Sharing content on LinkedIn is like throwing a party. No one wants to show up to an event with no guests, and the same goes for posting on LinkedIn. Before you share your next piece of content on LinkedIn, take a moment to look at its current performance. If it has a decent amount of engagement, you should hold off on posting until the big day.
Instead, let the post keep gaining traction (or “virality”) while you prepare your next piece of LinkedIn content to share. That’s the goal of any LinkedIn content strategy: to boost your content performance so that you can go viral. That’s where later alternatives come into play. While Later is a solid tool for scheduling LinkedIn posts, it’s not built to help you get LinkedIn content “ready” for sharing.
Instead, this social media scheduler focuses on Instagram, which makes it a poor choice for anyone looking to plan LinkedIn posts. If you’re looking for a better solution for your LinkedIn content strategy, this guide will outline the best alternative for LinkedIn: the viral on-demand platform from Megaphone. This tool helps you find virality before you share a post on LinkedIn to boost your content performance and make your next LinkedIn sharing party successful.
What is Later?
Later, it serves as a robust social media tool for businesses and social media managers focused on images and videos for marketing strategies. Its core function is to help users schedule and manage social media posts more efficiently, acting as a personal social media assistant. Lately, it has integrated with various platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Pinterest. With this integration, you can manage your social media accounts in one place—saving time and effort.
The Content Calendar: An Overview
Later's standout feature is the content calendar. This intuitive calendar shows your posts weekly or monthly, giving you a clear overview of your content schedule. You can drag and drop your content onto the calendar, allowing you to plan your posts visually rather than just by date and time.
Scheduling and Publishing Features
Later, it allows you to bulk schedule and auto-publish content for different post types, including single image, video, and carousel posts. This means no matter which platform you plan to post to, you're covered. To discover the best layout, you can preview your feed and rearrange it with its Visual Planner.
Of course, you can also post on particular days or times, making Later a more flexible social media management tool. It offers the Best Time to Post feature, which suggests optimal posting times based on historical engagement data. You can also post on the go with Later’s helpful mobile app, which allows you to shoot a video and then post it automatically.
AI Tools to Help You Optimize Posts
Later, it includes a few AI tools to assist in researching and constructing your posts. In the Ideas section of the dashboard, users can generate topics for posts based on a quick description of your business model.
The Link in Bio Tool: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
Another feature that differentiates It from its competitors later is its Link in Bio tool. It allows you to turn followers into customers by bridging the gap between Instagram or TikTok and your website. With a Link in the Bio landing page, you can turn your feeds into a clickable, shoppable landing page for your products.
Analytics: Track Performance for Continuous Improvement
Later, it provides analytics, giving you insights into your best-performing content and guidance on the optimal times to post. It tracks the performance of your social media posts, including metrics like engagement, likes, clicks, comments, and more.
While less comprehensive than some dedicated analytics tools, it provides valuable insights for refining your social media strategy and maximizing engagement. However, to take advantage of analytics for Meta (Instagram and Facebook), you’ll need a creator or business profile for Instagram and at least 100 followers on Facebook.
Content Creation Tools
One of Later’s best features is the content creation tools. They allow you to streamline your apps, saving time and effort when creating new posts. Later, it offers a robust media gallery to store your images and video. It even allows you to add labels and filters to your media, making finding and organizing your content easier. If you need help deciding what to post, use Later’s Hashtag Suggestions tool to reveal your industry’s top-ranking hashtags. This gives you an edge over your competitors when finding new engagement opportunities.
Team Collaboration Features
Later, it offers various team collaboration tools to simplify teamwork and content creation. Team members can share content planning and scheduling by assigning posts to a specific user. You can also give post approvals to one or more users, allowing you to eliminate the back-and-forth often associated with marketing teams. With features like task management and content calendars, teams can stay on top of their channels by staying organized, prioritizing tasks, and meeting deadlines effectively.
Later, it operates as a SaaS platform. Access to Later is sold every month. Later, it offers three paid plans and a free plan. All paid plans can be paid on a monthly or yearly basis. They offer a 17% discount for annual payments on the paid plans.
Starter Plan: $25 a Month
The Starter Plan costs $25 a month. With this plan, you can manage one social profile per platform. You can also have one user and schedule up to 30 posts per social profile. The analytics provided with the Starter Plan are limited to three months of data.
Growth Plan: $45 a Month
The Growth Plan costs $45 monthly and allows you to manage three social profiles per platform. You can have three users on this plan and schedule up to 150 posts per social profile. The Growth Plan also offers access to full analytics, which include up to one year of data.
Advanced Plan: $80 a Month
The Advanced Plan costs $80 a month. This plan allows you to manage six social profiles per platform and includes six users. The Advanced Plan also offers unlimited scheduling for posts and access to full analytics, which include up to one year of data.
Megaphone is a viral on-demand platform designed to boost your online presence authentically and organically. Our software connects you with influential creators in your niche to help you grow impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads. Key features include:
A sophisticated engagement network,
A private engagement pod service (coming soon),
Diverse creator partnerships for sponsored posts, X spaces, and newsletter ads (coming soon).
Megaphone caters to startup founders, marketers, emerging creators, and ghostwriting agencies seeking to amplify their digital footprint and social proof. Our complex matching algorithm ensures you partner with your field's most suitable and valuable creators. Go viral today with our viral on-demand platform.
16 Best Later Alternatives for Influencer Marketing
1. Megaphone: The Platform for Authentic Growth
Megaphone is a viral-on-demand platform designed to help boost your online presence authentically and organically. Their software connects you with influential creators in your niche, allowing you to grow impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads. Key features include a sophisticated engagement network, private engagement pod service (coming soon), and diverse creator partnerships for sponsored posts, X-spaces, and newsletter ads (coming soon).
Megaphone caters to startup founders, marketers, emerging creators, and ghostwriting agencies seeking to amplify their digital footprint and social proof. Their complex matching algorithm ensures you partner with your field's most suitable and valuable creators.
2. SocialPilot: The Agency-Friendly Alternative
SocialPilot is an all-in-one social media management app made for social media marketing agencies. You can schedule all the most important social media platforms, like X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Google Business. Plus, you get unique white-label features to manage, collaborate, and share analytics with clients. SocialPilot's pricing is reasonable if you manage many social media accounts. However, more affordable options (like Post Planner) exist if you manage only a few accounts.
Pros
Supports all of the most popular social media platforms
Great if you have a lot of social media accounts to manage
It is easy to optimize your posts for each platform
White-label customization features
Cons
More complex user experience compared to alternatives
You can only add one social account for each platform for each brand
3. Social Ladder: The Ambassador Management Software
SocialLadder is an end-to-end brand ambassador management solution. It primarily helps with influencer, ambassador, and affiliate marketing by letting you automate workflows, streamline communication, and monitor engagement. Improve influencer collaboration using in-app chatting options, feed announcements, and custom push notifications.
The platform lets you assign tasks and keep records of earned media value on different platforms. Identify your top performers with SocialLadder’s reporting tools. You can keep them motivated through a gamified reward or payment system. Access your reward inventory from a centralized dashboard. Conduct an in-depth analysis to calculate ROI (return on investment) from the amount spent on hired collaborators and relevant influencers.
Pros
Simplifies social media and influencer marketing campaigns
Includes ROI tracking
Point-based reward system
Chat function for smooth communication
Cons
You cannot approve submitted content in bulk
The chat feature can be improved compared to other influencer marketing software
4. Hootsuite: The Veteran Tool for Large Teams
Hootsuite is the best tool for larger companies because of its more complex features and higher price tag. It allows you to manage almost every aspect of social media posts. This tool enables social media managers to publish and schedule content, including auto-schedule, research, and identify engaging content; engage with the community; view many aspects of engagement with a multi-stream view; and analyze progress and analytics.
One of the strongest points of Hootsuite compared to other tools is the ability to directly reply to comments on your posts from the Hootsuite dashboard.
Pros
Strong analytics and reporting
Paid ads management
DM and comment management features that are great for customer service
Plenty of integrations
Great for social listening to manage your online reputation
Cons
Much more expensive than Later
The free plan is only for 30 days
5. Awario: The Social Listening Tool
Awario is a social media monitoring software that helps position your brand through influencer activities that trigger word-of-mouth marketing. It tracks brand mentions, content performance, and engagement statistics. Find influencers in your niche using the Mention Feed. Go through their content and profiles to lock down on potential collaborators. Once partnered with the right people, monitor their commitment by tracking brand hashtags, keywords, and mentions in their respective feeds.
With Influencer Analysis, you can gather social listening data to measure each influencer’s performance. Generate influencer comparison and post sentiment reports to analyze what worked for your campaign and what didn’t.
Pros
Ideal for online brand monitoring
Influencer discovery features help find niche influencers
Influencer monitoring through keyword and hashtag alerts
Start conversations easily
Cons
Some users desire more training materials to use the influencer marketing platform
Tuning search filters can be a lot of work
6. Sendible: A Scalable Solution for Agencies
Sendible is a scalable social media management software with features that would be an excellent fit for agencies. After signing up for their free trial, I was delighted with how easily their dashboard navigated. I could quickly figure out how to use each feature. If I were a social media marketing agency, I'd strongly consider using Sendible because of its collaboration and white labeling features, which can help you better manage clients.
When scouring online reviews, I struggled to find many cons about using Sendible that weren't inherent to most social media management platforms. It's not the most cost-friendly tool on the list, but I'd still consider it a high-value option for its agency-focused features.
Pros
Allows team collaboration
Unlimited post-scheduling for every pricing plan
Known for quick customer support
White-label features
Cons
Costs more than alternatives like Later and Post Planner
Lacks a content creator designed specifically for UGC like Later has
7. Social Blade: The Influencer Discovery Tool
The first step to launching a kickass influencer marketing campaign is identifying influencers aligned with your brand. Social Blade is a social media analytics tool that is perfect for the job! Keep tabs on desirable influencers for target social media platforms—for example, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube—and generate a list sortable by metrics like followers, likes, views, and uploads.
Click on the profile you’re interested in to explore more relevant stats, like the number of likes and uploads the influencer gets every week, and determine who can provide the most exposure to your brand right now. Social Blade is great for YouTube marketing—if you want to collaborate with popular YouTubers, find them by looking at curated lists based on subscriber count, countries they’re popular in, and categories like comedy, education, music, sports, and travel.
Pros
Locates influencers across multiple social media platforms
Handy search filters
Numerous metrics to monitor influencer activities
Special YouTube consultations are available
Cons
The search feature has room for improvement compared to other influencer marketing tools in this list
It is not as applicable to social media platforms besides YouTube, which could limit tracking your influencer marketing campaigns
8. Eclincher: The Multi-Location Business Tool
Eclincher is a social media and online reputation management software that was made for multi-location businesses like healthcare clinics. I recommend trying Eclincher's free trial if you're a business with multiple locations looking for more advanced features like inbox management, social listening, and business listing management. After trying their Basic plan, I was more pleased with the user interface than other reviewers who mentioned it was unaesthetic.
If you don't need more advanced features and are just looking for a tool that helps with social media content and scheduling, I'd recommend other options because the number of features won't be necessary. I also found the limitations with the Basic plan to be limiting for the price tag. For example, the Basic plan doesn't have access to the media library and reporting, which should be standard.
Pros
Feature-rich with tools that help you manage your online presence.
Comes with tools for social listening and managing your DMs
You can get a local SEO tool (for additional cost)
Attentive customer support
Cons
Less intuitive with the overload of features
Can't schedule stories
9. Upfluence: The Influencer Marketing Platform
Upfluence helps you find creators based on audience, content, and performance across platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Besides bringing you complimentary creators, it is a central hub for monitoring submissions and issuing payments. The Upfluence database consists of millions of influencers, micro-influencers, and celebrities.
Narrow your search with over 20 filters, including keywords, audience size, and social platforms. You can even drill down to find influencers who already mention your brand, making them more likely to commit to collaborations. Try automated emails to get in touch with them. Upfluence offers influencer templates for contracts and outreach emails to save you time.
Pros
Data-rich influencer profiles across multiple social media platforms
Simplifies outreach through automated emails
20+ filters to help with influencer discovery
Chrome plugin available
Cons
No cancellation policy is available
Not quite as user-friendly as other influencer marketing tools
10. HeyOrca: The Simple Social Media Scheduler
HeyOrca customers love HeyOrca for two main reasons: It's simple to use, AND they have fast customer support. They make it super easy to switch to different calendars, which is helpful if you're an agency that manages multiple clients' social media. After signing up for the free trial, I can confirm they have one of the most straightforward social calendars. It might lack tools that its competitors have (like better content curation), but I do like how they limit their features so users don't get overwhelmed.
Pros
Quick customer service (a lot of customer reviews rave about this)
Simple social media scheduler
Helpful community of users
Can manage comments and DMs from their social inbox
It comes with a post-approval system for managing clients
Cons
It is not as affordable as Later or some other alternatives like Post Planner
Limited Basic plan
11. Hunter: The Email Finder
Hunter is an email finder that helps you gather the contact information of various professionals, including business influencers, to improve your outreach. Just access its database and define the type of collaborators you wish to connect with, and Hunter will suggest matching results from its repository of 100 million email addresses. The Domain Search function assists in locating influencers within a specific business domain.
This feature is convenient if you’re looking for guest bloggers with niche expertise. Hunter ensures you get valid email addresses through the Email Verifier function. It’s worth noting that Hunter prioritizes fetching professional email addresses instead of those of common domains like Gmail and Yahoo—link Hunter to platforms like Salesforce and Google Workspace to gather leads and streamline your business outreach.
Pros
Vast database of email addresses of professionals
Handy email verifier tool
Enables search by domain or a person’s name
The influencer marketing Campaigns feature helps you send outreach emails on autopilot
Cons
Hard to find contact info for smaller companies
The influencer marketing platform UX needs optimizations
12. Loomly: The Affordable Later Alternative
Loomly is an excellent option if you're looking for a more feature-heavy Later alternative that can be used across a large team and is much more affordable. It’s designed to help businesses manage their entire publishing process from start to finish. Its user interface is a little old-school-looking. However, I found it easy to navigate, and its onboarding process is easy to follow. One standout feature Loomly has that most other alternatives don't is that it supports Snapchat.
Pros
Intuitive to use
The approval feature makes managing client content easier
Can manage comments and DMs from one place
Responsive customer support
Recommends posts based on holidays
Cons
Older-looking user interface
Although it has some content curation features, it doesn't help you find viral content like Post Planner
13. Klear: The Influencer Marketing Platform
Klear (formerly Twtrland) is an end-to-end tool for discovering influencers, monitoring campaigns, and managing payments. The user-friendly platform has a discovery portal with smart search filters to find influencers with unique physical and skill-based attributes.
Pros
Easy-to-use influencer discovery tool
Rich filter criteria
Brand Search feature to find value-compatible creators
Campaign progress metrics available
Insights into competitor marketing strategies
Cons
Payment integrations can be complicated to set up
Not best for finding micro-influencers with an ultra-niche audience
14. Planable: The Collaboration Tool
Planable is another alternative that fits agencies that manage many clients well. They offer content collaboration features that allow you to communicate with your team internally to manage your social posts. My favorite feature — a common theme across Planable's user experience — is its ability to generate AI captions based on an image in one click.
They have one of the better user experiences out of most alternatives because of how quickly you can get to any feature in 1-2 clicks. They also offer features to plan your blog posts and newsletters in the same place as your social posts, although most companies won't use those features because they'll already have software for those use cases. It lacks a feature for curating content. They offer GIFs, but I couldn't find any other form of media that comes with the platform.
Pros
Easy-to-use user experience
Helpful customer support
Quick AI content features
Easily swap between posts views
Cons
It doesn't offer stock images or videos
Pricing is scalable but can get pricey if you have a lot of users
15. BuzzSumo: The Research Tool
BuzzSumo supports idea-based search of influencers and trending content. Identify and enroll influencers according to their value in terms of genuine connections, reach, and authority. The platform also has a database of 500,000+ influential journalists who can hype your brand with strategic articles. The Content Analyzer feature gets you a list of the most shared content relevant to your brand.
Select View Top Sharers to discover influencers with significant clout in the field. Dive deeper by exploring the average number of retweets to learn about a creator’s audience engagement. You should focus on these influencers, as they’re more likely to orchestrate your desired exposure. If you’re benchmarking, find the right competitors by generating Content Analysis reports and cherry-pick strategies that drive more engagement over time.
Pros
Cross-platform influencer discovery search
Offers a journalist database
Engagement-based analysis is ideal for detailed influencer marketing campaigns.
Allows data exports in CSV and Excel formats
Cons
Not for businesses with low content budgets
The user interface is not the best in this list of influencer marketing software options
16. Buffer: The Simple Social Media Scheduler
Buffer's simple design and UX make scheduling, posting, and collaborating intuitive. Buffer can connect to Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Google Business, and even Mastodon. Even though Buffer can connect to all these platforms, Instagram is where it shines. Since Instagram only allows users to share one link in their bio, Buffer allows you to make a landing page that will enable you to share various links and calls to action. This stand-out feature will help you turn your Instagram traffic into sales and signups.
Similar to Later (unlike other tools on this list, like Post Planner), Buffer suffers because it doesn’t provide the user with a solution for finding posts. Its suite of tools is excellent for planning and scheduling, but it doesn’t allow the user to quickly and efficiently find the top posts in their niche. Buffer is heavily focused on teams and analytics. It may not be for you if you’re just looking for something to help you provide better content for your followers.
Pros:
Team collaboration features
It supports social media Mastodon, unlike other tools on this list.
In-depth analytics & dashboard
Great for converting your social traffic into sales with its link shortener and landing page tools
Cons
Pricing can get expensive because they charge for each social media platform you use
No features to find the top content in your industry
Later Pros: What Makes It A Solid Choice For Social Media Scheduling?
1. Easy to use
Later's intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to get started immediately. You won’t have to waste time navigating the platform before you can get to work.
2. Affordable
Later, it offers a free plan that allows you to schedule up to 10 posts per social profile. This is a great way to test the platform to see if it fits your needs. After that, paid plans start at just $15 per month.
3. Great for creators Focusing on visual content
Later is a fantastic option for brands and creators who use Instagram to promote their business.
4. Creator collaboration
Later, it makes it easy to collaborate with other users. You can invite team members or external collaborators to contribute to your Later account, assign them specific roles, and control their permissions.
5. Great link in the bio feature
Later has a tool called Linkin.bio that creates a customizable landing page for your Instagram or TikTok account. You can use this page to organize links to your latest content, products, or services and promote it to your social media audiences.
6. AI post ideas
Later, it uses artificial intelligence to analyze your social media performance and suggest the best times to post for optimal engagement. It can also generate post ideas based on your account or industry to help inspire your content creation.
Later Cons: What To Look Out For Before Committing
1. No social media post preview
Later, it lets you preview your social media posts before they go live. However, it doesn’t let you preview what your posts will look like on your actual social media profiles.
2. Underwhelming social inbox
Later, it has a social inbox to manage comments and messages from your connected social profiles. However, this feature is essential and lacks some functionality of other social media management tools.
3. Limited social media collaboration features
While Later does offer collaboration features, they are somewhat limited. For instance, you can’t create and assign tasks to other users.
4. Content curation and listening features are absent
Later, it does not have tools to help you find or organize user-generated content or posts from other accounts. This makes creating a social media strategy that incorporates curated content more arduous.
Go Viral Today with Our Viral on Demand Platform
Megaphone is a viral on-demand platform designed to boost your online presence authentically and organically. Its sophisticated software connects users with influential creators in their niche, helping them grow impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads.
Unpacking the Key Features of Megaphone
Key features include a sophisticated engagement network, a private engagement pod service coming soon, and diverse creator partnerships for sponsored posts, X spaces, and newsletter ads, which are also coming soon.
Discovering Who Can Benefit from Megaphone
Megaphone caters to startup founders, marketers, emerging creators, and ghostwriting agencies seeking to amplify their digital footprint and social proof.
How Megaphone Works
The complex matching algorithm ensures you partner with your field's most suitable and valuable creators. Go viral today with our viral on-demand platform.