. Simply add your media to the dashboard, select the desired social accounts you want to post to and click “Post”. 

Core Features:

• Custom Link In Bio creation 
• Auto Scheduling
• Bulk Scheduling
• Automatic posting to Pinterest
• Instagram Post Scheduling

18. Coschedule

Coschedule is one of the best remote work management softwares on the market. Their single content calendar helps you tackle scheduling, recycling, and generating content.  The Co-Schedule tool lets you share progress with team’s higher-ups while maintaining flexibility with drop and drop rescheduling. 

What makes Coschedule unique: 

Coschedule’s content organizer turns brainstorming, creating, scheduling and publishing content into an intuitive, visual process. Drop and drop assignment tags, prioritize tasks and plan posts through a comprehensive content calendar.

Core Features:

• Google Chrome Extension
• Built-In Headline Analyzer Studio
• Evernote + Google Docs FTW
• Content Library
• Users and Permission

19. Oktopost

Oktopost helps B2B companies with publishing content, measuring ROI, engaging with customers and converting social traffic. You can sync Oktopost with your CRM data to gain deeper insights into your customers’ journeys and maximize visibility with the Social Campaigns tool.

What makes Oktopost unique: 

Oktopost offers a unique employee advocacy feature, letting your team easily discover, recommend and share pre-approved company content to their personal social profiles.

Core Functions:

• Scheduling and publishing 
• Campaign Optimization
• Social Engagement tracking
• Paid ads tools 
• Competitor analysis
• Follower analysis
• Post performance data
• Attributions setup

20. Social Champ

Social Champ is an economically priced product that focuses on social listening. Sentiment Analysis can gauge the vibe of posts to ensure your tone is kept positive. You can keep track of overall actions taken on your social networks from week-to-week, giving you actionable insights as to what content engages your audience the most. 

What makes Social Champ unique: 

Social Champ provides powerful content repurposing capabilities so you can repost evergreen visual and written content that has performed well in the past. Add blog links, images, carousels and videos to bulk-upload in the future. 

Core Features:

• Social Analytics
• Social Publishing
• Campaign Optimization
• Social Engagement
• Social Ads

There you have it 

The above list covers the best content development and management platforms, all of which are viable alternatives to Buffer. We hope this list helped. Whether you’re looking to manage your content, create communities or collaborate with your team, social media tools like Kontentino will set you on the right track toward achieving your social media goals.