No matter what you sell or who you are selling it to, using social media as a digital marketing tool can help you grow your brand and your bottom line. If you have a good flow of content to publish on your social channels and are looking for a way to take it to the next level, this post is for you. I’ve rounded up some of my favorite tools and resources that anyone can use.
There are a few tools that make it easy for you to post regularly, optimize your time, engage your audience and publish social media worthy photos. Here are a few of my favorite and FREE social media tools to check out.
Post Scheduler
No busy business owner has time to think about posting on social media every day or even every week. Setting up a social media post scheduler like Hootsuite allows you to draft posts and schedule them to go out on certain dates and times. You can schedule up to 30 posts for free! Depending on your workload and how you wish to market your business, you can schedule posts out a week at a time or a month out. This allows you to free up your mind and not worry about posting to your accounts every day.
Link Shortener
Have you ever wanted to share an article and the link was a billion characters long with what seems like hundreds of back-slashes? It’s not a good look on your social media channels. And when posting to Twitter, where you only have 280 characters of precious space, having a short link is desirable. Bitly, Google Shortener and Ow.ly are all great FREE resources to take a long URL and make it small.
Graphic Design
Creating beautiful social media posts sometimes takes more than a photo and a caption. You may want to put your logo on it or add some text. Now you can without learning Photoshop and spending the money on some expensive software. Canva is a free tool that has a variety of different layouts, fonts, free photos and other tools to help you design the social media photos you want. Adobe Spark is another application that helps you turn your posts into a visual story. Great for photos and videos, this free software allows you to add filters and text that will help you stand out!
Image Sizing
Every social media channel has different size requirements. Turn to Landscape to resize your images to fit perfectly on every platform. This tool with automatically resize your images for profile photos, cover photos, or for the images you want to publish to your page. It’s easy and free!
Image Editor
Not everyone has the time or desire to learn Photoshop. There are two free photo image editing apps that you can download on your phone for free to help you edit your photos and make them social media ready. Facetune is great for editing people in phones, whitening background, sharpening objects and more. VSCO is another free photography app to help you achieve the best filter and lighting for your pics.
Books
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk: This is a blueprint to social media marketing and the strategies that really work. You see visual examples of successful social media and then the book breaks it into why it’s had such a positive impact. This book was published in 2013, but don’t let that shy you away from reading it. The principles in this book still hold true.
Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen: This book is all about harnessing the power word of mouth in a noisy social media world. It talks about listing to your customer’s problems, delivering value, and how you can truly engage with the right audience.
The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick: Guy was the chief evangelist for Apple and one of the first who took on business blogging, tweeting and Facebooking. This book is a guide to get the most bang for your time and effort on social media. It’s an interesting read and full of tips to build a successful social foundation.
LR Design & Marketing has years of experience building website and digital marketing plans for all types of industries from E-commerce, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, non-profits, and more. I’ve helped companies set up social media accounts, set up strategies, put together content calendars, and managed accounts for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Interested in upping your social media game? Let’s Chat!
