Essential Tools For Social Media That Small-Medium Sized Businesses Need To Be Using.
The amount of tools available to help with social media is quite mind-blowing. They help to increase the performance and quality of your accounts. But I also understand that majority of small-medium businesses can’t pour endless amounts of money into tools for their Social Media. So I’ve put together a list of the basic tools that will help get your accounts to the next level. They are also FREE to use! We have found the ones included (along with a lot of others) greatly beneficial for us. Especially when managing accounts or producing content for clients.
On Platform Scheduling Tool.
Creator Studio: Facebook, Instagram, (Free)
This is where the content you create can be scheduled. If you don’t already schedule your posts, I highly recommend you start! Staying consistent with content is a common problem, it happens to a lot of business who don’t see the immediate value in posting social media content. Batching all your content into a few hours of work is how you avoid this.
Multi-Platform Scheduling Tool.
Later.com: (Lite Version – Free)
Tools like Later.com is any Content Marketers dream. Mainly for posting on a variety of platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter). The analytics on Later.com is a lot better than what each platform provides. The benefits are that you can easily schedule a whole month of content in only 20 minutes! The lite version has an affordable cost of $7.5 per month, which is worth it if you’re looking to improve your content game.
Analytics.
Facebook, Instagram (Insights):(Free)
Analytics help tremendously when looking to create content that performs. Hosted inside each of the platforms, these are key to finding out what content works the best. Utilising data will help you increase the chance of getting better results from your content. What you may think is going to work isn’t always right….your audience could be after something completely different.
Message Auto-Responder.
Manychat:(Lite Version – Free)
This tool allows auto-responders to be active on Facebook 24/7. At first, responding yourself comes across as the only option as it is easy to manage. Many chatbots allow responses to happen immediately (even while you sleep). The more dynamic and time you take to build an auto-responder, the more it will come across as a natural conversation. Once it’s set up you can leave it for months, which frees time up without compromising response times.
Design/Illustrations.
Canva: (Lite Version – Free)
If you aren’t in a position to hire a graphic designer, Canva is a simple and effective tool. Canva has allowed countless businesses to run adverts and create content to a high enough level that converts. The free version allows you to post simple but effective designs for your content or adverts. The premium is well worth it if you’re looking to further increase the quality of your content.
External Links.
Bitly Link: (Lite Version – Free)This allows you to shorten the links you want to include in your content. Links that are ridiculous in length look far from professional and don’t make the link very enticing to click on. Bitly even allows you to include keywords on the tail end of the link to show what the user is about to click on.
Video Editor.
Clipchamp Create: (Basic Version – Free)
This video editor is by far the most value for money for users looking to not fork out a bunch of money and do videos themselves. It has the best features which allow you to keep that your content to a high quality without spending a lot per month for editing software. Videos are an essential tool to use for content and are a great way to get more personal with your audience.
