7 Tools to Up Your Social Media Management
When it comes to building your brand online, nothing is more important than keeping up your social media management game. With all the different social media platforms these days it can be difficult to stay on top of all of your different accounts, keep things organized and stay on schedule. Here's are some great social media management tools to free you from digital woes, getting you the engagement that you’re looking for.
1. Later.com
Later (formerly Latergramme) is one of the best decisions we've made in our social media management. With Laters' affordable paid plans, it was definitely worth it for our business.
Later is the number one marketing platform for Instagram in recent years. It allows you to plan all your visual content from photos to videos. Later features a calendar view that allows you to plan and preview your posts as they’ll actually appear. Recently, they've also updated a feature where you can share what you've planned on Instagram Stories! That's an added bonus since you can now schedule & plan your Stories as well.
One of my most favorite feature of Later is that it allows you to visually identify your best post times. Once you've selected them, you just need to upload all the posts you've created to the calendar! Bulk posting is just da bomb!
They also include a Media Library where you can organize all of your media for postings. The media library is where you can sync photos and videos from your desktop, Drive, or Dropbox and label and organize your media for future use or reference.
Another great feature Later offers is its Instagram analytics. This cool tool allows you to learn more about your audience by tracking likes, follows, and clicks. Plus Later features a free plan for individual users and offers several pricing points for different business levels.
Price: Free to Paid from $9/month
2. Canva for Work
Canva for Work makes it easy to create your own graphic designs for your social media accounts. Canva offers a free option as well, but Canva for Work is best for entrepreneurs with multiple team members and accounts to manage. The Canva for Work web-based solution allows you unlimited folders for your designs and unlimited storage for photos and assets.
With your monthly premium, you also get exclusive access to 300,000 free photos, illustrations and templates and the ability to upload your own images and modify them with resizing, fonts, etc. Over 10,000 organizations use Canva for Work in order to make the lives of their employees easier and increase their social media presence including yelp, Huff Post, and Up Worthy.
Canva has helped our team who has little to no experience in graphic design function like a graphic designer! Simple and easy to use functions of Canva makes designing a breeze for everyone. If you work in a team, you can consider Canva for Work plan. This ensures that your team are all acquainted with the Branding Guide of your brand before they produce any types of social media content.
Price: Free individual plan, $13.74/month Canva for Work plan
3. Microsoft Excel
This may seem like a primitive and more common option for social media management purposes, but is probably the least appreciated in the world. Dozens of different websites provide free social media templates for Excel that can save you hours of work. You can also use macros in the Excel program to create forms that you can then use to manage your social media better.
Price: $15/user/month cost for Microsoft Office 365
4. Facebook Pages Manager
This tool is specific to Facebook, but it’s a free to use option that can provide you with helpful statistics and tools to improve your business. Facebook provides you with Page Insights to show you which posts are grabbing people’s interest, which can help you create more effective posts in the future. This program also allows you access to Facebook Messenger where you can keep in contact with people interested in your business. You can also download the Facebook Pages Manager app and make adjustments to your page from any android or iOS device.
Price: Free! With options for paid ads and post boosting for a nominal fee
5. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is an app designed to help drive traffic to your website and landing pages while increasing social engagement. The app will make recommendations designed to help improve your social media strategy. Crowdfire does this by connecting your social networks and getting to know our brand. Next it will take you through a few quick tasks each day that can be personalized to you and your organization’s social media goals. Lastly, it will create content that your audience will love and post it for you once you give it permission to do so.
Price: Free
6. BuzzSumo
It’s a bit pricier than the previous options mentioned, but BuzzSumo provides an invaluable resource for content. BuzzSumo is a tool for those days when you’re drawing a blank on new social media content. It serves as an idea generator for new content topics and articles for you to share. You can even search for specific options of the content you want to share ranging from articles and infographics to giveaways and guest posts. BuzzSumo runs the gamut of content options for your social media profiles. They also allow you to search for key influencers (a great tool for increasing your engagement) and you can see then what content and topics they share most often and the domains they share from.
Price:
This is my most favorite one of them all.
Unlike all the previous tools mentioned, this isn’t any sort of technological platform. TimeEtc provides you with an option to hire a virtual assistant to work on your social media management for you. Maybe you’re just completely overwhelmed with social media posting and need another employee to assist you.
Time Etc is an internet service that can provide you with your own virtual assistant to handle your social media management needs. They also offer assistants that can work on a variety of other tasks for you, but certain people specialize in social media marketing and can use their knowledge to efficiently work on your social media accounts. What makes TimeEtc special to me is their unique 10-step selection process, designed by Sir Richard Branson's former Executive Assistant and refined over many years. This means you know your TimeEtc Virtual Assistant will be trustworthy, reliable and dependable. Yay!
Price: Starting from $78/month for 3 hours
If you’re able to utilize just some of the social media management tools listed above, you’re likely to have a much easier time with your social media accounts. These tools will help you up your social media engagement and get you to the top of your game!
