Creating and maintaining vibrant and engaging social media channels is a full-time job, so it’s unsurprising that time-poor businesses find it difficult to keep up. Some people think social media is something that can be done within an hour at the start of each week but, if you want to reach your goals, there’s so much more planning, time and attention to detail that needs to go into your Social Media strategy.
We might make it look effortless, but a lot of preparation and creative brainstorming goes into creating our clients’ content. Not only that, we also use a few crucial tools that help us stay organised and on top of our game.
Take a look through the tools that we recommend to help make creating and managing your social media content so much easier.
Scheduling Tools
A scheduling tool is the first thing we would recommend. This will allow you to plan your strategic content ahead of time and schedule it so that it will be delivered to the social media channels at a later date. There is nothing worse than having the pressure of needing to post on the spot because you’re often too busy and forget to do it, or it will be rushed. You may also feel like you’re posting just for the sake of it, rather than putting out something beneficial to your brand. We can recommend scheduling tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite or Buffer and most tools either have a free trial or a free package with limited tools.
Video
Video works really well on social media and is especially hot at the moment. In 2021, it’s estimated that the average person will watch 100 minutes of online videos per day, increasing from 84 minutes in 2019. There are a number of free, paid monthly or paid license video creation tools out there, but ones we recommend are Promo, Breakout Clips and Vimeo. These are handy tools to use for easy, short and engaging videos that will look great on your business socials.
Graphics
One way to bring your brand personality to life is to create eye-catching graphics. We have our own graphic designers in house, but we understand not every business has that luxury. If you want to create bespoke graphics that look the part, we suggest downloading the Adobe Illustrator software. Yes, this does come with a larger price tag, but it really is worth it! If you need something more wallet-friendly, we can suggest Canva or Adobe Spark that allow you to create what you need from templates or available assets. Alternatively, you can contact us to find out more information about our graphic design services.
Social Media Platforms
Did you know that most social media platforms allow you to do things such as schedule posts, edit images and get interactive? We’ll use Facebook as our example: on the native platform you are able to schedule posts to go live later, put posts into drafts, edit images with filters or add in stickers and take advantage of their post creative formats (carousel, slideshow, video). Don’t forget on most platforms you are able to post to Stories, publish question boxes and set polls live. This is all free and can be found on your business page.
Stock imagery
Using real life photos on your social media is great but is not always the easiest thing to have on tap. If you don’t have a lot of new and fresh images to use, your feeds can start to look bland and boring, and that is where stock imagery comes in. This tool is an extra way to add something visual to your posts and ads, whilst also giving your feed variety. Shutterstock, Canva or Adobe Stock all provide high quality, royalty free photography and graphics that will light up your social media profiles.
An agency
As we mentioned at the start of this blog, we know how important social media is when used in tandem with the other Digital Marketing services we offer, but it can also be hugely time consuming. That is why we’ve included ourselves in the best tools that are available if your business needs some social media TLC and guidance! We offer everything from content creation, paid advertising, social media strategy, graphic design and more. Our experts will assess your social media footprint before starting work and piece together a strategy of how to elevate your profiles to reach your target audience and goals. We’ve got all the tools mentioned in this blog at our fingertips, so you can leave the hard work to us.
Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you with your Digital Marketing.
