6 Essential Social Media Tools of the Trade

There are many tools available to help make our lives easier, and in the world of social media it is no different. We all want to do things smarter and not harder, so here are six tools of the trade that I use regularly to manage social media. 

1. Create a social media plan for your business
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Plan your posts and stick to the plan as much as possible. I find that having a plan helps to stick to the key messages for the business and helps to create more interesting, relevant and timely social media content as opposed to having an ad hoc approach. 

2. Set up a Hootsuite or similar social media management account. ​

Hootsuite is great. You can link all your social media accounts to this program and manage them all in one place. The free plan offers you 3 social media accounts, or you can pay for a plan if you want to link more than 3 accounts.

The beauty of this system is it allows you to plan and schedule your content in advance.

This means you can spend a couple of hours each week, or month and set everything up in advance so you don’t have to think about posting every day. 

3. Sign up to Google Alerts, industry blogs and e-subscriptions
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Keep up to date with what’s happening within your industry or profession with regular emails and alerts. Google Alerts is great providing you with timely notifications regarding the latest articles relevant to what you want to hear about. It’s easy to sign up using your free Google account.

4. Use an online graphic design tool.

We don’t all have access to a graphic designer when we need it, however with online low cost tools like Canva and Lucid Press we can create our own simple designs.
I have used both and prefer Lucid Press for design. Both tools have options to design graphics for social media posts, social media banners, Facebook ads, even flyers, brochures and more. 

5. Access quality free images for your website or social media

There are some great options online to access free or relatively cheap images which can save you a fair amount of money in photography or expensive stock images. I use UnSplash and 123rf on a fairly regular basis. I also have accessed others through the likes of Hubspot and Marketo over the years.

6. Create your own short videos
 
It’s not rocket science these days when you have easy access to apps like Ripl or iMovie. It depends how technical you want to be, sometimes I create short video posts on Ripl with a couple of good photos, you simply add in some text and choose which music you want to go with it then add it to Facebook. I have also developed my skills in iMovie (available on Apple devices) and enjoy creating longer videos with a mixture of images and video. It’s a really great and effective tool and fairly easy to master and upload to YouTube or other social media accounts. 

If you would like any more information or help to get started feel free to contact us. We offer in house training or Skype or FaceTime consultations. For more information email [email protected]. 

Author

Nicola is the owner and director of Out of the Box Consulting and has a keen interest in helping small businesses with their marketing and promotion. She is also the mother of two boys and loves to spend time with her family. ​​