With so many apps, websites and recommendations out there for managing your social media these days, I want to share about the top tools I use in my business. As with everything, it’s all about what works for you and with so many of these being free, it means you can have a play and if you don’t like it, try something else.
Even still, start with one and as you grow or your needs change, move up and on to something else.
I’ve been working with social media as a comms, PR and marketing tool since 2011. Here are the top tools that I use and have found useful over the years:
If there’s one tool you’ve heard of, it’ll likely be Hootsuite. But what’s it good for? Hootsuite let’s you plug all your social channels into one place for ease of monitoring and posting. You can post the same content across multiple channels at the same time and you can schedule content for the days ahead. It’s also got a nifty tool called ‘auto schedule’ which basically saves you the guesswork and research about what time of day to post and will send them out at the optional time for your specific audience. The basic version of Hootsuite is free, and it comes in both desktop and app versions so you can manage it on the go. Not only that, but you can access analytics and set up multiple search streams for social listening. This allows you to easily pick up mentions of your brand as well as industry relevant terms. You may even have your own hashtag. Want to track who’s using it? Done!
Having good quality graphic design and imagery across your social media is made possible thanks to Canva! A fantastic platform great for sourcing free images, designs and templates, all of which have specified sizes for social media channels (the cover image, the tweet, the Instagram post). You can upload your own images and brand colours to use too! Many, many, small businesses use this tool daily, and it’s simple to understand and play with. One piece of advice – you can easily lose a lot of time scrolling through the designs and images! Don’t get lost in the possibilities!
On Twitter we retweet, on Facebook and LinkedIn we share, on Instagram you #regram. To do this manually, you would need to take a screen shot and go through the process of adding a picture to your account. Be sure to seek permission and include their Instagram handle when sharing it with your audience. If that becomes a little too time consuming for you then that’s where the Repost app comes in. It’s a really quick and easy way for you to share other Instagrammer’s photos with your audience. The Repost app credits the owner automatically, and includes the original text that was posted with it.
We should all have gotten the memo by now that visuals are super important for all of your social media posts. Yep, all of them.
However, if you feel you don’t have a hugely visual business, or struggle with what to share, perhaps you have lots of inspiring words to share (or you can make this work for your business) then Wordswag is worth looking up. It’s a free app so you can create your content on the go, seamlessly and very quickly. Chose your background, type in your inspiration, pick a style, and away you go. It’s now in your camera roll ready to be shared with your followers!
Hashtags! A cause of confusion amongst many businesses and individuals I work with.
What do I use? Why should I use them? How many do I use?
As a quick heads up – two in a tweet is plenty and when posting on Instagram, Facebook recommends not going much above 5. When it comes to finding out which ones to start trying out, and which ones are associated with what – Hashtagify is your tool. Simply type your keyword in the search box and it will display, in a cool mind map, the hashtags which are being used the most alongside that word. Now you can pick which ones most resonate with you and what you’re posting about, or use the results to drop a few.
If you would like any of your social media questions answered, then get in touch!
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